What Are Marketing Objectives? How to Assign KPIs to Objectives

Running a business is like playing a video game.

You start at level one by gathering intel, understanding how the industry functions, collecting resources, and finally progressing to the next stage of your company's journey.

As your business continues to level up, you start unlocking parts of the previously locked map. The difficulty level increases, and you’re constantly upgrading your skills and assets to survive each subsequent round in this real-life video game.

The trick to progressing in a challenging video game is to complete the side quests or smaller missions before reaching the final level. If you skip these, you could miss out on a significant skill boost or access to a legendary gear pack.

The same applies to marketing. The key to any successful marketing strategy is accomplishing targets that align with business goals. Market intelligence software can help you navigate the challenges and opportunities in the industry and refine your strategy.

An important part of this strategy is understanding that goal is a broad term and it needs to be broken down into smaller objectives to help you reach the larger objective. Businesses should prioritize the primary goals first and understand how best to achieve the desired results. 

A pro-gamer move would be to set the right marketing objectives before beginning your quest.

Objectives are small parts of the bigger picture. All your marketing efforts and strategic execution are based on these smaller elements. Objectives help keep you on track with the primary goals that move your business forward.

So why are marketing objectives important to your business' bottom line?

Marketing objectives are critical to your strategic plan because they keep your team moving toward your macro-level goals. They establish a playbook for the tactics you should use and the steps you plan to take to get there.

Marketing objectives keep you on track and align the team with marketing goals that may not necessarily have a time limit. A good time to implement objectives could be the beginning of the new fiscal year, the end of a quarter, or a change in your business or product.

Each of your objectives should have an identified KPI (key performance indicator). Whether you're tracking social media analytics, conversion rates, or traffic levels, these indicators measure your progress along the path of success.

Let's say your goal is to drive more business through your marketing efforts. A good example of a marketing objective would be to "increase email open rate by X% in Q3." In the grand scheme of strategy building, your open rates mean people are moving across your funnel. Increasing your open rates contributes to this long-term business goal and breaks the larger goal into an actionable plan.

To make sure your objectives make sense for your business, identify the four Ps of marketing: Price, Product, Place, and Promotion. These four areas will help you determine the factors that affect the way you communicate with your audience.

Marketing requires understanding consumer behavior so that businesses can direct their efforts toward achieving optimal results. You craft the best message to reach and attract the right consumers and get them to use your service.

To find out how to tackle your high-level goals, let's first focus on the objectives, how they help you gauge your efforts, and what they can do to help your business thrive.

What's the difference between a marketing objective and a goal?

Many use the terms "objectives" and "goals" interchangeably, but they're not the same.

Goals are broad ideas or outcomes set over a period of time. How these goals will be achieved may or may not be considered while setting them. Activities that lead to achieving a goal can vary depending on an organization’s resources, opportunities, and changes (internal or external).

Objectives are actionable tasks that accomplish a specific target for various marketing purposes. If goals are the endpoints companies wish to reach, objectives outline how different activities will help achieve those goals. Objectives aren't as ambiguous as goals. While goals can be measurable, they're mostly general ideas.

S.M.A.R.T marketing objectives

S.M.A.R.T stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely objectives. These guidelines help you break down your objectives and allow you to set them up and illustrate what your efforts aim to achieve. 

S.M.A.R.T objectives help identify the way to measure your success and metrics that’ll reflect your progress. Let's look at what each component entails.

• Specific: What exactly are you trying to achieve? Who are you going to target, and how?
• Measurable: How will you measure your success? (Metrics, KPIs, traffic, revenue, and sales) Is it quantifiable?
• Attainable/achievable: Does it make sense for you and your peers? Is it totally out of your scope or something realistic your team can achieve?
• Relevant: Will this objective matter to your company or stakeholders? It probably isn't a crucial objective if you're trying to fit a square into a circle.
• Timely: Is this the right time to make a move? Is it something people are currently talking about? Does it relate to current events? Will people understand the point you're trying to make?

