This is an area that we come across a lot when speaking to partners and the like: how can marketing confidently advise on their respective business' marketing objectives?
I'd love to say it's super easy to do. But it's not. And to confidently do it can take time and experience.
The last thing you want to do is jump into a finger-in-the-air number that has no objectivity behind it. Equally, you don't want to accept an ambitious target that your sales director has set. Instead, setting marketing objectives needs some considerations.
In this quickfire blog, we'll explore some important considerations.
Budget is a biggie. If you're about to commit to some ambitious objectives and you're not significantly investing an additional monetary budget to support it, you're setting yourself up to fail.
When thinking purely budgetary, ask yourself what a good cost per acquisition would be. It's always good to ladder this back to two things:
For example, if your average deal value is £30,000 over 12 months, would you willingly pay £3,000 to acquire that? Similarly, if your average customer stayed with you for three years (£30,000 x 3 = £90,000), would you willingly pay £3,000 to acquire that level of fees?
By doing this level of basic maths, you can start to have a much more objective conversation about marketing investment. Simply asking for a nominal figure without some calculations and modelling can cause unnecessary pain. Not to mention, focusing on potential return vs budget and average CPA/CPL (cost per acquisition/cost per lead) costs can help you understand where you need to focus your marketing efforts.
Resource is another important factor for consideration: do you have the capability and/or capacity to deliver against new targets? Quite often (and we come across this a lot), you find a one-person marketing team already stretched, who gets handed a stretch target with no extra resources to support but an expectation that marketing will generate (or at least support with identifying and acquiring these opportunities).
If you're serious about achieving the level of growth you hope for, you'll need to add additional resources. This could involve hiring full-time or part-time employees, bringing in a contractor, or partnering with a channel marketing agency like Resultful.
If you've ever been on a call with me, you're likely to have heard me harping on about data and insights. I can't stress enough how important they are in informing everything we do. First-party sales and marketing data is the easiest way to guide your objective setting. For example, if we've grown web leads 10% YoY, then an additional 10% growth wouldn't be unreasonable to forecast. Although, and this is a big caveat, you've got to stay on top of your game and regularly review those existing processes to ensure they're still going to be as effective at generating leads as they have been (and that you're not going to be caught off guard by any competitors, who've swooped in).
In addition to first-party data, consider benchmark data, too, if you can access it. Whilst it should be taken with a pinch of salt, it can at least guide initial thinking. Average channel conversion rates can be used as a guide (and I'd stress - as a guide only!) to understand how effective tactics could be for your business. But note: if you're doing something for the first time (for example, PPC ads), expect to achieve less than the benchmark. It'll take time for you to optimise what you're doing and get it to work in a scalable and predictable way.
If you're still unsure where to begin when it comes to objective setting, take advantage of our free-to-use advice and guidance offering: a 15-minute call could help point you in the right direction.