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Setting your business objectives to drive your marketing strategy

Apr 04, 2013

joe

Have you ever driven through a thick fog? Though your lights are on, it’s difficult to see the person passing you, let alone five feet in front of your hood. This experience is very much like running a business without clearly defined goals. Setting business and marketing objectives gives your company direction and focus.

Marketing objectives quantify the results you are looking to achieve. By clearly stating these results in advance, you provide performance criteria against which your future results can be compared.

Your marketing plan and overall objectives will define your communications strategy. It will help your entire company give a planned, clear, comprehensive, and consistent message to your customers, employees, investors, and business partners.

You are more likely to act on your objectives if they are written down. They have no value floating just as an idea or a thought, they need to be clearly articulated into measurable actions . By writing them down they are more clearly articulated and it is easier to evaluate them against the SMART criteria.

Whatever marketing objectives you decide on, they should meet certain criteria. They must be realistic, measurable, and be guided by short, medium and long-term deadlines. Define as specifically as possible what it is that you need to accomplish to meet your goals.

S = Specific
Your objectives should be straightforward and emphasise what you want to happen. Specifics help us to focus our efforts Marketing Objectves SMART and clearly define what we are going to do.
Specific is the WHAT, WHY and HOW

- WHAT are you going to do? Use action words such as direct, organize, conduct, coordinate, lead, create, develop, plan, build etc
- WHY is this important at this time? What do you want to ultimately accomplish
- HOW are you going to do it?

M = Measurable
If you can’t measure it – you can’t manage it. Choose an objective with measureable progress so you can see the changes occur and how far you have progressed to meeting your objective.

A = Attainable & Achievable
When you identify goals and objectives that are most important to you, you need to ensure you have the means and resources to make them happen. Objectives you set that are too far out of your reach, you probably won’t commit to. For instance, an objective which states "100 percent customer satisfaction" isn't realistically achievable. It's not possible to expect that everyone must be 100 percent satisfied with their service. A goal of "12 percent improvement in customer satisfaction" is better. Set the bar high enough for a satisfying achievement!

R = Realistic
Objectives need to be reasonable and be realistic. Being unrealistic sets you up for a fall and kills your enthusiasm at achieving your goal. Realistic goals are potentially challenging but not so challenging that the chance of success is small. Be realistic while remembering that worthwhile goals and objectives should force you to reach out of your comfort zone in order to attain them.

T = Timely
Set a timeframe for your goals and objectives – not doing this makes it too easy to not complete. The timeframe you set must be measurable, attainable and realistic.