Main Takeaways:
- Marketing objectives are actionable goals that provide overall directions to a specific campaign.
- The mnemonic SMART goals can help remember how to set your marketing goals.
- Examples of marketing plans include sales growth, lead generation, grow brand awareness, website traffic, and conversion.
- Use key performance indicators to monitor your objectives.
According to a CoSchedule study, top marketers always set goals. In fact, goal-setting marketers are376 percentmore likely to report success in their campaigns. Before exploring how to do that, let’s begin with a simple question.
What does Marketing Objectives Mean?
Marketing objectives are actionable goals that provide overall directions to a specific campaign. Think of your marketing plan as a target that your team is looking to reach within a particular timeframe. Also, it comes with a metric that serves as a symbolic finish line. For example, a marketing objective might entail increasing your social media post’s conversion rates by 30 percent. Objectives extend beyond picking an arbitrary number. You also have to specify how you intend to reach your goal and measure that endpoint.
This brings us to the next part of the post.
How to set Marketing Objectives for your Business
Marketing plans should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. The acronym SMART goals can help remember these words.
Specific
Consider using specific metrics in your marketing objectives. For example, you can’t just say you want to increase sales. Instead, outline how much you want to increase using either percentage or dollars.
Clearly outlining your goals ensures that your team understands the objective and why it’s vital. Moreover, marketers with a documented strategy are 313 percent more likely to report success.
Measurable
It’s not enough to simply outline a marketing strategy. You must also outline how you intend to measure your success.
Whether you’re looking to increase brand awareness or search traffic, your plan must include how to key performance indicators. That way, you’ll know if you are on track to achieve your objectives.
Attainable
Your objective might be to increase organic traffic to your website by 200 percent. But, is this goal attainable?
When setting your marketing target, consider picking a benchmark that’s reasonable and achievable. As tempting as it may be to set the bar high, you could unintentionally set your team up for failure.
Relevant
Consider setting goals that are relevant to your brand’s mission and the company’s overall plan. It should also account for current trends in your industry.
For example, you could reassess whether growing your site’s search traffic is feasible after a Google algorithm change. Considering such relevant factors allows you to set more realistic goals.
Time-Bound
Consider attaching a reasonable timeframe for reaching specific benchmarks. Not only will this help you stay consistent, but it’ll also put pressure on your team to accomplish the goal.
Making your goals time-bound could also help avoid falling into the trap of procrastination.
Most brands set their marketing objectives based on a financial quarter or year. However, this timeframe may vary based on how much work is required to reach the benchmark.
Five Examples of Marketing Objectives
1. Sales Growth
The primary goal of every business is to increase revenue, and this only happens with rising sales. As a result, sales growth is a direct marketing objective for brands.
Your goal might be to increase online sales by 15 percent in the next three months. After identifying your target, the next step is to outline how you’ll get there. It could entail actions such as:
- Increasing lead generation
- Average customer orders
- Automating your email marketing
2. Lead Generation
The objective of lead generation is simple. It involves increasing the number of people who land in your sales pipeline. That way, you can work to convert these leads into sales.
In other words, lead generation increases the probability that your sales team will close more deals.
For example, your objective might be to increase the number of leads by 25 percent in the coming quarter. This usually involves launching new lead generation funnels.
3. Conversion Rates
Conversion rates refer to the number of people who perform the desired action when presented with an option. It could include an audience clicking on a link in an email or a website visitor signing up for a free trial.
Expectedly, boosting conversion rates on various mediums should be one of your marketing objectives. These include website opt-in, email links, free trial sign-ups, and other call-to-actions.
4. Grow Brand Awareness
Brand awareness refers to how well your target audience knows or recognizes your brand. Businesses with high brand awareness are often described as “trending” of “buzzworthy.”
Tracking brand awareness can be challenging without a well-defined goal. That’s why it’s essential to write out your objective.
You may aim to increase your brand awareness next quarter through different digital marketing channels.
