Marketing objectives to reach your company goals

America’s greatest marketer once said, “Many marketing objectives are not met within budget or on time and the rest are hardly met at all, because teams:

• Don’t use the best marketing management software.
• Don’t establish a powerful marketing objective strategy, or they
• Just do Level 2 and Level 3 marketing objectives.”

Think back to all the marketing projects you’ve ever worked on.

How many were perfect from the get-go to the finish line?

And of those which were, how much time, money, and effort went into managing all the different platforms and apps?

“Martech is complicated. Sales Teams often do not understand what the Marketing Team does for them to help increase sales. Marketing sees the Sales Team as obstructionist and not trying hard enough to help improve conversion rates.”

Sound familiar? Not anymore.

Marketing Goals and Olympic Gold

Yes, marketing success is like winning an Olympic Gold Medal. If you want both, keep reading. If you know Level 1 objectives and just want to focus on Levels 2 and 3, jump to Profit-Generating Objectives for Each Marketing Campaign.

But just so you know before you do that, we have:

• Two more super videos.
• Three keys to making marketing gold.
• The isolationist list.
• The basic gold medal strategy.
• If musitech were martech. (We invented ‘musitech’ to make a point.) Head, heart, and guts.

Just so you’re clear, we could have just focused on discussing important marketing objectives, but you will have seen all that before. We want to excite and enlighten, so we really are building into this marketing strategies discussion, a real Olympic Gold Medal winner’s strategy.

And since 48% of marketers say pressure to perform is worse, if you want your team to outperform others without unnecessary stress, work like Olympic Gold Medalists: replace stress with power and enthusiasm. Let’s go.

The World Has Changed, and We Changed it.

So “Optimizely CMP to My World. ask and the key will be given.”  Click the link. There’s a miracle on offer. Then keep reading.

Your 3 Keys to Marketing Gold

To hit every one of your measurable marketing objectives:

1. Think like Olympic Team Gold Medal winners.
2. Know the most important marketing objectives.
3. Use the best marketing management software.

That’s it! And that is why you must focus on the most important marketing objectives. You will dominate your market (and the court, rink, or pitch.) But JSYK, you’ll have to be very fit to win the gold, so dominating your market is much easier. But hey, super-effective marketing and a Gold Medal? Read on!

Which Came First, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Objectives, or KPIs?

Good question. Most folks say strategy, then objectives, then KPIs. But too many small businesses and major corporations confuse a comprehensive strategy with lots of isolated objectives. Isolated objectives? Come on, this is a team thing: Marketing Team, Sales Team, and Management Team.

The Isolationist List

Many marketing departments who are isolated from sales, focus on measurement because measuring results is easy: That’s what the martech stack is for, right?

• Increasing brand awareness.
• Increased website visitors and website traffic.
• Increased subscribers.
• Increase lead generation.
• Encourage more organic search with better SEO.
• Increased FB likes.
• Increased SEO scores

The list goes on.

Results are finite, frequent, and fun unless you ultimately get the wrong results and a poor ROI. This is why getting Level 1 and all the other objectives right is critical to ultimate marketing success. Build the foundation, create the right marketing campaigns, set effective marketing objectives, and then focus on monitoring as well as measuring. Because the sequence is critical to success, (dominating your market or winning gold) we will start there.

If Olympians Were Marketers

Olympic Team Gold Medalists have:

• A clear strategy usually of at least four years. But strategizing for gold after gold after gold is better. (Make your marketing strategy stay strong year after year.)
• Clear, comprehensive, and mutually supportive objectives. (Just like results-driven marketing objectives for marketing, sales, and management teams.)
• Three-tier goals. End Goals, Performance Goals, and Process Goals give Gold Medalists benchmarks for continuous measurement. (Which is why they win, and others don’t.)

Oh, they also get very, very fit. So, if gyms and things aren’t for you, stick to becoming a marketing legend.

You Can Set Objectives, Can’t You?

Yes: play hard, pass well, and shoot straight. No. That is what you do to win your gold medal after the strategy, objectives, and 3-tier goals are all in place. Don’t you just love watching America win gold medals? Get your marketing strategy right, set the right objectives, and the rest follows. Just so long as you make it easy.

In today’s world, 75% of marketers say their time is spent on trivial ‘work about work.’ Remember the timeframe and budget failures quote? Well, trivial tasks are most usually the reason behind it. Complex martech stacks don’t make it easy.

But we do.

Strategize and Objectivize for Your Marketplace (or to get on Court)

You have your long-term strategy in place. Many marketing teams use SMART, SMARTER, or SMAC acronyms to create their objectives. Some prefer SMARTER because E for Enthusiastic turns them on. Who really wants to achieve objectives they just agree with but don’t care about? Especially if the stack stinks.

Align your marketing and sales teams’ objectives. That way their actions support each other. Success is a team thing even when you’re not on the court.

Not Built with You in Mind?

Sissel closed the sale, but the orchestra made it magic. (you did click the link, didn’t you?) Just imagine how it would have come out if the pianist and violinists had all been in isolated Zoom rooms. What if the music was controlled by one file management software system and the rhythm was handled by a separate time tracking tool? And what if they then shared the group sound via independent communication apps?

Would Sissel and each musician have felt part of the same team working towards their common objective? Did they share a common vision to be the best orchestra possible and win the next gold disc? Would they have maintained their enthusiasm? Would their heart have been in the game?

Neither Sissel nor her target audience would have been pleased if it took too much time and effort to bring that ‘musitech stack’ together. Next year would see her sales fall, fan retention drop, and her brand awareness slip.

It’s a Marketing Thing (Apparently)

Funnily enough, that is typical for how a lot of marketing teams work. They think overly complicated martech is normal. They all work their socks off and then the C-Suite wonder why the long-term goals aren’t met 100%.

