DIY Marketing: Setting Marketing Objectives

Usually we talk about setting objectives.  But not everyone gets to "set" the marketing objectives.  Basically only business owners get to "set" objectives.  Managers "give" the objectives to the team and the rest of us poor souls are given the wonderful task of "getting" the objectives. 

I always recommend getting to marketing objectives by working your way down from financial and profit goals and objectives.

Financial Objectives : $1 mil sales
Where will it come from? 1000 new customers spending at least $100 per print job per year.

This is where marketing objectives come from – where will you get 1000 customers, what will you do to make it easy for them to spend $100 per year with you?

Setting Good Marketing Objectives

If the purpose, function and mission of marketing is to get your organization chosen over other alternatives – regardless of price, then your marketing objectives will come from the critical elements that have to be in place for that to happen.

For example:

ABC company provides online printing templates and services.  Their target audience is small business owners and mobile marketing professionals.  The most important thing to their target audience is receiving their materials on time and looking exactly as they did in the "preview."  They have to get "chosen" INSTEAD of FedEx Kinkos – who is currently their target audience's primary alternative.  Here are some sample marketing goals:

• Become the printer of choice for road warriors and social media professionals
  • Build a referral base of enthusiastic customers who will refer us.
  • Grow our Net Promoter Score to 75% from 65% by 2009

Notice that we started setting objectives by setting more general goals – and then making those goals more specific and more measurable.

Giving Marketing Objectives

Now that you've set your objectives, you need to share them with the people who will help you achieve them.

• Share the financial objectives
• BEFORE you give anyone any objectives you came up with, ask the following question:
  • In what ways can we become the best [insert your positioning here]
• After people have come up with a few things – you can share what you cam up with and talk about that.
• Narrow down the list of objectives to about 3 items.
• Use your goal-setting process to turn those objectives into tasks and ultimately achievements.

The key point when you're giving objectives is the element of sharing your vision and thought process with your team.  To achieve your objective you're really going to need active and enthusiastic participation from everyone involved.  This is why I recommend collecting input from your team.  You will be pleasantly surprised by what you come up with.