5. Increase Website’s Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is responsible for53 percentof all site traffic and 40 percent of revenue. So, it makes sense that you would want to add it to your marketing plans.
The goal here is simple — it entails ranking your page at the search results’ top spots. This will likely lead to an exponential jump in traffic, and it’ll ultimately increase your revenue.
Again, it’s crucial to measure your objectives. That way, you’ll know when you’ve achieved the goal.
How to Measure your Marketing Objectives
KPI for Sales Growth
Your revenue is the primary key performance indicator for sales growth. It refers to the amount of income that your business is generating or the number of units sold.
Here are other KPI examples for monitoring your sales growth:
- Year-to-date sales growth: The amount of profit realized since the first day of the current calendar year.
- Churn rate: The percentage of customers that leave your service within a specific period.
- Customer retention: The ability to engage existing customers to continue buying products or services.
- Gross profits: Theprofit made after deducting the costs of the products.
Consider monitoring these metrics over a specific timeframe, interval, or through the campaign duration.
KPI for Lead Generation
Choosing the key performance indicator to measure lead generation can be confusing, depending on your marketing objective. Besides the percentage increase in leads, any of these metrics will do the trick.
- Conversion rates: The percentage of visitors to your website that completes the desired goal.
- Marketing-qualified leads (MGL): Leads that are more likely to make a purchase.
- Sales-qualified leads (SQL): Leads that are further along in the buyer journey and aresales-ready.
- Cost per lead: It measures how cost-effective yourcampaigns at generating new leads.
Since your KPI for lead generation will come from various sources, the data could get scattered quickly.
Luckily, the right software could help simplify the process. Examples of such includeDashthisandScoreboard.
KPI for Conversion Rates
The key performance indicator depends primarily on your company’s industry, campaign, and growth stage. However, here are a few things to consider when focusing on conversion rates.
- The open rate for email marketing: Thepercentage of subscribers who opened anemailcampaign.
- Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors that leave a web page without taking an action such as clicking a link.
- Cost per conversion: It refers to the cost of obtaining a real customer.
- Time spent on page: It records the amount of time a visitor spent on the page.
A website’s unique and returning visitor can also serve as a KPI. This is especially true when you’re just starting.
KPI for Brand Awareness
As with other marketing goals, you must define what you intend to achieve by building brand awareness. Ranging from increasing brand mention to direct web traffic, here are a few ways to measure brand awareness:
- Social listening: It involves monitoringsocial mediaplatforms for mentions of brand name or product.
- Google alerts: Use Google alert to track mentions across the web.
- Brand awareness survey: Compile a list of questions to measure how much your audience recognizes yourbrand.
- Brand mention: It measures online references to yourbrand, company, or product.
Before measuring, you may want first to create content that can boost awareness. These usually include guest articles, videos, podcasts, infographics, e-books, to name a few.
KPI for Website Traffic
With digital marketing being a part of the brand’s strategy, it’s essential now more than ever to keep an eye on web analytics. Several online KPIs can tell you how well your site is performing. These include:
- Pageviews per visit: It measures how many pieces of content a particular user views on a website.
- Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors that leave a web page without taking an action such as clicking a link.
- Average visit duration: It refers to the averageamount of time visitors spend on a website within a session.
- The number of unique visitors: It refers to thenumberof distinct individuals visiting a page or multiple pages on your website.
Along with providing insight into your website, these metrics are also useful for assessing your competitors’ performance.
Some tools for monitoring website traffic includeAlexa’s Site Overview Tool,Ahrefs,and SEMRush.
Final Word: Use a Marketing Objectives Checklist to Plan and Execute
Effective marketing always begins with a clear, measurable objective relevant to your brand’s short-term goals. But, memorizing details of the plan can be challenging — unless you have an eidetic memory.
That’s where a checklist comes in.
A marketing plan checklist can help inform your team on your goals and the tactics required to achieve them. It also allows you to set milestones and essential success components to accomplish along the way.
