In the last blog, we answered the first question of every marketing plan “Where are we now?
Today the focus is on the second question ‘How are we going to get there?’
The key to this is to spend time working on your marketing objectives, which will in turn help you to position your product or service, set your pricing and decide on the best communication channels.
Setting your marketing objectives – these should clearly outline what you’re trying to achieve. From your earlier analysis in Step 1, you should be able to identify areas of your business that show potential and areas that are at risk. Make sure you include financial objectives and make them SMART:
S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Achievable
R – Realistic
T- Timely (i.e. put a date against them)
At least one of your objectives should be qualitative, such as improving some aspect of your business, for example, putting a referral process in place.
Here are some good examples of marketing objectives:
Achieve total revenue of €500,000 by the end of 2018, a 5% increase on 2017
Gain 5 new large clients (sales of €75,000 by end of 2018)
Increase customer satisfaction levels from 3 to 4.5 by August 2018
Increase the retention rate of customers by 5% by end of 2018
Digital channel contribution objective.: achieve 10% online revenue contribution within two years.
Acquisition objective: acquire 50,000 new online customers this financial year at an average cost per acquisition of €45 with an average profitability of €10.
Conversion objective. Increase the average order value of sales to €200 per customer.
The next step is customer segmentation and targeting which I will touch on in my next blog. Any questions, just email me.
