Marketing 9 min read

Marketing Objectives: How to Define, Measure, and Achieve them

mohamed Hassan / Pixabay.com

mohamed Hassan / Pixabay.com

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 are 376 percent more 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.

An image of a ruler and a bar chart
Your marketing objectives should be measurable. | EDGY.app original image

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

The image shows a laptop surrounded by other messaging images
Joseph Mucira / Pixabay.com

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 for 53 percent of 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

An arrow line with each points labeled as KPI aiming to hit a target.
EDGY.app original image

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: The profit 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 are sales-ready.
  • Cost per lead: It measures how cost-effective your campaigns 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 include Dashthis and Scoreboard.

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: The percentage of subscribers who opened an email campaign.
  • 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 monitoring social media platforms 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 your brand.
  • Brand mention: It measures online references to your brand, 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 average amount of time visitors spend on a website within a session.
  • The number of unique visitors: It refers to the number of 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 include Alexa’s Site Overview ToolAhrefsand 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

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Sumbo Bello

Sumbo Bello is a creative writer who enjoys creating data-driven content for news sites. In his spare time, he plays basketball and listens to Coldplay.

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