Read More: 10 Tips for Creating a Successful Video Marketing Strategy
FAQs
Marketing Objectives: How to Define, Measure, and Achieve them? ›
Good marketing objectives often follow the SMART methodology: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based goal-setting. SMART goals are how businesses evaluate their marketing objectives to see if they meet the necessary criteria for success. Specific.
How do you define and measure marketing objectives? ›- Have a strong company vision in place. ...
- Track the data. ...
- Make objectives specific. ...
- Step 1: Review your organizational goals. ...
- Step 2: Brainstorm with the team. ...
- Step 3: Define the objectives. ...
- Step 4: Create a marketing strategy. ...
- Step 5: Measure the results and then regroup.
Good marketing objectives often follow the SMART methodology: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based goal-setting. SMART goals are how businesses evaluate their marketing objectives to see if they meet the necessary criteria for success. Specific.
What are the 4 objectives of marketing? ›There are various types of marketing objectives, but the four main types are profitability+ objective, market share objective, promotional objective, and growth objective.
Which is the best answer to define the goal of marketing? ›The ultimate goal and benefit of marketing is to drive sales. When relationships with customers are stronger, well-defined, and positive, customers are more likely to engage in sales. When marketing is done right, customers turn to your company, and you gain a competitive advantage over your competitors.
How can you measure your objectives? ›The best way to measure the objectives of a company is through the creation of indicators or data that allow quantifying the result, be it a process, service or product. In turn, having clear objectives makes it easier to create execution and performance indicators.
What is measure in marketing? ›Marketing metrics measure the success of marketing campaigns and show how well campaigns are tracking toward key performance indicators (KPIs). They are one of the most important elements of any campaign, and without them, marketing teams wouldn't have a clear picture of whether their marketing strategy is a success.
Why is it important to achieve marketing objectives? ›Goals in marketing are important because they give the marketing department and company direction, purpose and vision. By setting measurable goals, marketing teams can determine whether their campaign or efforts were effective and what type of impact they had on sales, performance or engagement.
What is a marketing objective example? ›Marketing Objective Examples. Increase blog subscribers. Reach more visitors with organic search traffic. Improve the mobile traffic conversion rate site-wide.
What are the 7 marketing objectives? ›These seven are: product, price, promotion, place, packaging, positioning and people. As products, markets, customers and needs change rapidly, you must continually revisit these seven Ps to make sure you're on track and achieving the maximum results possible for you in today's marketplace.
What are the 6 main marketing objectives? ›
- Improve product satisfaction. Any successful marketing needs to be founded on a good product that satisfies existing market demand. ...
- Grow organic traffic. ...
- Generate leads. ...
- Establish thought leadership. ...
- Increase brand awareness. ...
- Increase revenue.
The key purpose of marketing is to get people interested in the products or services of a company. This happens through market analysis, research, and contemplating the interest of a business's ideal customers and attracting them through messaging which would be educational and helpful to a business's target group.
What are the three main goals of marketing? ›- Acquiring customers.
- Retaining customers.
- Turning customers into brand ambassadors.
With measurable goals, you select a measurable target or objective you want to achieve and establish measurable criteria to see clearly what you've accomplished. These measurements provide clear direction and motivation to reach your goals.
How do you measure success? ›To measure success, you need to set goals, but not all goals are created equal. Taking the time to outline Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound goals will provide you with the foundation you need to measure the effectiveness of your project.
What is an objective measure of success? ›An objective performance measure is a method of evaluating how well an individual, team or organization accomplishes tasks or goals. It's also known as key performance indicators (KPIs). Departments within an organization often set specific KPIs for employees relevant to their activities.
How do you measure success in marketing? ›ROI is a common metric that measures how much you invested and spent on your marketing versus how much you earned back. For example, if a social media marketing campaign for sneakers costs $1,000 and brings in $5,000 worth of sales, the ROI is $4,000 or 400%. The higher your ROI, the more successful the investment.
