In the dynamic world of business, effective marketing is the cornerstone of success. However, simply implementing marketing tactics without clear objectives and strategies in place can lead to wasted resources and missed opportunities. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll delve into the fundamentals of building marketing objectives, and explore various strategies to reach target audiences.
HOW ARE MARKETING OBJECTIVES DIFFERENT FROM BUSINESS GOALS?
In an earlier article we talked about the techniques for making business goals. But how are business goals different from marketing objectives?
Business goals and marketing objectives are closely intertwined but serve different purposes in driving business success. Here’s a breakdown of their differences, their relationship, and how business owners should approach making both.
1. Business Goals:
- Definition: Business goals are broad, overarching objectives that define the desired outcomes or achievements a company aims to accomplish within a specific timeframe. These goals typically relate to overall business growth, profitability, market share, customer satisfaction, or expansion.
- Purpose: Business goals provide a strategic direction and serve as a compass for the entire organization. They guide decision-making, resource allocation, and performance evaluation across all departments.
- Examples: Increasing revenue by 20% within the next year, expanding into new markets, improving customer retention rates by 15%, or launching a new product line.
2. Marketing Objectives:
- Definition: Marketing objectives are specific, measurable targets that support the achievement of broader business goals. They focus on marketing-specific outcomes related to brand awareness, customer acquisition, lead generation, sales, or market share.
- Purpose: Marketing objectives translate business goals into actionable steps and provide a roadmap for marketing initiatives. They help marketing teams prioritize activities, allocate resources effectively, and track progress towards key performance indicators (KPIs).
- Examples: Increasing website traffic by 30% within six months, generating 500 new leads per month through digital marketing campaigns, improving social media engagement by 25%, or launching a targeted email campaign to increase sales conversion rates.
Essentially, marketing objectives help us achieve our business goals. Each business goal should have corresponding marketing objectives, and each marketing objective should align back to at least one of our business goals. Otherwise, why are we doing it?
For example: If our business goal is to grow revenue by 20% in the next year, our marketing objectives might include improving our sales or affiliate team training to increase upsell products by 15% per transaction in Q1; or increasing customer retention rates by 7% by streamlining our digital checkout experience in the next 2 months.
Remember our SMART model? We’ll use this same model to apply to marketing objectives too. Each of our marketing objectives should have:
- Specificity: Make marketing objectives clear, specific, and measurable to facilitate effective planning, execution, and evaluation. Use SMART criteria (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound) to set objectives.
- Integration: Integrate marketing objectives into the overall business planning process to create a cohesive strategy that addresses both short-term marketing needs and long-term business objectives.
- Flexibility: Continuously monitor and reassess marketing objectives in response to changing market dynamics, consumer behavior, and business priorities. Be prepared to adjust objectives as needed to stay agile and responsive to evolving conditions.
- Measurement: Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to track the progress and success of marketing objectives. Regularly evaluate performance against these metrics to identify areas for improvement and optimization.
By aligning marketing objectives with broader business goals, we make sure our marketing efforts are strategic, impactful, and ultimately contribute to the overall success and growth of the company.
BUILDING CLEAR AND MEASURABLE MARKETING OBJECTIVES
Marketing objectives serve as the roadmap for our business’ marketing efforts, guiding every campaign and initiative towards achieving specific goals. To ensure success, these objectives must be clear, measurable, and aligned with broader business goals. Here’s where our SMART goals come in again.
- Specificity: Objectives should be precise and clearly defined to avoid ambiguity. For example, instead of stating a vague goal like “increase sales,” specify the desired outcome, such as “increase sales by 20% by the end of the year.”
- Measurability: Establish concrete criteria for measuring progress towards your objectives. Whether it’s tracking website traffic, email open rates, or social media engagement, ensure that you have the tools and metrics in place to monitor performance effectively.
- Attainable: Like our business goals, we need to make sure our marketing objectives are realistic. If we want to grow our sales by 20% by the end of the year, and we know it costs $X per sale on average – then we can do the math to see if that goal is achievable with the budget we have available.
- Relevant: Align marketing objectives with broader business goals to ensure that every marketing initiative contributes to the overall success of the organization. For example, if our business goal is to expand into new markets, marketing objectives should focus on increasing brand awareness and customer acquisition in those target markets. It’s also important to consider the relevancy of our measurement metrics, as well, to make sure they will help us evaluate progress over time.
- Time-bound: Set a specific timeframe for achieving our objectives to create a sense of urgency and accountability. Whether it’s a short-term campaign or a long-term strategic initiative, having deadlines in place helps keep our team focused and motivated.
EFFECTIVE MARKETING CHANNELS TO REACH TARGET AUDIENCES
Once we have clear objectives in place, and we have an understanding on who our audience is and our Unique Value Proposition (UVP), it’s time to make sure we leverage every marketing channel at our disposal to help accomplish our marketing objectives.
There are three main media types that we can use to engage with our audiences:
- Owned Media: These are channels that we own and control, such as our website, blog, and social media profiles. These channels allow us to disseminate valuable content and engage with our audience directly.
- Some owned media channels available to us include Email Marketing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Website, Content Marketing, Organic Social Media Posts, Search Engine Optimization, etc.
- Earned Media: Earned media refers to publicity gained through word-of-mouth, social sharing, and media coverage. This is where “going viral” fits into the scheme of things (although we have opinions about when that’s desired or not).
- While we can’t entirely control earned media, we can encourage it by requesting customer reviews, testimonials, and social shares to amplify our brand’s reach organically. We can also reach out to local media outlets or podcasts we listen to and see if they might be interested in interviewing us about a topic related to our business or products.
- Paid Media: This is when we invest in targeted advertising across various platforms, including digital ads, TV and radio spots, print ads, social media ads, search engine marketing (SEM), and display advertising, to reach specific demographics and increase brand visibility.
- Paid media has become much more affordable with the increased access to promotional tools through digital platforms like social media, and also through the use of programmatic platforms that allow for real time bidding on advertising inventory. But, more on this in a future article.
We’ll go into more details on these marketing channels, and how to think about budgeting for them, in the next article. But it’s important for us to be thinking about and leveraging all of the channels available to us, to ensure we’re engaging with our intended audience and in a way that resonates with them.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Building clear and measurable marketing objectives that align to our business goals, implementing effective strategies to reach target audiences, and utilizing all of the media channels at our disposal are essential steps for businesses looking to achieve marketing success. By following these principles and continuously evaluating and refining our approach, we can position our businesses for long-term growth and profitability.
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