One of the important steps in setting up an effective marketing strategy, and one of the most difficult, is marketing objectives. Find out how to do this step easily.

Marketing objectives at any company level (management, marketing, sales), setting targeted and measurable objectives are essential since they define the strategy’s roadmap. However, many companies are still embarking on redesigns, marketing campaigns, or any other project without having clearly defined marketing objectives. If you plan on investing on the web, read on before you get started. You will discover a complete guide that will help you structure your marketing strategy. Another way to go to a social media marketing services to get the best results.

What is the marketing objective?

Definition

A marketing goal is a goal that you set for yourself and that you generally want to achieve in short to medium term.

The different types of web marketing objectives

In the web world, the three main objectives relate to acquiring traffic, increasing conversion, and retaining customers.

Depending on your current situation (number of visitors and conversions), your sector of activity, and your company’s maturity, it is necessary to adjust these three objectives while maintaining a certain balance since they will together.

The reason? To be effective, a website must generate traffic and conversions and allow your customers’ loyalty. This last point should not be forgotten because customer retention is more effective than acquisition (cost four times lower, higher average basket, easier word of mouth….).

Why do you need to define your goals?

So that your web project a success, develop a digital strategy is essential, and it must pass through the definition of your marketing objectives.

Here are five reasons that prove the importance of setting goals:

Do you define your goals? Think SMART

As we have just seen, setting marketing goals is essential. This mission may, at first glance, be dangerous. But don’t panic, I’ll give you the miracle recipe: apply the SMART goals method. What is a marketing goal?

This acronym stands for

Specific: your objectives must be precise, clear, and understandable by everyone quickly.

Measurable: they must be able to be quantified using performance indicators

Achievable: your objectives must be accessible in the short or medium-term and sufficiently ambitious to maintain the participants’ motivation.

Realistic: they must be relevant and not depend on chance.

Temporarily defined: they must be delimited in time with a due date and possibly intermediate dates.

“To have more customers in future years” is not a SMART goal.

After having listed the objectives you want to achieve, you must check that they meet these criteria: they are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and defined over time.

How to set quantified objectives?

Defining web marketing goals is essential, but to be relevant and meaningful, they must be quantified.

To determine them, follow these five steps (in this direction or the other from n ° 4) is essential:

By doing these calculations in the table below, you can conclude whether it is preferable as a priority to work on your visibility (to generate more traffic) or your conversions to reach your quantified objective.

 How to measure and monitor its results?

Once you have defined your objectives to be achieved and the marketing actions to be taken to achieve them, the work does not stop there!

Indeed, you must regularly identify and analyze key performance indicators (or KPIs in English: key performance indicator) to ensure your web marketing campaigns’ profitability by calculating the return on investment or ROI.

As the KPIs to be monitored depending on the objectives set, they can be classified into four categories (or more) as below.

Traffic generation indicators: number of unique visitors, number of visits per channel (organic, paid, direct, social networks, etc.), bounce rate, etc.

Prospect acquisition indicators: number of leads, number of white paper downloads, visitor/lead conversion rate, etc.

Customer conversion indicators: number of new customers, average basket per customer, lead/customer conversion rate, etc.

Loyalty indicators: customer feedback, number of recommendations, number of shares, comments, or “likes” on social networks …