What is a measure in strategy? ›Strategic measures are used to track your progress in achieving your objectives and goals. For example, if your objective is to retain current customers, you'll ask yourself, “How are we doing toward meeting this particular goal?” The answer to that question is the measure.
What is the best definition of a measure? ›: the size, capacity, or quantity of something as fixed by measuring. use equal measures of ingredients. : something (as a yardstick or cup) used in measuring. : a unit used in measuring. the foot is a measure of length.
Why should marketing objectives be smart? ›Setting smart marketing goals is the key to generating better results from your marketing campaigns, projects, and strategies. They allow you to break down your goals into more precise, specific, and attainable steps to help you stay motivated and prioritize your actions better.
What is the most important marketing objective? ›
Increase Sales. Finally, we've reached the most common and obvious marketing objective: increasing sales. There are many different methods of doing this, but two popular actions are increasing conversion rates or increasing the average amount per transaction (for example, cross selling).
What are the 4 SMART marketing objectives? ›By definition, an effective SMART marketing objective is: Specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-bound.
What is strategy in marketing plan? ›A marketing strategy is a long-term plan for achieving a company's goals by understanding the needs of customers and creating a distinct and sustainable competitive advantage. It encompasses everything from determining who your customers are to deciding what channels you use to reach those customers.
What are the 4 concepts of marketing? ›The marketing concept rests on four pillars: target market, customer needs, integrated marketing and profitability.
What is 5 point marketing strategy? ›The 5 P's of marketing – Product, Price, Promotion, Place, and People – are a framework that helps guide marketing strategies and keep marketers focused on the right things. Let's take a deep dive into their importance for your brand.
What are objectives examples? ›- I will speak at five conferences in the next year.
- I will read one book about sales strategy every month.
- I will work with a coach to practise my networking skills by the end of this month.
The 8 Ps of marketing is product, price, place, promotion, people, positioning, processes, and performance. The goal is to get them working together for your marketing mix.
What are the 6 elements of marketing strategy? ›The building blocks of an effective marketing strategy include the 6 P's of marketing: product, price, place, promotion, people, and presentation. The effective integration of the 6 P's of marketing can serve as the foundation for an effective growth strategy.
What are the 7 marketing functions and their importance in strategy? ›The 7 functions of marketing are promotion, selling, product/service management, marketing information management, pricing, financing and distribution. Understanding the core functions of marketing can help you better focus your efforts and strategies to support your business.
What are the principles of marketing? ›The 4 basic marketing principles are product, price, place and promotion.
What is the difference between goals and objectives? ›
What is a goal vs. objective? A goal is an achievable outcome that is generally broad and longer term while an objective is shorter term and defines measurable actions to achieve an overall goal.
What are marketing processes? ›What is a Marketing Process? A marketing process is: “A series of steps that allow organizations to identify customer problems, analyze market opportunities, and create marketing materials to reach the desired audience.”
What is the definition objective in marketing? ›Marketing objectives are measurable goals that are set up by an organization to promote its products and services to prospects with an aim to maximize profits and achieve customer satisfaction.
How do you define smart marketing objectives? ›By definition, an effective SMART marketing objective is: Specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-bound. One of the main reasons we called our site and service SMART Insights is because we help marketers succeed with a more structured approach to marketing strategy and planning.
How do you define an objective? ›An objective is a measurable step you take to achieve a strategy.” A goal is the purpose toward which we aim an endeavor. An objective, however, is something that our efforts or actions are intended to attain or accomplish. Objectives are measurable and tangible, while goals usually are not.
Why is marketing objectives important? ›Marketing objectives set out what a business wants to achieve from its marketing activities. They need to be consistent with overall aims and objectives of the business. They also provide an important focus for the marketing team.
What are the 5 SMART objectives? ›Setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) objectives is a good way to plan the steps to meet the long-term goals in your grant. It helps you take your grant from ideas to action.
What are 3 typical marketing objectives? ›Typically, clients marketing objectives include some or all of the following: Increase sales. Build brand awareness. Grow market share.