You’ve been in business for a while. You know the score. You understand that marketing has a direct relationship to your financial outlook. Now that you’re ready to kick things up a notch in the marketing department there’s one thing you must do first. You must define the marketing objectives for your business.
Before you do anything else, you need to know the specific group of people you’re targeting in your marketing efforts. You cannot create effective marketing objectives without a clear image of your target audience.
It’s not enough to simply know the demographic. You have to understand what motivates your target audience to buy.
Not too long ago, in a marketing venue dominated by men, a gentleman was promoting a product he believed would end bed wetting among children. He said he’d tried every approach he could think of to market the product and wasn’t getting the traction he needed.
The four women in the room, almost in unison, uttered a single word – laundry. His problem wasn’t that the product was a failure. It was simply that he didn’t understand the motivations of the people most likely to buy it.
You don’t have to be a mother to make or sell these products, but you do have to understand that she’s the most likely buyer as well as why she’d buy it in order to effectively market it to her.
Marketing objectives are short and long-term goals you set for the marketing activities of your business. You can call them objectives, outcomes, goals, or whatever you’d like. In order to be effective, though, they must share the certain characteristics.
The most important are that the goals be specific and actionable. What this means is that vague undefined goals are impossible to achieve. An objective that states “We want to make more money in the next quarter,” isn’t specific enough. Whittle it down to the nuts and bolts.
How much more money does your business want to make in the upcoming quarter? $1? $10,000? Be specific as this helps you decide upon the appropriate marketing actions necessary to accomplish your marketing objectives.
Then there’s the actionable part. How are you going to achieve the marketing objectives you’ve put into place?
Just as you must be specific when defining your marketing objectives, you must also be specific when putting them into play.
These are all important details you need to define at the planning stage and not leave up to chance.
One of the most critical elements for successfully creating objectives and goals is to secure agreement among the people responsible for meeting those goals. You’ll never get the engagement required for success if your own people aren’t committed to accomplishing the goals set for them.
It’s important to be able to measure the success of your marketing objectives for two reasons.
One without the other is weaker than the whole. Each part of the process needs to have a pre-defined measure of success or failure in order to be truly effective.
When all the pieces work together, your marketing objectives can bring your business to new heights. Without an effective marketing plan, though, it’s going to be difficult to accomplish those goals. That’s why it’s important to consider partnering with someone who can help you create and define marketing objectives for your business that will serve your needs today and well into the future.
If you are in need of some help in any of these directions, we offer a free Complimentary Inbound Marketing Session that might be what you need. Just click on the button to get yours today.
You may already know that implementing content marketing can boost traffic for your non-profit, but did you know that achieving your content marketing objectives takes time? Unfortunately, it won't happen with a few blog posts or some other great content.
People will need to consume your content for a while before they contact you. Yet, without your content compelling them to contact you, your goals may never be met.
The good news is that you don't have to figure out alone. In fact, one of the best investments you can make with your marketing budget is to partner with a solid firm like BroadVision marketing.
Click the link so you can make an informed decision, or call BroadVision Marketing at 707-799-1238.