But they have lots of stats to track and lots of results to measure. Let’s go back to the most important marketing objectives. Just like winning the Olympic Gold, marketing objectives are grouped. Ignore a group and you miss the gold medal.

Make Marketing Success Automatic

Level 1: Foundational Marketing Objectives

Use these examples to build your f
oundation. Share ideas with every involved team member, get their input then review, improve, and get agreement.

With the right marketing management software, they will easily rediscover existing sales-based and marketing-originated data, reconsider how to make the best use of it, and then manage it during the campaign.

Get buy-in from each team member that each marketing campaign will advance the long-term business goals as well as help the company hit the sales targets. This helps achieve the background objective of aligning Sales and Marketing.

Clarify and label each campaign carefully and measure the specific objectives that will get you the intended ROI. Ex:

• New product in the existing target market.
• New product in the new market.
• Existing product in the new market.
• Increase unit sales/revenue/profit/market share in the chosen target market.

Create and agree on your ultimate marketing and sales objectives for each marketing campaign.

Confirm every that objective (increased unit sales, revenue, new customers, repeat buyers, item cost, relative market share, etc.) is valuable, adds to the business goals, and is measurable using absolute numbers.

Head, Heart, and Guts

It’s not just your head that’s in the game, your heart and your guts are in there too.

When Level 1 objectives are built up using team member skills and experience, you win. Heads are on straight, enthusiasm is high, so their hearts are full, and because it is ‘their campaign,’ they will work hard, try harder, and do more to make sure their marketing efforts deliver.

The Level 1 objectives begin it. Winners make it happen! Now the aligned teams are ready to get the profit-generating objectives in place and delivered through online funnel conversions and sales team action.

Level 2: Profit-Generating Objectives for Each Marketing Campaign

Shorten the sales cycle on select products in specific target market segments.

Prospective buyers will already have a lot of information about the features, advantages, and benefits of the campaign product from existing marketing activity. The End Goal of the campaign is to shorten the sales cycle by a specific, measurable, agreed, realistic amount. So sales of $X are made by Y existing buyers and Z new buyers in the intended time frame.

With that End Goal in place, Performance Goals are agreed on which deal with the quality of marketing materials produced for each online and offline channel. Process Goals ensure that all actions are completed on time. The key performance indicators measure the results of both the marketing department and sales team.

Objective Examples

KPIs to measure objective progress would include (but may not be limited to):

• The number of new product pages and other media material launched to encourage speedy purchase decisions.
• The frequency of launches to maximize buyer attention.
• Consistency of message across each chosen medium to maximize intended effects.
• The number of new content pieces aimed at educating new prospective buyers, so they trust enough to make quick decisions.
• The number of positive reviews posted by new and existing customers who bought, so readers want to do the same.
• % increase in online cart completions or sales team orders, at set points in the sales cycle, so conversions and actions can be measured easily and accurately.
• % reduction in online cart abandonment so unit sales and $ values increase.

Oh, and did you notice each KPI has a purpose as well as a factual measure? It’s a head, heart, and guts thing to keep everyone focused on the why not just the what, how, and when.

Together, those indicators support the overall shortening of the sales cycle, and everyone sees it happen. Success encourages effort in marketing and on the basketball court.

Increase Customer Lifetime Value

It is more profitable to sell to existing customers than it is to find new ones. Just as it is better to keep playing a winning team than to switch players for each game.

You may base a marketing campaign like this on re-educating existing buyers, exposing them to new ideas and the additional benefits of using the same products in a different way, or using new products currently not bought or bought from a competitor.

The objectives of this marketing campaign will include:

• Selling the same products in greater quantity or more frequently.
• Up, down, and cross-selling new products.
• Getting pre-orders placed for automatic delivery on an agreed schedule.

The marketing team’s Process Goals will include some of the topics just covered. (This is why easily rediscovering and reusing existing data in the marketing management software system is so important.)

Increase Brand Authority and Affinity

This is a common marketing campaign. But too many companies treat it as the End Goal: Raise our profile, improve our reputation, help people to associate us with positivity.

So what?

That’s like an Olympic team aiming to look good on the court, get loud applause for trying hard and helping fans feel good about them. That is not how to win gold medals.

Companies increase brand authority in order to sell more products more easily, to more buyers, while reducing costs, and maximizing profit.

E.A.T. is Not an End Goal

Increasing brand authority, and affinity through the E.A.T.acronym is a Performance Goal supported by Process Goals. Use them to achieve your campaign End Goal. We changed the world so you can maximize your profit. Always bring your A-game.

You increase your brand’s online presence, prove your expertise, stamp your authority, and build trust to:

• Increase market share.
• Open up new markets.
• Increase profitability by, for example, shortening the sales cycle and increasing customer lifetime value.

Level 3: Narrow-Focus Campaign Objectives

OK, you will be saying to yourself that some of the explanations and examples could be marketing campaigns in their own right. Correct!

What matters is that everyone knows that some narrow-focus campaigns are all part of the greater marketing plan. The thing is, many martech stack apps are complex and difficult to integrate, so a lot of businesses treat every marketing objective as a campaign in its own right. Do not make that mistake. Use the narrow-focus objectives to support the grand objectives. These are the most important:

• Increasing online presence to grow brand awareness.
• Increase the number of high-quality leads.
• Increase social media engagement.
• Reduce customer churn.
• Include at least X number of UVPs or USSPs (you choose) into each new product page, white paper, or ‘how-to’ video.
• Generate X positive responses to new product releases, articles, videos, and reviews.
• Generate X guest posts that reflect the demographics and psychographics of target market personas.