Setting good objectives is an important part of your marketing strategy.
You cannot have everything as an objective, you need to focus on the important elements that will deliver on your business goals.
A good start is to draw out your target customers’ marketing funnel.
This means examining the stages that the target customer goes through from initial awareness to advocacy, e.g.
- Become Aware
- Give consideration to
- Have a preference for
- Purchase
- Become a regular purchaser
- Recommend to others
Using research if you can, or your own experience or anecdotal evidence, figure out an estimate of the number people drop off at each stage in the funnel – this will show you the area/s that you need to focus on with your marketing.
It may be that most of your target customers know about your brand, like it, would buy it but don’t. If this is the case, you need to find out why. Do you need to increase trust in the brand? Change your distribution channels? Is your price too low? Too high (beware of lowering your price though!)? Do your customers understand the value you are delivering – the benefits to them?
There is a lot of thinking and investigation involved in this but it is very worthwhile.
When you have decided where your purchase funnel is leaking, you can set out your objectives. Make sure that they are SMART – Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timed.
Objectives like “increase sales” are way too broad to be useful. You need to dig down. For example, “Increase % sales conversion from enquiries from 17% to 25%”. This objective encourages you to work on those who already like your brand (for example people who have engaged online) with tactics that will nudge them to take the next step and purchase.
It is important to find a way to measure the success of your efforts. This will help you to evolve your marketing to make it ever more successful.
If you would like to discuss your business’s marketing, call Paula on 086 1294859 or email paula@ronanmarketing.ie
