Aligning your Marketing Goals with Business Objectives: A Secret to Success
Integrated digital marketing goals with your business objectives mean every action of your business contributes towards the end goal.
Those who think that marketing is a department independent from the rest of the business, couldn’t be more wrong. Marketing is the heart of a business. therefore, to synchronize your entire business objectives with the marketing strategy is the only way to achieve success.
The issue many businesses face is, that they analyse the competition, trends and marketing methods online when devising their business marketing plans. While these factors are extremely important too, no marketing strategy can cater to your business needs without keeping your business objectives in mind. This is why, clear communication of business goals with your agency is the foremost factor to success.
In this article, we will highlight the ways to align your marketing goals with business objectives.
Why Aligning your Goals and Strategies is important?
How can you expect business growth if strategy objectives aren’t according to your marketing vision? Goals alignment is important to ensure that no aspect of a marketing strategy is a waste of time and money. And this is only possible if you dish what you need.
Similarly, suppose a strategy temporarily works great for your business but doesn’t pay off in the longer run or might go against the entire business objectives in future. In that case, it is better to abandon such plans. After all, a business doesn’t think about immediate success only while letting go of long-term growth.
Tips to Align Business Objectives with Marketing Strategies
The lack of cohesion between your business goals and marketing strategies is a plan set for failure. This missing interaction between goals and strategies can end up in a waste of money, effort and an overall build-up of frustration. Marketing agencies that work without clear communication of objectives from an organization, run campaigns that might succeed temporarily but won’t add to the business value.
Likewise, businesses that are too proud to expose their visions to the marketing agency are only wasting time with no specific directional growth. Therefore, a unified structure is important which helps plan objective-based marketing strategies. But how do you combine business objectives and marketing goals? Here is how:
Set Business Goals
The first step is to identify and then set your own business goals. Setting business goals is the first step to attaining clarity and working in a disciplined manner. While there are many methods to set business goals, most organizations use the SMART goals or the RACE framework for a clear business strategy.
SMART Goals
SMART goals aren’t a new concept in business marketing, they have been in practice for years. These goals S-specific, M-measurable, A-Achievable, R-Realistic, and T-Timely, give a clear understanding of business objectives The benefit of SMART goals is that they cover every aspect of what a business goal should be. They are clear, targeted, time-defined and relevant too. They create an organized business strategy according to which marketing strategies can be planned.
Here is an example of SMART goal:
To gain 5000 new followers on Instagram in 6 months to increase brand awareness.
This goal is specific (increased number of followers), measurable (5000), Achievable (realistic timeline), Relevant (increased brand awareness) and Timely (6 months).
RACE Framework
The second model most commonly used to align the marketing goals with the business objectives is the RACE framework. However, this model is not as common as the SMART Goals and is a bit more complicated too. The model works by visualizing each stage of the business framework. It divides the work that needs to be done so the entire team gets an idea of where the business is headed and what is the final goal. Here is a simple model of a RACE framework:
The RACE framework combines the ENTIRE marketing plan a company has to follow both online and offline, digital and traditional to ensure a customer makes a purchase and becomes a loyal recurring buyer.
The first stage is the Reach where a brand works to reach the customer via multiple digital and traditional channels, the second step is ACT, where the customer begins the interaction with the brand. The third stage is Convert, where your goal is achieved such as making a sale and receiving the payment, and the last step is Engage, where businesses focus on building long-term relationships and converting a customer into a recurring client.
Short-term and Long-Term Goals
Both are equally important. Short-term goals identify the direction of a campaign and give motivation via mini-wins. Long-term goals, on the other hand, route the short-term goals in the right direction. They keep the business purpose in check and prevent any deviation from the final plan. Here is an overview of how short and long-term goals work:
Type of Goal | Time frame | Business Name |
Long-term goals | 6 months – 2 years | Strategies |
Short-term goals | 1-6 months | Objectives |
Short-term Goals
Short-term goals are what an organization plans to achieve in the next 4-6 months. They are also known as milestones. These goals are designed to divide a business win into multiple stages. Crossing each state gives a sense of achievement hence the motivation to do better. Some examples of short-term business goals include:
- Increase brand awareness
Especially if you are a new brand, your foremost attention would be to spread the word to as many people as possible.
- Assembling and Building the Team
Your team is who will be working for you. Without a proper team, there is no success. Thus, for a startup or even an organization to improve their ways, team organization is the first step. This includes hiring new resources, resource allocation, and defining standard operating procedures (SOPs) of the company.