All of these will help you understand the limits and boundaries of your overall marketing goals. Identifying objectives through SMART goals gives you a laser focus. The more specifically you set your smart objectives, the more likely it is that you’ll achieve them.

Examples of marketing objectives

The beauty of marketing objectives is that there's one for every business. Regardless of the size of an organization, budget available, or timelines, marketing objectives work with what's at hand and depend only on the goals. We've already established that objectives need to be S.M.A.R.T. Let's look at a few smart objectives examples that marketers can adopt.

A few examples of marketing objectives are: 

• Increasing your sales
• Improving product awareness
• Establishing yourself in the industry. 

These may seem like broad examples to start, but when carefully planned and armed with KPIs, you’ll see stronger marketing success.

Here's a closer look at each of the above objectives you can aim for in your marketing strategy.

Improving product awareness

Product or brand awareness is crucial in ensuring that your brand is largely recognized and for a good reason. Sometimes these objectives revolve around improving the trust people have with your brand. A great example is adding value for the customer base via user-generated content. You can refine this objective and add a timeline feasible for the team and business.

Establishing yourself in your industry

Knowing that you're an expert in your field doesn't mean much if others don't know it too. Establishing yourself as a thought leader in your industry can positively impact your reputation with your audience. Being a thought leader in your field or niche can establish your brand as a trusted and go-to place for your audience.

Grow your digital presence

People across the globe have similar problems or look for similar solutions. If your business can address these needs, it's an excellent market opportunity to engage with them.

With the help of digital marketing, companies can reach prospects from any part of the world. It's an excellent way for businesses to go global without physically setting foot on foreign soil.

If your company hasn’t built a strong online presence, another useful digital marketing objective can be focusing on search engine optimization (SEO) to grow your visibility.

Lead generation and conversion rate optimization

The ultimate goal for any marketer is to convert their visitors into qualified leads or customers. Any improvement in the results, even if minute, can have a significant impact on the quality and quantity of your marketing qualified leads (MQLs).

The success of any digital marketing campaign is measured by the number of conversions. Keeping lead generation or conversion rate optimization (CRO) as an marketing campaign objective can help team members align campaign strategies with the overarching business goals. CRO takes these goals into account and provides marketers with a relevant audience. This audience has the potential to become loyal customers.

Customer acquisition

Customer acquisition strategies generate business opportunities and cost-effectively increase revenue. This can be achieved with on-point, customer-focused acquisition marketing.

The process of acquiring new customers involves a lot of time and effort. There are many ways companies can acquire new customers, but it’s vital that each strategy aligns with the objectives set by the entire team.

Retaining existing customers

Acquiring a new customer is far more costly than retaining an existing one. Marketing objectives that focus on customer retention can increase customer engagement, improve customer loyalty, and increase the longevity of your product within the market. Loyalty programs can reduce customer attrition, create happy customers who advocate for your brand, and increase overall revenue.

Building brand awareness

Whether you’re a new company, launching a new product, or looking to target a new audience, increasing your brand and product awareness is a decent goal to guide your marketing plan.

Suppose you’re targeting a new audience. For this objective, success can be measured by the number of impressions and by comparing brand awareness of the target audience before and after the campaign.

Increasing return on investment (ROI)

You know that your strategies are working if your results improve. One way to validate this is by evaluating the return on investment (ROI) for your marketing campaigns and practices. Keep a few tangible targets in mind and correlate them with a specific business goal. If you see an increase in customers, conversions, or traffic in general, you know you’re doing something right.

Since digital marketing campaigns require an investment of time, money, and effort, it’s crucial to be able to justify the costs of an activity. Advertising spending has increased over the years. Identifying the right campaign that generates dividends can be another marketing objective.

Increasing business sales

It’s pretty evident that sales goals are commonly at the epicenter of a for-profit business model. A lot of effort is put into converting MQLs into customers. And no one understands this better than marketers. 

