Context and diagnosis
- Analysis of market and competitive context
- Business objectives translated into marketing objectives
- Diagnosis of the marketing areas currently running
- Risks and dependencies identified up front
StrategyMarketing strategy
Before doing more marketing, find out what actually needs to be done.
Strategy organises positioning, audiences, priorities, channels, messages, resources and indicators so that execution stops being a sequence of disconnected initiatives.
The diagnosis starts with a conversation about context, not with a ready-made proposal.
The problem
Plenty of activity, little direction
The problem is almost never a lack of effort. It is a lack of criteria for deciding what comes first, what waits and what should stop.
Situations that tend to appear together
- Many initiatives running, with little clarity about what each one should produce.
- Priorities that change at every meeting, before the previous one is finished.
- Channels chosen by trend, by recommendation, or because a competitor is there.
- Internal team, agency and suppliers pulling in different directions.
- Positioning that could belong to any company in the same sector.
- An audience defined too broadly to guide either message or investment.
- Content produced with no connection to what makes someone decide to buy.
- Budget allocated out of habit rather than against an objective.
- Well-written plans that never reached execution.
- Indicators tracked that change no decision.
What happens when this is left unresolved
- Acquisition cost rises and nobody can explain why.
- Each channel is judged by its own metric, and the whole is never judged at all.
- Good initiatives die before they mature, replaced by the next idea.
- The team starts executing tasks instead of pursuing an objective.
- The company accumulates material, tools and contracts — and no learning.
Without strategy, a company can execute the wrong things correctly.
Clearing up the confusion
What strategy is not
Much of what the market calls strategy is an intermediate deliverable, a tool, or a presentation format.
- A list of ideas gathered in a meeting.
- A posting calendar.
- A polished deck that describes the market without deciding anything.
- A one-off workshop that leaves nothing running.
- A fixed plan, written once and defended against reality.
- Choosing platforms before defining objectives.
- Copying what a competitor does and assuming it works for them.
- Trying to execute everything at once so nothing is left out.
None of this is useless. It simply is not strategy — and none of those artefacts answers where the company should concentrate its effort.
What it is
A decision about where to concentrate effort
Marketing strategy is the set of decisions that defines who the company speaks to, what it promises, through which channels, in what order of priority and against which indicators — in a form that execution can be led and corrected by.
The decisive word is "decisions". A document that describes the market without choosing an audience, setting priorities and stating what will not be done guides no one: any action can still be justified.
Strategy also does not end with the document. It has to become initiatives with an owner and a date, indicators that somebody watches, and a review routine that allows a change of course based on information rather than fatigue.
Scope varies. A company that has not defined its positioning needs different work from one that already sells well and needs to organise channels. The diagnosis is what separates the two cases before any proposal.
How we think
Strategy is reviewed, not defended
A plan that does not change in twelve months is not a sign of accuracy: it is a sign that nobody compared it with the outcome. Strategy exists to be confronted with what the operation shows, and adjusted when reality disagrees with it.
That is why the work is organised into three movements, which also underpin the other areas of Arte com Pimenta.
- MADE reveals reality
- Mapping the context: market, competition, offer, audience, channels in use, investment history and what the existing data already supports — separating fact from assumption.
- FAPE defines the path
- The choices: positioning, value proposition, priority audiences, funnel architecture, message system, channels and the order in which each area starts.
- MAE organises execution
- Turning those choices into initiatives, ownership, indicators and a review routine — so the plan stays alive after delivery.
Scope
What the strategy covers
The composition depends on the diagnosis. A company with clear positioning and a working funnel does not redo everything — it works on what is loose.
Positioning and audience
- Positioning and value proposition
- ICP — ideal customer profile
- Priority audiences and exclusion criteria
- Buyer decision journey
Marketing architecture
- Funnel architecture
- Message system by stage and by audience
- Channel selection and the role of each one
- Priorities and sequence of initiatives
Execution and follow-up
- Initiatives with a named owner
- Indicators per objective
- Responsibilities across internal team, agency and suppliers
- Review routine and criteria for changing course
Not every project uses every item. What goes in is decided during the diagnosis and recorded before work starts.
