Marketing strategy goals are the stepping stones toward major business goals that affect your entire company. In order for them to have value, they should be realistic and measurable.
A marketing campaign without a clear goal is a waste of money, and wasting money is the last thing we want for your business. Instead, your marketing should be bringing you a return on investment!
Your goals should provide clarity, direction, vision, and purpose for your marketing strategy. Let’s discuss a few goals that you can use to guide your campaigns.
Build Brand Awareness
Every company wants to get their brand in front of more eyes. The more you increase your brand awareness, the more you’re on the forefront of people’s minds, and the likelier they are to become your customers.
Let’s be realistic – your brand may never be as well-known as Kleenex or ChapStick. But that shouldn’t dissuade you from increasing its awareness among your customer base and within your industry.
Make a goal to increase brand awareness by focusing on the number of people exposed to your advertising every month. If you typically reach 100,000 or so (looking at metrics like social media followers and search impressions to measure), aim to reach 120,000 or 130,000 people each month.
You can also take advantage of your position as a big fish in a small pond. If it’s not within your budget to purchase say, five radio stations and two TV channels, simply pick one or two radio stations and buy at a high frequency. Since radio is a high-frequency medium, using it to its full potential allows the audience of those stations to get to know your brand very well.
Generate Quality Leads
High-quality leads are people likely to become new customers. After you identify those in the sales funnel who are closest to making a purchase, gather their contact information so either your team or the sales team can communicate with them. A few good ways to do this include:
- Running polls/surveys
- Email newsletters
- Promotions and coupons
- Targeted low-funnel content, especially with data collection elements (think quizzes and polls)
- Website forms
- Pop-up chats
Traditional mediums of marketing, like radio spots, TV ads, and billboards still work well with baby boomers and, in many cases, even younger generations. In an effort to include your entire audience, don’t put all of your eggs into one basket when considering quality leads. What matters most is understanding who you’re marketing to, because that gives you a good idea of what leads qualify as “quality.”
Quality leads are those you should focus heavily on, because they’re customers who are very likely to make a purchase. Measure your efforts in what types of leads become customers and use that information as you continue to strategize.
Rank Higher in Search
High search rankings are critical in our mobile-first world. When more people find your business online (thanks to your website or business listing ranking higher when in search results), you have a better chance for increased brand awareness, more leads, and, eventually, an increase in revenue. To achieve this goal, keep in mind the targeted keywords you should be using to get your listing or website as high as possible (this is called search engine optimization). That way, your business will appear in front of qualified leads.
Grow Brand Engagement
The last thing you want is for people to come across your content and feel bored or like there’s nothing there for them. You want them to engage, and you can increase engagement by posting relatable and compelling content on a regular schedule, replying to comments on social media, and keeping your website stocked with up-to-date and relevant information.
If people don’t like what they see on your page, they’ll often click out of it – that’s called a “bounce,” and Google doesn’t like high bounce rates. Strive to keep customers on your page for a longer amount of time and stay in Google’s good graces.
Increase Social Media Presence
Though traditional marketing has its (important) place, social media is a crucial tool in today’s digital age. If your business isn’t on social media, make it your 2024 goal to secure a social presence. If you’re already on social media, there’s always more that you can do on the platforms you’re active on.
You should always be thinking about your brand's posts and the comments, likes/reactions, and shares those posts get. Extensive social media presence means more communication with customers and better brand visibility, so it’s not something to pass up on.
To up your social media presence, post relevant and interesting content on a regular basis, collaborate with influencers, interact with your followers, and run contests or giveaways. A solid social media presence will build brand awareness and create a community of loyal superfans, which, in turn, will drive more revenue.
Establish Industry Authority
You want your customers to trust you, which is why creating industry authority online is a valuable goal to set. One great way to build that authority is by implementing blogs on your website; come up with a handful of topics to start (maybe based around questions that your customers commonly ask) and get writing.
Including blogs on your page doesn’t just answer customers’ questions, either. It also helps you rank higher in search when customers look up something relevant to your business, and that will bring more people to your website.
Increase Revenue
It’s not unusual for a company to concentrate on increasing revenue more than any other goal. But the question is – what goals can they set in order to make that happen?
We’ve discussed many tactics that your company can use to increase revenue. A few more include:
- Creating a strong online presence that encourages community and post things that followers/customers care about
- Doing research to find out what transforms qualified leads into customers
- Not only writing blogs, but sharing tutorials and demos so customers can learn more about what you offer
- Sharing customer testimonials to make your brand more personable
- Creating a loyalty program
Remember to review your revenue reports to check out what’s working (AKA what you should do more of) and what’s not (tactics you can dial back on).
Setting Measurable and Realistic Goals
The key to setting goals is making sure that they’re achievable. Reaching them should be a challenge, but still there's a finish line that you’re sure to cross. Start small and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by all you can accomplish.
For help on figuring out the best goals for your marketing strategy, reach out to our marketing experts here at Federated Media. We’d love to create a personalized plan for your business to help it see as much success as possible.