When a business starts losing these customers, it isn’t just a lost revenue opportunity. It’s weeks of work, huge amounts of campaign spend, and countless interactions with leads that go down the drain.

Some businesses still struggle to understand what they want to do, how they aim to get there, and what results they’re looking to achieve. This goes beyond the conventional thought, “I want to sell a product and make 2x the revenue I made last year.” 

The main goal of a marketing strategy for this entity will revolve around aligning marketing strategies and sales to drive more business. Your objectives will sound more specific, like "Increase the number of demo sign-ups by x%." Doing so further breaks down the goal and makes it more feasible for your marketing efforts.

Entering a new market

The best way for established businesses to grow their business is to enter foreign markets. Unlike a new business, companies at this stage have a validated product and understand how the industry operates.

Growing market share

Understanding consumer demands and their needs can help a business significantly increase its market share and revenue, as well as identify any new, potential areas to grow in the existing market. It could also indicate new regions that haven’t been tapped yet and are worth exploring.

Growing your market share requires assessing the competition in your industry. Market intelligence provides data that bridges the gaps for businesses looking to understand what is driving current market conditions.

Understanding your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses allows you to evaluate how your product should position itself in the market and attract customer attention. Constantly monitoring what the competition is doing puts you at a competitive advantage and enables you to capture market opportunities before others.

On the other side of the spectrum, closely following your competitors also helps you understand what didn’t work for them. This can help you avoid repeating the same mistakes.

KPIs assigned to marketing objectives

Objectives and KPIs go hand-in-hand.

Since marketing objectives are measurable, marketing teams must establish some tangible KPIs attributed to each objective. These KPIs help marketers accomplish their objectives and guide them toward their overall goals.

These KPIs could be deadlines, metrics, increase or decrease in rates or total costs associated with marketing activity. Ultimately, KPIs are meant to help marketing teams gauge the output of their efforts and evaluate the results achieved over a period of time.

Here are some examples of KPIs marketing professionals can consider for their objectives.

Growth in sales

When improving your sales, keep an eye on your revenue (your business income) and the number of units sold. Both of these metrics will help you track whether your sales are growing. Monitor changes over time and throughout campaigns or marketing initiatives to understand trends and fluctuations.

Market share

Your market share is the portion of a market that your brand or product controls. This metric helps you compare your company with others in your industry and identify ways to reach your growth potential. To measure changes in your market share, you need to know your current market share.

To determine market share, consider your industry’s total revenue and market size or geographic location. Then divide your company’s total revenue by the total revenue of the market. This calculation gives you an estimate of the percentage of the market your brand controls.

Lead generation

Here are a few metrics to consider when the marketing objective is lead generation:

Click-through-rate (CTR): CTR is used to measure the interaction users have with a campaign. The interaction here is in the form of clicks.

Cost per impression (CPM): CPM is the cost of an ad campaign per 1000 impressions. Here, "impression" isn't singular but in thousands.

Customer lifetime value (CLV)

CLV refers to the value of revenue generated from an individual over the customer life cycle. The lifetime value of a customer should always be greater than the cost of acquiring one. If the acquisition cost is much higher than the value obtained from a customer, it’s a futile exercise, and such a customer shouldn’t be pursued past a certain point.

Return on investment (ROI)

As more money is poured into digital marketing, the demand for more accurate data and a higher ROI will only continue to grow. Here are some KPIs used to measure the ROI of different marketing activities:

• Cost per lead (CPL) = Cost to the advertiser ÷ Number of leads generated from an ad
• Return on investment (ROI) = (Total revenue – Total cost) ÷ Total cost
  
  Or
  
  Return on investment (ROI) = (Revenue + Goal value) ÷ Cost
• Return on ad spend (ROAS) = (Revenue ÷ Spend)

There are two other metrics used to measure the effectiveness of digital campaigns: Pay per click (PPC) and cost per click (CPC).

