You’ve set personal resolutions for yourself this year, but what about setting goals for your business? Creating marketing goals increases your chances of achieving them – so do yourself a favor this year and set yourself up for success. Collaborate with your peers to determine overarching marketing goals and “SMART” objectives before carrying out any tactics. This will save time, money and resources – which may ironically be part of your marketing goals themselves!
This 7-step process will help you define and refine your 2016 business growth goals and segment them into achievable marketing objectives.
1. Encourage a Brain-Dump Exercise
Host a group brainstorming session with key stakeholders or department heads to create a list of any and all things you’d like to see happen for your business over the next 12 months. Use this list to develop goals that support the “big picture” vision for your business. These goals may include revenue generation, limiting operational expenses, employee growth or retention, branching out to new target markets or sales territories, new product launches, company acquisitions, improved customer service, operations efficiencies or opening new business units.
2. Focus on Marketing-Oriented Goals
Highlight the goals that can be influenced by marketing efforts and remove anything that is unrelated. Keep in mind that marketing goals are typically externally-focused as to include items such as revenue generation, branching out to a new target market or launching a new product. Alternatively, internal business goals may include controllable variables such as operational efficiencies and processes, management structures and employee satisfaction.
3. Determine SMART Objectives
Construct your marketing goals in ways that support a SMART objective, which is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and includes a Timeline. Then, separate the objective into attainable monthly or weekly marketing tactics. For example, if your SMART objective is to ‘Increase $ revenue for Widget X over the next 12 months by 6%,’ consider the following tactics:
- Tactic #1: Develop two sell sheets and one brochure that can be downloaded from the website and used by the sales force on their sales calls.
- Tactic #2: Implement an Ads campaign that drives new traffic to the Widget X product page on the website.
- Tactic #3: Create a lead nurturing email campaign to support the sales staff.
Another example of a SMART objective is to ‘Secure 3 new contracts per quarter for Widget X in the New Jersey market,’ which can be achieved by:
- Tactic #1: Identify 500 prospects in New Jersey before the end of January and develop a direct mailing piece targeted to them with a call-to-action to attend a webinar about the benefits of Widget X.
- Tactic #2: Attend three widget-related tradeshows in New Jersey (March, June and August), and secure a speaking engagement for one of these. Implement pre-, during- and post-tradeshow marketing.
- Tactic #3: Implement a New Jersey-focused Ads campaign to drive traffic from this new sales territory to the website.
4. Embrace Project Management Software
Research and decide upon a project management software that houses your objectives and keeps track of its associated tactics. At Sagefrog, we rely on a program called Asana to manage various clients, tasks, team members, resource capacity and timelines. At any given moment, our team can collaborate on a tactic and determine its status to completion. It holds individuals accountable for their assignments and helps to prioritize the most pressing tasks.
5. Delegate, Delegate, Delegate
Your SMART objectives have a lot riding on them so it’s critical to delegate tactical responsibilities to the right people. This includes personnel with the proper expertise and capacity. If your marketing department has limited resources or is already overflowing with the maintenance of daily activities, don’t hesitate to bring on a team of marketing experts. Once a marketing agency is made aware of your overarching marketing goals and objectives, their job is to meet them – and that includes your marketing ROI.
6. Track and Measure Success
Set up Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to determine if your marketing campaign’s performance is on track to meet your objectives and thus your marketing goals. KPIs are measurable and often quantifiable, so task your team with developing business metrics such as tracking response rates to your direct mail or email campaign, numbers of retweets from your social media campaign, leads secured from tradeshow attendance or Ads campaign conversions.
7. Close the Loop
Evaluate your campaign’s performance quarterly or every six months to track the progress of your SMART objectives. This check-in should determine what tactics are proving successful versus those that aren’t. It’s a common misconception in marketing that pausing a tactic before it’s run a full course is poor practice. However, some tactics are simply not fit for certain companies and industries, so there’s nothing wrong with switching gears to allocate more time and resources to the areas that are performing. Remember, marketing should be agile and your tactics should be adaptable.
Did you find these tips helpful? Here are other resources you might enjoy!
Are you interested in B2B marketing plans or other B2B marketing services? Contact Sagefrog Marketing Group.
