The start of a new year means setting your marketing objectives for the year.
I often find that when marketing objectives are mentioned, people tend to jump into tactics straight away. “We need to do more digital marketing”, or “We need to update our catalogue”, or something along those lines. This is starting at the wrong end, in my view. When setting your marketing objectives, you need to disregard all tactics, take a step back and remind yourself of your business objectives. Your marketing objectives should be anchored in the organisation and connected to the company’s business objectives.
Marketing needs to work closely with Sales to understand the company’s sales funnel:
- What does the funnel look like and where are the biggest losses/opportunities?
These are the areas that the marketing objectives should be focused on. Do you have enough leads coming into the sales funnel, or do you need to work on improving the attention to your product and/or service? How about the later stage of the funnel such as repeat purchase rate? Or customers becoming your advocates?
Sales targets are not to be part of your marketing objective, but if you achieve your marketing objective/s, then you should see an increase in sales as a result of this.
You have probably heard of SMART goals; but it is worth repeating. Goals need to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound. Out with all vague and lofty goals and write exactly what it is you want to do. The goal must be possible to measure. You need to be able to act and work towards the goal. It also needs to be a realistic goal and set within a certain time frame.
An example of a smart goal would be:
Increase the repeat purchase rate in segment X from 35% to 45% of the cat food “miaow” by 31st December 2025.
Once you have established your SMART marketing objectives, then it is time to start planning your tactics. These will be straightforward to plan and implement at this point.
Wishing everyone a great marketing year 2025!
To discuss this topic further, please get in touch.