There is no progress in life if you don’t have any goals. The same happens in business as well. If your business goes with the flow, it will never make you rich.
Any business goal stands behind a certain marketing objective. These marketing objectives create an overall marketing strategy that moves a business in the right direction.
Therefore, it is strictly important to be able to set marketing objectives properly.
In this guide, you will find out everything about marketing objectives from A to Z.
Shall we begin?
General Information About Marketing Objectives
When a marketing specialist starts brainstorming the marketing objectives, it leads to the complexity of this process. Simply because marketing objectives vary. They can be both – general (the growth of MRR up to $5 by the end of the quarter) and detailed (publish 10 guest articles on 10 third-party resources that have DR65+ by the end of the month).
It doesn’t matter what marketing objectives you are going to set. Most importantly in this process is that your marketing objectives must align with a “SMART” criteria.
What does it mean?
- Specific – this concept helps you identify the main purpose of a goal and answer the following questions like “why”, “how”, “when”, etc.
- Measurable – this concept helps track the progress of the objective with the help of KPIs.
- Achievable – this concept helps achieve your goal.
- Relevant – this concept helps you understand that your objectives are relevant to your marketing strategy.
- Timely – this concept helps you set up a time frame to achieve your goals.
Social Insider and other marketing resources state that you won’t be able to see the progress in your marketing campaign if your marketing objectives don’t meet the requirements of the SMART criteria. Besides, various Digital Marketing courses underline the importance of the SMART criteria for a good reason.
You are already aware that the choice of marketing objectives depends on the needs of your business. There is no golden rule on this occasion. Nevertheless, stick to the following two conditions:
- Avoid setting multiple objectives – it complicates the process of tracking the results + the overall effectiveness of your marketing campaign will decrease.
- Keep an eye on short and long KPIs – there is a 40:60 proportion between short (earn $2K by the end of the month) and long (grow the number of YouTube subscribers up to 50K by the end of the first quarter) KPIs.
Now, let’s find out what exact marketing objectives you should draw your attention to.
Start With Working on Your Brand Awareness
You can’t deny the power of a brand name. For instance, when people think about fast food, one of the first brands that come to their mind is McDonald’s.
If your brand finds its recognition, it will attract more customers to your business.
Talking about brand awareness, you should pay attention to two positions – saliency and positioning.
Saliency helps you understand the exact percentage of the market that knows about your brand. The positioning gives you an idea of whether your target audience resonates with the brand.
How to measure this objective?
The first thing you will have to do is to research your market. This research will help you understand how your brand is popular in contrast to your competitors. This is a very time-consuming process. Thus, it makes sense to delegate this task to one of the market research agencies.
Take Care of Increasing Quality and Quantity of the Leads
Without attracting new leads, you won’t be able to grow your customer database. And the best way to do this is by improving marketing communication.
How to measure this objective?
If you use any CRM, you will be able to figure out lead quantity easily. But when it comes to tracking lead quality, it requires using a lead scoring system.
How does this system work?
The lead scoring system scores all your leads by analyzing their activities. Here are some data points you should focus your attention on.
- Data from the process of user registration
- Chat history between the users and your support team
- User behavior
- How the users are happy with the trial of your product
Let’s admit that it might be hard to analyze this data by yourself. Hence, you should collect this data and make a report using one of the report making tools like Visme. The report you need to share with an analytic expert for further in-depth analysis.
For your information, some CRM tools suggested by Poptin have an option that suggests a lead scoring system. Nevertheless, practice shows that you shouldn’t take these results seriously.
Customer Growth
Remember that the number of leads doesn’t correlate with the number of customers. In other words, there is no one hundred percent guarantee that every lead will convert into paid customers.
Thus, you must set this marketing objective for sure.
How to measure this objective?
Just analyze the numbers from your CRM.
Sales Growth
This is a short-term marketing objective that you must set constantly. You won’t deny the fact that there is no point in your marketing strategy if your business doesn’t grow the number of sales.
How to measure this objective?
Make sure that you have precise numbers in your financial dashboard (checkout system, CRM as an example). And keep in mind – don’t believe the numbers you can see in Google Analytics. Most of the time, they are skewed by default.
Share of Voice Metric
Share of voice (SOV) metric measures an advertising share compared to your competitors and helps you see how your brand is visible in the market.
This metric is important and you should take SOV as one of your marketing objectives.
Why?
Because there is a strong correlation between SOV and market share. And SOV must go in line with market share. Otherwise, if it is higher than the market share, it will lead to an excess of share of voice – eSOV.
Don’t try to track this metric across all the channels. It is quite difficult. Instead, focus on those channels that make sense for your type of business the most.
A couple of SOV examples:
- Increase YouTube channel subscribers from 5K to 7K by the end of 2021
- Increase organic search visibility in Canada from 15% to 20%
How to measure this objective?
To measure SOV you need to know the channel’s specifications. Let’s say you want to track SOV for organic search. Put your target keywords to the Rank Tracker tool from Ahrefs, add the competitors, and review the metric “visibility” that is available in the “Competitors overview” tab.
This report reveals the percentage of all clicks from tracked keywords that land on your websites and on the sites of your competitors as well.
Product Demand
It goes without saying that if people have ever heard of your brand, it doesn’t mean they will buy your product. They can even be stuck between two marketing funnel stages – awareness and consideration. And never move to the stage called – conversion.
Why?
Because there is no product demand. People don’t need to buy from you. Your task is to increase product demand ASAP.
How to measure this objective?
Run research surveys that would help you figure out what your potential customers seek when choosing your type of product or service.
Customer Lifetime Value
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) analyzes the average percentage of how much money a customer will spend to purchase your product. By increasing this metric, you will improve financial performance and acquire new customers.
How to measure this objective?
Use the following formula:
Avg. Order Value x Avg. Annual Purchase Frequency x Avg. Customer Lifespan
Here is how it works. Your AOV is $30. The customer is going to buy your product 8 times a year. Plus, this customer has been happy with your brand for about 4 years.
CVL will be – 30 x 8 x 4 = $960
With this formula, you won’t have any difficulties in measuring this marketing objective.
Marketing Funnel
Marketing funnel represents the entire life cycle of your customers. Each of the stages has its role and if there is a leakage, the funnel won’t work at all.
Why does the leakage happen?
For example, you run an ad that reflects the benefits of your product. The user might notice the ad but didn’t click it. Even if the user clicks the ad, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he or she will buy from you.
To sum up, each stage of the funnel can have leakage. And your task is to identify where your marketing funnel suffers the most.
How to track this objective?
Since the marketing funnel consists of five stages, there are specific metrics per each stage you should track.
- Awareness – SOV, brand awareness, traffic
- Interest – return visitors, number of subscribers
- Consideration – the quality of traffic
- Conversion – conversions, income, AOV
- Retention – churn rate, customer lifespan
Keep an eye on each stage and track this marketing objective accordingly.
Conclusion
Marketing objectives can’t always be the same. They should change as your business is getting stronger. Objectives depend on business needs. And if your business has more needs, more new marketing objectives get into the game.
Don’t hurry up with brainstorming multiple objectives. Start easy and move forward as your business allows you.
You can take the suggested marketing objectives and apply them to your strategy.
Don’t hesitate to share your objectives if you see that this guide lacks something.
About the Author
Sergey Aliokhin is a Marketing Manager at Visme. When he is out of work, he likes to spend his time with family, read books on science-fiction, practice playing the bass, and visit the gym.
