Businesses often engage in marketing simply because they know they need to. But without direction as to what a marketing strategy is supposed to accomplish, it can be difficult to know whether it has been successful. One of the primary reasons marketing campaigns fail is because companies fail to set specific goals.
In this blog post, we'll explore why clear marketing goals are essential to your strategy and discuss five common marketing goals that can help you achieve success.
The Importance of Setting Marketing Goals
According to McKinsey & Company, giving your team members "clear KPIs, such as a volume of new customers or specific revenue goals, ensures that everything is measured and evaluated."
Having measurable goals allows you to track progress, assess what's working, and identify areas for improvement. Without specific goals, it can be difficult to know whether your marketing efforts are paying off.
Setting goals also gives your team a sense of direction and motivation. A shared goal gives employees a clear understanding of what the company is trying to achieve and how their efforts contribute.
Keep in mind that when setting marketing goals, you'll want to make sure they are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Five of the most common marketing goals are:
- Generating leads
- Building brand awareness
- Increasing website traffic
- Converting leads into customers
- Developing customer loyalty
Here's what these goals tend to look like and what they mean for your strategy.
1. Generating Leads
One of the most common marketing goals is increasing the number of leads by a certain percentage within a given timeframe or over a specific channel. For example, you might aim to increase the number of leads you have by 20% over the next three months via your content marketing.
Another option is to set a goal for the number of new leads you want to acquire each month. For example, if you typically generate 50 leads per month, you could set a goal of acquiring 100 new leads per month.
This, of course, will require you to change how you're currently marketing. It could be that you need to expand your content marketing efforts, buy more digital ads, or engage in other types of lead generation to reach this goal.
2. Building Brand Awareness
Generally, brand awareness refers to potential leads' knowledge of your company name, your value proposition, and the things that distinguish you from your competitors. Brand awareness can be tricky to measure, but it's an important metric if you intend to expand your reach or tap into new markets.
There are a few ways to set goals for brand awareness. For example, you could set a goal to increase your social media followers by 30% over the next three months. Similarly, you could use Google Trends' competitive analysis tool to scan the internet for mentions of your brand, then set a goal to increase mentions by a certain percentage.
Another option is to set a goal for the number of people who will be exposed to your brand each month. You could combine metrics like social media followers, search impressions, and others to measure this goal. For example, if you typically reach 100,000 people per month, you could set a goal of reaching 130,000 people per month.
3. Increasing Website Traffic
On its own, website traffic won't directly result in revenue. However, it's an important metric to measure if you draw a significant number of your leads through your website content. Understanding how your traffic relates to lead and customer generation can give you a good idea of how increasing web traffic could improve your business results.
Website traffic goals can be relatively simple. For example, you might aim to increase website traffic by 25% over the next three months. Likewise, you could try to increase your monthly website traffic by a certain percentage by generating a higher volume of content or launching a regular ad campaign.
4. Converting Leads into Customers
Generating more leads is a great start, but what's truly important is your lead-to-customer ratio. Average customer conversion rates vary by industry and channel, but they can range from 2% to 10% or more.
There are a few different types of lead-to-customer goals you can set, but most companies try to improve this ratio permanently, if possible. For example, if your lead-to-customer ratio is currently 2%, you may set a goal to increase it to 5% over six months by targeting leads with more personalized messaging and content. You may then want to measure how these results change year over year, then adjust your strategy if it starts to go down again.
5. Developing Customer Loyalty
Like brand awareness, customer loyalty can be challenging to measure. Thankfully, there are multiple tools you can use to do so. Metrics like Net Promoter Score, repurchase ratio, and customer lifecycle value are all good ways to measure customer loyalty.
Once you've identified a metric you want to use, you can set a timeline and a means for achieving it. For example, you could improve overall customer lifetime value by 15% over a year by implementing omnichannel customer support, a customer self-service system, and live chat support.
You can also measure how often customers stick with your brand (retention) or move to competitors (attrition). It’s virtually impossible to achieve a customer retention rate of 100%, but you can try to get as close to that as possible through loyalty marketing, excellent customer service, and customer loyalty benefits.
Set Goals for Your Next Marketing Campaign
No matter what marketing goals you set, it's important to have a plan for how you'll achieve them. Depending on your marketing goal, you may have a range of strategy types to choose from.
For example, you can build brand awareness through social media marketing, such as by launching social media ads or partnering with influencers and creators. Developing customer loyalty is all about delivering more value to your existing customers. You can do this through personalized content, loyalty rewards, special promotions, and more.
To start setting goals for your next marketing campaign, contact us at Aptitude 8.
