How to create marketing goals and objectives for your team
Introduction
As a marketing leader, part of your responsibility is to create marketing goals and objectives for your team. Sometimes this is easier said than done, especially when you are juggling a million issues at once and the “corn song” keeps playing in your head. We often get so busy that we forget to set out clear objectives, and then we get frustrated when the end result isn’t what we wanted.
Another common issue is that the marketing team is seen as a service department in many organizations. What this means is that people within organizations send marketing requests and often jump too far ahead in their demands. For example, if someone is organizing an event, they might request that you “tweet about it,” when what they really want is 400 people to attend the event, which could be more easily solved with better digital marketing strategies.
So how do we solve these common issues? Just create SMART marketing objectives. A quick Google search will show you thousands of posts that tell you to “just make SMART objectives,” but it isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Anyone can create objectives that are Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Timely, but how do you figure out what objectives are best, how do you communicate with colleagues outside of your team in a way that yields clear objectives, and how do you effectively communicate these objectives to your team in a way that will actually yield results?
Start off with a huge marketing objective (e.g. Increase brand awareness)
As someone who is responsible for your brand, you should have the power to set your own marketing strategy and be able to adapt over time if you need to. However, before you start creating any strategy, you need to know what your goals are and how they relate to each other.
Right before you do this, start by understanding the higher goals of your organization. Usually, “growing revenue,” is a safe bet. Now you can set an overarching goal for your marketing team for the next 3 - 6 months (e.g., increase brand awareness), which is meant to influence the organizational goal. Then break that down into even smaller goals, such as:
Increase reach on your social media channels
Increase organic website traffic
Develop a unique online voice
Break this down into smaller SMART marketing objectives by asking the right questions
Once you have the big picture in mind, it's time to break it down into smaller SMART marketing objectives. For example, if your objective is to increase your social media reach, you may have a goal like "increase total followers on Tik Tok by 10% in 6 months." This helps provide an actionable way for your team members to achieve your broader aim.
Asking the right questions will help you refine your objectives especially when you are requested to provide marketing support. Let’s say that someone in your organization tells you to “please do marketing.” All you have to do is say “no problem, what is the goal or objective you are trying to achieve?” They might then say “I want everyone to know that our product exists.” You could then ask more questions like “great, who exactly do you want to tell?” Asking questions until you refine the request to a SMART objective will make your job a lot easier.
5 Great Questions to Ask When Refining Marketing Objectives
1. What do you use to determine success?
2. If we were to hit this objective would you be happy?
3. How long do we have to accomplish this?
4. Is your objective similar to this “other past” objective?
5. How do you measure that?
Break this down into activities that can be measured (e.g. increase email subscribers to your newsletter by 25% in 3 months)
Once you have identified the marketing goal or objective, break this down further into a series of measurable activities that can be completed over a defined period of time. For example, if your objective is to increase email subscribers to your newsletter by 25%, there is a lot you could do to get new subscribers, break this down into a series of measurable activities:
Increase the frequency of newsletter content from 2 times a month to 4
Add an email newsletter sign-up CTA at the bottom of every blog post
Decrease unsubscribes to 1% or less after each newsletter is sent
Make sure your objectives are SMART
Be specific. Don't say, "be on social media." Instead, say "Increase followers on Tik Tok by 20% in 3 months."
Make sure your objectives are measurable. If you want to increase followers on Tik Tok by 20%, then you need to have a way of measuring that progress. Maybe it's the number of followers or maybe it's the number of clicks and impressions on your videos that indicates whether or not you're meeting your goal—the point is that there should be an objective metric for each objective so you know when things are going well and when they aren't.
Make sure each objective is achievable; nothing frustrates people more than having an impossible task set before them. If one part of our previous example was "Increase followers on Tik Tok by 500%," then we'd probably be setting ourselves up for failure as a result of this unattainable goal (and who wants that?). Instead, we want something achievable like "Increase followers on Tik Tok by 20%." That way everyone will feel good because they know they've done something worthwhile and made progress towards the larger goal (rather than feeling like everything would have been better if only those darn marketers had given us another 5 years).
Ensure each objective is realistic—this ties into being achievable but also makes note that sometimes our goals are too ambitious given the resources available at hand. It's important not just because it means fewer failures but also because if people think their efforts won't pay off fast enough with very little return on investment then they'll lose motivation quickly. This leads us to our last point:
Make sure every objective has an end date specified so we know when something needs to happen (i.,e., within 90 days). This prevents confusion about what needs to be done next since having no hard deadline often leads to inaction due in part to busyness but also because people simply forget what tasks were assigned originally due to their lackadaisical nature (or perhaps both!).
Be clear about your tasks so that you can check off when you have completed them
SMART marketing objectives are specific and measurable. You want to be able to check off when you have completed them. Using a good project management tool like Asana can help with this.
They should be achievable, or realistic, yet challenging enough that they stretch your team. They should also be relevant to the higher goals of the business. If an objective is not aligned with higher goals, then it may not help push those goals forward as effectively. This can lead to frustration from colleagues and confusion for employees on what their priorities are at work today versus tomorrow vs next week vs next month. You don't want this happening as it will hinder productivity across all levels of your organization because people aren't sure where their focus should be at any given moment in time if there isn't clear direction given beforehand (aka SMART objectives).
A good example would be something like “We need more customers” which doesn't really tell anyone anything specific about what needs to be done except maybe just write down some ideas perhaps through brainstorming sessions. Then again there's no guarantee those ideas will actually work together well enough so maybe not even worth doing either way.
Conclusion
Setting clear marekting objectives with your team and clients is an essential part of being a digital marketing manager. You have to clearly understand the organization's higher goals, create one large objective, create smaller objectives, ensure those objectives are SMART, and then track your progress. If you can clearly define your team’s objectives and work with your colleagues to ensure that their requests are in the form of objectives it will make it a lot easier to effectively do your job.
