A great marketing strategy ensures that the right audience knows about your product or service. Before running any campaigns it’s important to set goals for yourself so you’re spending your dollars effectively. Below are a few tips to keep in mind when setting marketing goals for your business.
1. Start With Relevant Objectives
Your marketing plan and your business’ objectives should be aligned. The objectives you set could be based on how long your business has been in operation. For example, if you’ve been in business for a few months your objective may be to raise brand awareness. Even if you’re making the best pizzas in town, you won’t be able to sell them if people aren’t aware that your restaurant exists. If you’ve been operating for a few years and have established your brand presence, your objectives may be focused on growth. This could include launching a new product or bringing in new customers.
2. Quantify Your Goals
Every goal you set should be measurable, timely, and tied to an objective. With an an objective of bringing in new customers, your goal could be something like acquiring 10 new customers in 3 months. This gives you both a quantity to measure and a deadline to meet. If the goal can’t be measured, you may not know what strategies are working and what’s not.
Defined goals also help you select the strategies you’ll use to reach them. For example, you may launch a cold-calling and mail campaign to attract new customers.
3. Set Realistic Goals
When choosing what numbers to tie to your goals, use historical performance as a guideline. For example, imagine that next month your goal was to increase your Facebook followers by 100. In this case, you could check the analytics of your page to understand what normal growth looks like for your company. This would help you set a baseline. Then you could evaluate what you’ve done in the past and how that affected your growth. These numbers will allow you to understand what goals are realistic with your available resources.
4. Reevaluate Your Goals Periodically
Check your performance on a constant basis to see which goals are being met and which ones aren’t. If certain goals aren’t being met, find out if the strategies need to be changed or the goal itself. In some cases, the business’ objectives may have shifted and you’ll have to set new goals.
Bottom Line
Having realistic and quantified goals that are tied to your business objectives will give you the greatest chance of success. However, marketing is not the only way to accomplish your objectives. Here are some other ideas to grow your business.
Comments are closed here.