Here is your complete guide to marketing objectives
Introduction to Marketing Objectives
Strategic and clear marketing objectives are essential components of any sound, effective inbound marketing strategy.
Your marketing objectives are the well-defined goals of your brand.
Aside from that, you can use your marketing objectives to provide clear direction for your team members to follow.
There is no clarity on what needs to be accomplished if goals are not defined, and your brand will struggle to reach its full potential. Your company will have the goals it wants to achieve and the execution plan to meet those marketing objectives if you implement a simple marketing plan.
What Is the Difference Between Marketing Objectives and Goals?
So, what exactly are marketing goals? How can they be defined so that you know which marketing efforts the marketing team should prioritize? As previously stated, marketing objectives should contribute to and align with overall company goals. Every organization’s marketing arm is used to support the company’s goals, whether they are quarterly, annual, or even ten years in the future.
These are four examples of marketing objectives if you are the VP of Marketing for an athletic apparel brand looking to expand into new markets.
Create an online presence in a new city or country, translate all marketing materials into the local language, launch a brand awareness campaign to introduce the brand to the new market, and generate X number of online sales by X date.
In the preceding example, one of the company’s goals is to enter a new market, and the marketing department’s goals must support that.
These objectives, when combined, form your overall marketing strategy for achieving your company’s objectives.
How Do You Set Marketing Goals?
We frequently see companies set arbitrary marketing goals that do not contribute to the overall success of the company. These would be goals like increasing website traffic by 100% for the year or launching social ads to increase Instagram and Facebook followers.
Marketing objectives must have an impact on the organization as a whole, and they must be supported by other departments in order for marketing to be seen as relevant. Too often, the relationship between sales and marketing is strained. The sales department wants more sales-qualified leads, and the marketing department claims to be providing them already.
A SMART Approach to Marketing Goal Setting
When developing your goals, make sure they are SMART! To put it another way, you want them to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.
The SMART approach enables your department to better manage marketing activities and determine the viability of new objectives.
Specific
The objectives are well defined and outlined. Your entire team understands the goal and why it is critical.
Measurable
Your marketing objectives should include key performance indicators (KPIs) and benchmarks. These KPIs track your progress toward your goals and clearly show if you’re on track to meet them.
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Achievable
Your goals are within your company’s and team’s capabilities. Set high goals, but keep in mind that they must be within the marketing department’s budget.
Relevant
Your marketing objectives are relevant to your brand mission and business direction. Each marketing objective contributes to the achievement of a corporate goal.
Time-bound
Your goal must have a timeline that indicates when it begins and ends.
Use this method to evaluate each of your goals to ensure they are worthwhile.
How Should Marketing Objectives Be Written?
The five points listed above will serve as a starting point for writing a comprehensive set of fundamental marketing objectives. Then, in the six steps that follow, you will further narrow and specify your objectives.
Step 1
Begin by writing down your sales target in total dollars or as a percentage increase.
For example, you may decide that you will achieve $1 million in gross sales in the coming year. You could also aim for a 25% increase in sales. You can include the strategy you will use to achieve your sales goal as part of your goal.
A marketing objective might state, “ABC company will increase sales by 25% by identifying a market segment we have not explored.”
Step 2
Establish a market share target. This should be both realistic and incremental, in our opinion.
Expect to capture an 80% market share in one year, let alone five. Begin where you are now and add a percentage for the time period your marketing plan covers.
“We will increase market share by 10% in the next year,” for example, should be more in line with your expectations. This will most likely motivate your marketing team much more than an open-ended goal.
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Step 3
Determine the number of customers required to meet your sales and market-share targets.
This requires you to examine the average purchase size. For example, if the average customer spends $200, you will need 10 customers for every $2,000 increase in sales.
Customer acquisition costs money, so make sure you have enough funds to meet your goal. You could say something like, “By the end of this year, we will have acquired 100 new customers through Facebook advertising.”
Step 4
Following that, you should select a percentage increase for each customer purchase. If your customers are currently spending $200 per purchase, choose a percentage to add to that.
This marketing objective would be written as follows:
“By recommending additional products at checkout, we will increase the average customer purchase by 12%.”
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Step 5
You want to set price targets here. Examine your current prices to see how they place you in the market. Your marketing goals are dependent on effective pricing.
A limited-edition wine, for example, could justify a high price in order to appeal to well-to-do connoisseurs. Local IT services, on the other hand, may need to be priced to compete with neighboring businesses.
The goal is to set a price target that allows you to profit while remaining competitive.
To achieve this price goal, it may be necessary to take several small steps, such as increasing prices by 10% per year.
Step 6
Finally, combine all of your key objectives into a single summary paragraph to test their compatibility.
For example, if your summary states, “We will increase sales by 15% while decreasing prices by 20%,” you can see that you have two competing goals.
An effective summary of your key marketing objectives might be, “We will achieve $1 million in sales, giving us a 15% market share.” We will increase the number of customers by 20% and the average purchase price by 10%. In addition, we will raise our prices by 5% over the next three years.
Examples of Marketing Objectives
Increase your sales.
If you sell products or services, you might want to concentrate on selling more of those items. This is one of the marketing goals that will boost revenue and the amount of money coming into your company.
Marketing objective example: “Increase online sales by 10% over the next 12 months.”
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Increase Brand Awareness
If your brand is new or only known to a small group of people, one of your marketing goals should be to broaden your reach and familiarize more people with your brand.
Marketing objective example: “Increase brand awareness by guest posting on five websites that our ideal buyer reads each quarter.” An increase in referral traffic or new leads generated from referrals could be a follow-up or KPI to this goal.
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Increase your lead generation efforts.
If your pipeline isn’t full, you should concentrate on lead generation tactics that expand your email list and fill your customer relationship management (CRM) system with qualified prospects.
Increase Your Online Presence
If your brand does not have a large online presence, your marketing strategy may include beginning SEO and increasing your visibility in search engine rankings as well as social media platforms.
Marketing objective to increase digital presence: “Launch website blog and publish 10 SEO-optimized blog posts per month for the next 12 months to increase organic traffic and online presence.”
Setting KPIs for Each Marketing Goal
Once you’ve determined your marketing objectives and goals, you must determine how to measure them.
Setting goals successfully necessitates the use of KPIs and benchmarks to track your progress. Each of your marketing objectives must be assigned numbers, deadlines, and metrics.
Creating Leads
Lead-generation metrics can be measured in a variety of ways. Determine which metrics will best measure your success based on your marketing objectives.
- Number of leads: the total number of new leads received.
- Lead generation has increased by a percentage when compared to other time periods.
- Cost per lead: the amount of money spent to obtain a single new lead.
- Conversion rate: the percentage of visitors who become leads after visiting your website.
- Marketing-qualified leads: the total number of qualified leads accepted by marketing.
- Sales-qualified leads: the total number of qualified leads accepted by sales.
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Participation on Social Media
When implementing digital strategies for social media, make use of KPIs for social performance.
- Increase in fans/followers: the number of new followers/fans gained over a specific time period.
- Comment count: the number of comments left on your posts or updates.
- Shares: the number of times your content was shared.
- The number of opt-ins corresponds to the number of leads generated by your social campaigns and posts.
- Social media traffic to your website: the percentage of your website traffic referred by social media sites.
