Strategy for Success: Tips for Setting and Meeting Marketing Goals

Running your business well means putting a lot of time, energy, and sometimes money into marketing. Without solid marketing, most businesses flounder along without really developing a meaningful market share. Without that market share, you can’t build growth or profitability.

Of course, solid marketing depends on setting clear marketing objectives and marketing goals. If you’re new to business or just learning about the importance of marketing, that can feel like a tall order. If that’s you, keep reading.

We’ll give you an overview of marketing objectives and offer some tips for setting and meeting goals.

What Are Marketing Objectives?

In essence, marketing objectives are broader goals for a business or brand. They offer a marketing team direction in where they focus their attention.

Common marketing objectives include:

• Increase sales
• Customer retention
• Lead generation

These objectives help broader business goals like increased revenue, longer customer lifespan, and more market share.

Why Set Goals?

In short, goal setting prompts more concrete action. That action drives success.

The real heart of the matter is focus. A goal prompts you to focus your time and energy on specific ends, rather than spreading yourself across lots of tasks.

Keep Goals Specific and Measurable

You can’t get vague about your goal setting with ideas like make customers like us more. It’s a goal that defies ready measurement. You need specific and measurable marketing goals and objectives.

Examples of specific and measurable goals include:

• Improve traffic to your website by five percent
• Increase monthly revenue by $5000
• Increase landing page conversion rate by one percent

These goals are specific because you know exactly what you want to change. All of the goals also lend themselves to measurement because you can attach hard numbers to them.

Meeting Marketing Goals

Just like you must set specific and measurable goals, meeting those goals requires that you set out specific and actionable steps. These steps will detail what the marketing team will do on their way to the goal.

Building a list of these steps forces everyone to think in concrete terms about the viability of a goal or strategy.

Call in a Pro

If you don’t get the marketing outcomes you want, you can always turn to a marketing consultant. A consultant often brings in training and experience the average business owner lacks.

That training and experience can provide them insight into why your efforts didn’t let you achieve your marketing objectives. Consultants can also offer new angles or approaches for reaching your objectives.

Getting to Your Marketing Goals

Setting your marketing objectives begins with understanding what the business needs, whether it’s increased revenue or more leads. Once you identify that need, you must set specific and measurable goals that resolve that need.

You follow up those goals by creating specific and actionable steps that will get you to the goal. Sadly, even good planning can fall short at times. When that happens, consider calling in professional assistance.

Ready for some more marketing tips and advice? Check out more of our marketing-related content in our Business section.