Process
How the work happens
Strategy is built with the company, not handed over finished. The people who know the operation take part in the decisions — otherwise the plan describes a company that does not exist.
Diagnosis
Conversations with decision-makers and with the people who execute, a read of the available data, and a review of investment history and material in use.
Reading and hypotheses
Organising what was gathered, separating fact from assumption, and formulating the hypotheses the strategy will test.
Decisions
Positioning, audiences, messages, channels and priorities defined together, with what is left out made explicit.
Execution plan
Initiatives, owners, indicators and sequence. This is where the plan stops being a document and becomes a routine.
Review
Follow-up sessions where results are compared with the hypothesis and priorities are adjusted.
What depends on you
- Access to decision-makers, with real diary time for the diagnosis conversations.
- Sales data, even imperfect: without it, marketing can only be judged by platform metrics.
- Clarity about real constraints on budget, team and delivery capacity.
- A decision about what the company will stop doing. Prioritising means giving something up.
Indicators
What starts being tracked
The strategy defines which indicators matter for that company’s objectives — and which can be ignored without loss.
- Demand generation
- How much new, qualified interest the operation is creating.
- Opportunity quality
- Whether the people arriving fit the profile, not just how many.
- Conversion
- Where the journey advances and where it stalls, stage by stage.
- CAC
- What it costs to win a customer, counting what was invested to get there.
- Revenue
- How much of the commercial result originates in marketing.
- LTV
- What a customer represents across the relationship, not just at first purchase.
- Retention
- Whether the base stays — which changes the acquisition maths entirely.
- Channel efficiency
- What each channel delivers relative to what it consumes.
- Priority progress
- Whether what was set as a priority actually moved.
Indicators are defined per project. We publish no benchmark figures: every operation starts from a different point, and a number out of context misleads more than it guides.
When it fits
When strategy is the right step
There are situations where starting with execution is predictable waste.
- When there is marketing investment and no agreement on what it should produce.
- When the company is entering a market, launching a line or changing audience.
- When several areas are active and nobody can say which one carries the result.
- When the internal team and suppliers work from different understandings of the same business.
- When growth has stalled and every available explanation is an opinion.
- When there is budget to invest more and no basis for deciding where.
Limits
When strategy alone does not solve it
Strategy organises decisions. It does not replace delivery capacity, nor fix problems that sit outside marketing.
- When there is neither team nor supplier to execute whatever is decided.
- When the product or service has no fit with the market being targeted.
- When the sales process cannot handle the volume already arriving today.
- When investment decisions change direction monthly regardless of the plan.
- When the problem is operational — deadlines, delivery, support — and shows up as a marketing problem.
In those cases the diagnosis says so plainly. Selling a plan that cannot be executed is the kind of work we do not do.
Questions
Frequently asked questions about strategy
What do I receive at the end of a strategy engagement?
A documented set of decisions — positioning, audiences, messages, channels and priorities — translated into initiatives with owners, indicators and a review routine. The document matters less than the routine it leaves running.
How long does it take to build the strategy?
It depends on the size of the operation, how many channels are active and the quality of existing data. The timeline is estimated during the diagnosis, once scope is defined. We do not advertise a standard duration before knowing what needs to be done.
What if my company has no organised data?
That is the most common situation. The diagnosis works with what exists and points out what needs to start being measured. Organising measurement is usually one of the first initiatives in the plan, not a prerequisite for starting.
Can I hire strategy without hiring execution?
Yes. The strategy is delivered so that it can be executed by an internal team or by other suppliers. What we do not do is hand over a plan knowing there is no way to execute it — that surfaces in the diagnosis, before any contract.
How often should the strategy be reviewed?
The review routine is set within the plan itself and follows the company’s decision cycle. The trigger for reviewing is not the calendar: it is the gap between what was expected and what happened.
Are MADE, FAPE and MAE registered methodologies?
They are the names of the three stages of our working method: MADE maps reality, FAPE defines the path and MAE organises execution. The method page describes each one.
Before deciding where to invest, it helps to understand what is happening.
That is what the strategic diagnosis is for: understanding context, objectives and constraints before recommending any area of work.
No proposal is sent before the diagnosis conversation.