Session 3: Establishing goals and objectives

In session 3 of A Marketing Podcast I discuss how to establish marketing goals and objectives as part of your marketing strategy. I review the reasoning behind having both goals and objectives and how they differ from each other. I also provide some insight into how to build your goals and objectives to make them achievable and to achieve your business goals as well.

Session 3 Show Notes:

* Brief review of session two and the process of marketing strategy development

* Discussion on the difference between goals and objectives

* A GOAL is measurable only by personal impression/gut feeling, or the completion of your objectives if you’ve created the right objectives.

* An OBJECTIVE is measurable by numbers, and multiple objectives build the checklist you need to achieve your goals

Creating Goals

* Always create your goals before your objectives

* Shoot for 5 goals – but 3 will work

* Make sure your goals a big and push your marketing, but are also achievable within the time period of your strategy

* I mentioned that I like to divide goals up to relate to particular business areas, and used the following as examples:

* Brand

* Product/Service

* Customers

* Culture

* Revenue

* Examples of goals for each business area:

* Brand: Establish our brand as a premium brand in the industry of X

* Product/Service: establish product X as the primary revenue generator for my business

* Customers: Increase resale value to current and future customers, increase up sells

* Culture: Develop an event participation program for marketing opportunities

* Revenue: Increase revenues in South East Asia

* Make sure that your goals are big! But give yourself a chance to achieve them in the strategies period.

* Remember to make your goals read like a story. They are not measurable by numbers.

Creating Objectives

* Now that you have 5 goals (or maybe 3), let’s create objectives for each goal.

* Depending on the size of the goal you will require at least two, and most likely more objectives to achieve each goal.

* If your goal can be achieved by achieving one objective, guess what? It’s not a goal, it’s an objective, so go back and change it.

* Make sure that your objectives align with your goals, and that achieving every objective within the goals group will achieve the goal.

* If you start to produce objectives that do not fit within a current goals grouping, you may need to add a new goal or decide to push that objective into the next periods strategy.

* Examples of some objectives:

* let’s use our previous example: “Establish our brand as a premium brand in the industry of X”

* Objectives would potentially include:

* Achieve 1,000,000 impressions in online advertising without our core markets (New York city, Los Angeles)

* Work with 5 influencers to post brand imagery and recommend our brand to their followers

* attend/speak at 3 industry related events

* Complete setup of all social channels currently in use to use new brand visual elements

Recap – Establishing goals and objectives

produce 3-5 goals

make them big, but attainable

make sure they align with business goals

produce objectives for each goal (make sure there is more than one)

make sure objectives a measurable by numbers

group objectives with each goal

Links & Resources:

* Small Business Marketing Strategy Template

* Extra Reading: Marketing Goals vs Obje...