Developing Marketing Objectives
Meeting business goals with well-defined marketing objectives
To tap into what shoppers are looking for, develop a solid marketing objective. A marketing objective is the foundation upon which an effective inbound marketing strategy is built from.
With a marketing objective in place, the business will be better equipped to implement a plan and achieve set goals.
What Are Marketing Objectives?
A marketing objective is the defined goals of the business. They help provide direction for how the business can reach certain goals.
Marketing professionals need a plan in order to understand what they want to achieve and how to go about doing it. Most often, an objective points toward a clear metric. A business will use key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure whether an objective is being met.
Keep The Marketing Objective SMART
The marketing objectives are the heart of the marketing strategy. It’s responsible for helping businesses have a direction and goals to work towards. For a marketing objective to be effective, it should follow the SMART goal framework:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
By following this framework, it will ensure that the goals of the objective are focused and rooted in reality. Let’s take a more in-depth look at what SMART means:
Specific
Measurable
All of the goals chosen should be quantifiable. This likely means using KPIs and benchmarks to measure progress. By tracking goals, you’ll know whether you’re on track to meet an objective.
Achievable
It is essential to keep all of the goals realistic and based on your own analytics. That means setting objectives that are within the ability of the business and its team.
Relevant
The marketing objectives that are set should be relevant to your brand and the direction in which your business should move. Be aware of current trends in the industry and ensure that a set goal contributes to the overall company objective.
Time-Bound
Choosing Solid Marketing Objectives
Here are some of the most common market objectives that a business might like to include in its marketing strategy:
Increase Sales
If sales have been dipping off, lead generation is a great place to start. Lead-generation tactics will include things like building an email list to get qualified prospects.
Marketing Objective Example: Increase lead generation by 25% by setting up and launching five new conversion funnels on the website each month.
Build Brand Awareness
When a brand is small or new, one key marketing objective should be to expand your reach. People, or searchers, must be familiar with your brand. This helps grow trust and when people are in need of a specific product or service provided, they’ll be more likely to come to your business for it. Brand awareness that’s consistent across multiple platforms can help increase revenue.
Marketing Objective Example: Schedule three social media posts per day across various platforms and grow followers by 10% within a month.
Launch New Products or Services
Are you hoping to launch new products or services through your business? If so, then any marketing objective needs to consist of goals that will help promote these new products or services.
Marketing Objective Example: Sell 100 workshop courses within the first 10 days after launch.
Target New Customers
Similar to lead generation, obtaining new customers is more about branching out to a new demographic. This is especially important to do when releasing a new product or service that will appeal to a clientele different from your current demographic.
Marketing Objective Example: Design and implement five new conversion funnels meant to appeal to a specific demographic that will grow new customer prospects by 25% within a month.
Grow Market Share
Before expanding into a new market, make sure that you don’t need to instead focus on expanding in the current market. This particular objective is about gaining more customers interested in a specific service or product, or who are located within your geographic location.
Marketing Objective Example: Each month, make a guest post on five websites using geo-modified content to attract ideal buyers in the area to help grow market share.
Enter New Markets
Once your brand is established in a specific industry or geographic location, consider expanding into a new market. Your business can do this by offering a product or service that’s vertical to any current offerings, or branching out to a new location.
Marketing Objective Example: Define the targeted level of sales, targeted market, and budget and implement 5 new conversion funnels on the website a month before releasing the new product or service.
Enhance Customer Relations
Increasing customer satisfaction and communication helps build a lasting relationship where existing customers will continue to spend with your brand. Focusing on this objective can also help identify which demographic of customers may be as-of-yet untapped.
Marketing Objective Example: Offer an incentive to increase customer feedback on surveys by 10% within a month.
Improve Internal Communications
In order to truly thrive in a specific industry, excellent internal communications are crucial at every level. By making this an objective, your business will work toward ensuring all employees feel informed and know what actionable steps to take to achieve a specific goal.
Marketing Objective Example: Send out an email to all employees at the start of each month that gives the time and subject of all upcoming meetings.
Increase Profit
Don’t confuse this objective with increasing sales. Focusing on increasing profit can be achieved without needing to sell more of your product or service.
Instead, this objective could be about cutting overhead and limiting expenses. Another option could be to focus on selling a specific product or service that is more expensive.
Marketing Objective Example: Reduce overhead spending costs by 5% within a month.
Set KPIs for Every Marketing Objective
Once you settle on which marketing objectives to target, find a way to measure them.
For any set goals to be successful, KPIs and benchmarks are needed. Therefore, you should assign numbers, metrics, and deadlines to each marketing objective.
By setting KPIs, it is much easier to evaluate if progress is being made. Knowing whether you’re on track to achieve the marketing objectives is impossible without benchmarking.
A few examples of the most common KPIs used include:
● Conversion Rate: The percentage of traffic converting to a lead after visiting a website.
● Bounce Rate: The percentage of website visitors who leave a website after only viewing one page.
● Lead-to-Customer Ratio: The percentage of leads that convert into paying customers.
● Branded Traffic: The percentage of traffic from users searching for terms containing a company name.
● Non-branded Traffic: The percentage of traffic from users who searched for terms that did not contain a company name.
Setting Marketing Objectives Now Aids Future Marketing Efforts
When setting marketing objectives that are backed by research, your marketing efforts become more effective and focused. Deciding what marketing objectives should be gives you actionable steps to take to improve your business.
That’s why it’s so important to set marketing objectives as soon as possible. The sooner it’s done, the sooner you’ll reap positive results.
Ready to Take Your Search Hustle Further?