• Pay per click (PPC): A particular rate is charged for every ad that users click. If you have a fixed budget, knowing the average PPC costs for your industry is a great way to predict your total campaign spend and determine your ideal ROI.

• Cost per click (CPC): CPC refers to the cost of each click on an advertisement or campaign within the platform. 

New customer acquisition

In the growth phase, you should keep an eye on new customer acquisition and the metrics that’ll help you monitor growth. KPIs measuring customer acquisition include the following metrics:

• Number of new customers: The number of new customers acquired over a certain period
• Cost per new customer: The amount of money spent to acquire a new customer
• Lead-to-customer ratio: The number of leads that convert into customers

Customer lifetime value

Consider these metrics if you’re focused on marketing objectives related to your current customer base to keep those customers happy.

• Customer churn rate: Rate at which customers exit the sales cycle
• Customer retention rate: The percentage of customers who stay over a period of time
• Lifetime spend: The average time customers spend with a company in their lifetime

Conversion rate optimization

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a tactic marketers adopt to improve a visitor’s overall experience on a website or ancillary channels and encourage them to take a more desirable action on the website to achieve a business goal (in this case, a conversion).

While CRO is a great practice for all types of incoming traffic, it’s especially beneficial in making the most of your existing traffic. Every CRO strategy increases the chances of a website visitor completing your business objectives. Coupled with a CRO software tool, marketers can turn visitors into customers.

Website metrics

Websites aren’t designed to convert users. That doesn’t mean you can’t see any conversions. It’s a little harder to get a conversion on a website because buyer intent can’t be established on the first visit. Usually, visitors are in the discovery phase when they land on a homepage.

There are a number of metrics that can be used to measure the performance of a website and to ensure that the site’s objectives are being met. Here are some metrics marketers can consider:

• Sessions: The total number of visits to a website during a specified time period (day, week, or month)
• New visitors: The number of unique people who visit a site
• Time on site: The average time the website visitors spend on a page
• Pageviews per visit: The average number of pages a website visitor visits or interacts 
• Bounce rate: The rate at which visitors exit the website after viewing only one page

Social media engagement

Since most people spend considerable time on social media, it’s only natural for businesses to shift their focus to digital platforms. Several social media marketing software tools are available in the market for specific goals to optimize the marketing efforts on these platforms.

• Community building: The number of new followers or fans acquired over time across social media platforms
• Engagement rate: Comments and likes on posts or updates, and the number of times users shared the post
• Click-through-rate: Number of leads generated through online campaigns or posts
• Referral traffic: The amount of website traffic from online channels like social media platforms, campaigns, etc.

SEO performance

If your marketing plans include improving your visibility in search, monitor KPIs that show improvement in your SEO status. 

• Number of backlinks: The number of external websites linked back to your website
• Keyword density: The number of times a specific keyword appears on a webpage
• Search volume: The estimated number of average monthly searches for a specific keyword
• Share of Voice (SoV): The number of high volume keywords your content is ranking for and the amount of visibility your website has on search engine results pages (SERP)
• Search traffic: The monthly traffic on your website from a search query

KPIs keep you on track and aligned with your marketing goals, even if they’re not necessarily time-bound. Remember to implement these KPIs over time to assess the true performance of each objective.

Without marketing objectives, it’s game over

You can't reach the final level or the "boss fight" before you've advanced through the ranks of the game. Trying to fight the dragon at the final level before you have collected your sword at level one only spells disaster. However, with video games, you have the luxury of failing and restarting from the last checkpoint. In reality, rectifying a mistake isn't as easy as loading a saved game file.

Marketing teams can better justify their actions and performance when they have a set of marketing objectives in place. Not only does this ensure that all teams and stakeholders are on the same page, but it also allows marketers to methodically plan their activities.

Before you set marketing objectives and goals, identify market opportunities.