vickioneill

From this episode:

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"How is this marketing activity supporting the overall business objectives?"

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Chances are you're familiar with Goal-Based Marketing - and are already doing it. This episode is good for all as it can either serve as a reminder to make sure marketing activities support business goals or plant a seed to incorporate this into your 2020 strategic planning. 

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Examples of business goals that could apply to any business size and type: 1) drive sales 2) reduce churn 3) improve customer satisfaction and 4) launch a new product or service.

 

If you’re a small business in manufacturing, for example, it could be more specific like 1) reduce operating expenses 2) ramp up productivity 3) open a second location and 4) conduct a marketing audit.

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Now, think about your marketing strategy and activities. Could you align each marketing activity to one of your business goals? 

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If not, you should be. 

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I believe there are a lot of businesses already doing goal-based marketing – BUT if you’re investing time, resources and/or money on marketing and you are saying something like “We just aren’t getting the results we had hoped for” or “Our marketing doesn’t do anything for us” or "We are behind budget, cut marketing expenses" then this episode is for you.

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For the sake of simplicity and meeting the needs of every business whether you’re an entrepreneur, small business owner or leading a marketing team, we are all in a role that supports driving sales, right? So we'll use that as our example for the business objective:  Drive Sales.

 

There are two ways I suggest accomplishing this:

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1. Specifically indicating which activities are supporting this business goal in your monthly/weekly content calendar planning, like

2. AND/OR looking at the data analytics from your platforms and website to see which ones drove the most revenue (quantity and ticket value).

 

Side note:  When you are developing or refining this part of your plan, this is assuming you know who and where your ideal customers are. So make sure you know who they are and where they are. If you need help with this, see the link in Show Notes below.

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Let’s say you have a product you’re selling online via your website. And it’s been an 'OK' seller but you know the opportunity is there to sell more. So on Facebook, for ex, create a post that mentions a 10% discount that’s only available for the next X days based on how many people comment on the post by X date/time. So the engagement determines the length of time the discount is available. But if you do something like this - be prepared! If you get 50 people to comment are you prepared to discount for 50 days? You could also do a # of hours or whichever works best.

 

Do you think something like that would generate interest in buying it – especially if it’s already gaining momentum and you have an attractive discount on it for a limited time (so creating some urgency around it)? I’d say yes! 

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Let’s look at another example. You’re hosting an event and need to sell tickets and sponsorship. This supports your Driving Sales business objectives by being a major event in the year to help accomplish a big chunk of that revenue.

 

That requires a lot of planning and relies heavily on your existing relationships – and it can also get very pricey so evaluate this whole process BEFORE you go down that path. .

 

Let’s say you’ve done all that and you’re ready to promote the tickets – where and how will you do that? You could do give aways (that also drives traffic to your website which may be a business goal: to increase website traffic) and you could do FB ads or Google ads – wherever your target audience is – organic and paid.

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So these examples and a quick summary of this episode – goal based marketing – is to make sure you share the business goals with the stakeholders (partners, employees, investors) and that their strategies and activities support the business goals.

 

To have a successful business all hands need to be on deck. And the left hand needs to know what the right hand is doing which means the business needs to know what marketing is doing and how it impacts the goals.

 

So as your planning your marketing content, consider the business goals and ask yourself “what business goal is this supporting by posting X content”?

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6 things you need to ensure your Marketing activities support the Business Goals:

1. Business Goals

2. Marketing and Sales strategy

3. List of who's responsible for what (accountability)

4. Deadlines and deliverables to keep you on track

5. Content calendar (or whatever works for you in managing content to business goals)

6. Updates/reports (quarterly or monthly - whichever makes the most sense for your needs)

 

If you'd like to see a business goal walk-through of Driving Sales, click the link in the show notes.