It’s crucial for businesses to have clear, measurable objectives when setting their marketing goals. Here’s how to ensure your goal setting is achievable.
There are bound to be many things you dream of achieving with your business. Growth in sales and clients, industry recognition, and customer loyalty are probably some of them.
So, when it comes time to setting marketing goals, chances are you’re faced with the question of “which one do I choose?”
It can be a daunting task. Setting your goals too high will lead to discouragement and ultimately failure, and setting them too low will see limited return on your time and investment.
The two golden rules of setting marketing goals are that the goals must be achievable, and they must lead to a significant outcome for your business.
Here are some key steps to follow when setting your marketing goals.
1. Align your marketing goals with your business objectives
Keeping your business objectives front of mind when setting marketing goals might sound obvious, but it’s surprisingly easy to get distracted.
Marketing is a world of seemingly endless and exciting possibilities. There’s social media activity, video content, in-person promotional opportunities, and much more. You can get so caught up in what you might do, that you lose focus on what you should be doing to grow your business.
Business owners can also become side-tracked by their competitors’ activity, or marketing ideas which sound appealing in theory but may not necessarily generate the best leads and sales.
This is why, at every step of goal setting, your marketing efforts need to support what your business is trying to achieve.
2. Make your marketing goals specific
It’s incredible how many businesses kick off their marketing planning with the goal of ‘promoting the business’ or other, similarly vague objectives. If marketing strategies are to achieve any success, their goals must be as precise as possible.
Your specific marketing goals might be increasing your email database, improving conversion, or selling a large number of tickets to an event.
Once you know what it is you want to achieve, you can focus 100 per cent of your marketing efforts on this.
Remember, the broader or less defined your goals are, the more diluted your marketing will be.
3. Your marketing goals need to be measurable
It’s critical that all your objectives are measurable, as this will allow you to assess how well your marketing strategy is working, areas in which you need to re-double your efforts, and what elements of the marketing mix are performing more strongly than others.
It’s also important to attach a finite period of time to that figure. Your goal might be to double your number of email subscribers by the end of the month, or to sell out two events in the next quarter.
Collecting data, reviewing analytics, and assessing the results next to your targets are all actions that should be conducted throughout a marketing campaign to inform ongoing activity, as well as once the campaign has finished to inform future marketing efforts.
4. Make a plan for your marketing goals
Now that you have clearly defined goals and measurable objectives, what you need is a marketing plan that enables you to achieve them.
Your marketing plan will include which platforms and media to include in your marketing mix, combined with specific messaging and strategic timing of staged rollouts.
Every element of the marketing plan should be based on data: what has worked in the past, what you know customers respond to, emerging areas of strength, and what works best in your industry and with your customers.
Every element of your marketing plan will also relate back to the fundamental objectives: what your goals are and how success will be defined.
Need help setting your marketing goals?
Assemblo is a full-service marketing agency based in Melbourne, with experienced marketing professionals who understand how to set realistic marketing goals and help you achieve them.
To find out how we can support your business with goal setting, give us a call on (03) 9079 2555 or send us a note via the contact form below.