Then follow the six steps below to further narrow and specify your objectives. To write a comprehensive set of fundamental marketing objectives, you’ll use the five points listed above as a starting point. Use this method to check each of your goals to ensure they are worth pursuing. Your objective must have a timeline that indicates when they both begin and end. Each marketing objective contributes to reaching a company goal. Your marketing objectives are relevant to your brand mission and the direction of your business. Set the bar high, but also remember to set goals within the marketing department’s means. Your objectives are within the ability of your company and team. These KPIs track the progress toward your goal and clearly display if you’re on track to hitting those objectives. Your marketing goals have key performance indicators (KPI) and benchmarks. Your entire team understands the objective and why it’s important. The goals are clearly defined and outlined.
The SMART approach allows your department to manage marketing activities better and be able to determine how successful new objectives can be. When setting your objectives, you must ensure that they are SMART! That is, you want them to have the following characteristics: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound.
So how can a marketing department set marketing objectives that are prioritized and seen as necessary by the rest of the company as well? A SMART Approach to Setting Marketing Objectives
Similar observations exist between marketing and development marketing wants the dev team to prioritize their website update requests or other marketing items that need development but don’t because other issues are deemed more critical. The sales department wants to see more sales-qualified leads, and the marketing department says that they’re already providing them. The Sales and Marketing relationship is far too often a struggle. Marketing objectives need to have an impact on the organization as a whole and the objectives need support from other departments for marketing to be seen as relevant. These would be objectives like increasing website traffic by 100% for the year or launching social ads to increase the number of followers on Instagram and Facebook. There are many times we see companies set arbitrary marketing objectives that don’t contribute to the overall success of the company. Together, these objectives make up your overall marketing strategy set up to achieve your company’s goals. In the example above, one of the company’s goals is to enter a new market, and the marketing department’s objectives need to support that. Establish an online presence in new city or country, translate all marketing materials to the local language, launch a brand awareness campaign to introduce the brand in the new market, and generate X amount of online sales by X date. The marketing arm of every organization is used to support the company’s goals, be it quarterly, annually or even ten years out.įor example, if you’re the VP of Marketing for an athletic apparel brand that is looking to expand into new markets, these are four examples of marketing objectives. So, what exactly are marketing objectives? How can you define them so that you know what marketing efforts the marketing team needs to prioritize? As we stated above, marketing objectives should contribute and align with the overall company goals. Setting KPIs for Every Marketing Objective.What Are Marketing Objectives and Goals?.