- Researching the Market
To create more brand awareness, researching the market would be the first step. It helps in finding the click factor of your target audience, the ongoing economic trends, the customer behaviour etc.
Long-term Goals
Long-term goals are what we call the company vision. These are what the brand expects in the coming years. Long-term goals can be as far-sighted as 5 years or so. They are mainly on the leadership level and are not very often disclosed to the entire team initially. Here are some examples of long-term goals:
- Become a Niche Leader
Every company plans to rule the niche they belong to. This doesn’t come easy otherwise every company would make that mark. However, planning is the first step to execution so this long-term goal can seriously help align marketing goals in the right direction.
- Expand the Company
Even if the world is digital more than ever, there is still a need to expand business roots to grow strong. Especially if you are a product-based company, having more accessibility wide-spread across the world gives you more exposure.
- Increased Sales
This goal belongs to all levels of planning. While the short-term sales expectations are less, long-term accounts for 40-60% more sales.
Know your Target Audience
To design a business for success, you need to understand the target audience. This includes current customers and the prospects you are planning to convert into customers. Now when it comes to analysing and understanding the target audience, there are several steps you can take.
- First, take regular feedback from your present clients and have in-depth discussions about what changes they would like to see in your brand/product/service.
- Perform in-depth market research through surveys, questionnaires and discussions with potential customers.
- Analyse the competitors and the methods they follow with their customers.
- Analyse your website and social media platforms to find out customer’s behaviour and response towards your brands
- Use analytics tools like Google Analytics or CRM to analyse customer behaviour.
Gathering this information will help you work on a marketing strategy that is targeted at the audience rather than business only.
Know your Marketing Channels
The thing about several marketing channels in today’s world is that there are a lot of options to voice your product/service. While that is fortunate, it also raises the competition bar too high. Only some brands risk going all-in with multiple channels initially. The best approach is to start with a few, note the audiences’ response, identify your social media marketing strengths and then expand to the next.
Another reason why going all in at once isn’t recommended is that different channels have different types of audiences. Thus, you need to customize your social media marketing strategy accordingly.
Mutual Calendar
Since we are aware of the need for clear communication in business success. A mutual calendar helps in prompt responses and transparent availability. For a marketing team and business leadership, there is a constant need for two-way conversation. Knowing when you can contact the other party and get a clear response helps with swift work.
Secondly, a mutual calendar also helps in maintaining records of calls, conferences and meetings with the clients. These reminders are visible to both parties hence there is no need for constant reminders.
Find What Works for Your Company
The various marketing trends are indeed appealing, and one would like to take all the inspiration from the most successful marketing campaigns of all time. However, it is important to realize that what worked for one business might not work for you. Thus, sticking to your business objectives when designing a marketing strategy, helps draft a plan specific to your business.
Measure your Wins
In the business world, data is the power. It helps businesses realize where they are headed or whether they should proceed in the same direction. The right data and figures can easily identify the progress of a marketing strategy before it gets too late.
Therefore, to use analytics, and leverage them while making business decisions is an approach only smart business owners follow. For example, your business decided to target two countries during a certain campaign. Country A showed a 30% response whereas country B showed roughly 8% response. With the help of this data, you can allocate your country B’s resources and efforts towards country A and expand the business even more.
What Does it Mean to Align Business Goal with Marketing Strategy?
To design smart marketing objectives that align with business goals means to bring both sides of the business to the same platform. The key here is to create understanding between both parties. This might include the leadership of an organization and the in-house marketing team, or a business with an outsourced marketing team.
Without understanding, trust-building is impossible. Since both the marketing agency and business have to play a crucial role in the success of an organization, it is vital to bring them to the same front, so the efforts are combined and uni-directional.
Aligning business goals and marketing targets also means viewing the bigger picture together. It also includes realizing that there is no ‘I’ in business success and it’s just ‘We’ who must work together towards success. Here are some other ways in which business goals and marketing strategy alignment work:
- Planning a map-route
- Defining individual and collective roles
- Trusting each other
- Complete transparency
- Developing content strategy
- Highlighting KPIs
- Discussing progress
The Best Marketing Goals for Success
There is no clear-cut formula for the best marketing goals and objectives. Yet it is a series of research, market analysis, and trial and error to find the practices that suit your business. However, by aligning your marketing goals and objectives with that of business’ it becomes much easier to map a precise route towards the end goal.
This is often easier said than done, therefore many businesses outsource a marketing agency which can study the business model and devise a strategy closest to the business goals.