The marketing plan is the fundamental document that all marketers need to guide our actions. Without it, it is impossible to optimize the management of all channels to achieve the best results.
For the marketing plan to do its job, there is a key “ingredient”: objectives. And is that if we do not know what we want to achieve, badly we can get down to work. So let’s get inspired by looking at 10 examples of marketing plan goals and what are the first steps to start developing yours.
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Before you start: the first steps of a marketing plan
The objectives are a key part of a marketing plan , but that does not mean they are the first thing to be defined. And is that to be realistic, first we have to be well informed about what the environment of our brand is like and what we can aspire to.
Therefore, before defining the objectives of our marketing plan, we must study:
- The current situation of the company , including both internal and external factors. The external ones are the general situation, the characteristics of the sector and the market. Interns refer to our own company, for example the staff and resources we have.
- The situation of the competition . That is, what are the main brands that compete with ours and what is their situation in the market: budget and volume of business they handle, price of their products or services, sales process, customer acquisition …
- The general objectives of our business . For a business to come to fruition, all departments must row in the same direction. Therefore, the marketing plan must respond to the general goals of the company. And of course, it must be taken into account that different objectives can be compatible or even complement each other.
So that you can understand the ten examples of objectives of a marketing plan that are in this article, we have prepared this video for you:
Detailed video where we explain the 10 examples of objectives of a marketing plan.
10 examples of marketing plan objectives
1) Make the brand known to the target audience
On occasions, we will find ourselves in charge of a new brand, which is aimed at a different audience than usual or which for any other circumstance needs to be known and increase its visibility.
In the case of this objective, we will define the actions to impact new users for the first time and make them remember us. Success can be measured in number of impacts or in more specific metrics, eg. ex. market research comparing brand awareness before and after campaigns.
This objective is closely related to the study of the competition , since the position of a brand in the market is always relative. Depending on the existing brands and our resources, we will define a specific position in the market (the goal does not always have to be to become the leader, since this is often not achievable).
3) Launch a new product
Launching a new product always puts a lot of work on the marketing team , as you have to inform the public about the novelty and get it to “catch up” with your customers.
For this objective to be successful, it is essential to define the price and positioning of the launch well and have a well thought out communication strategy.
4) Improve return on investment
The ROI or ROI is one of the most important metrics of marketing, as it measures whether investing in advertising is giving the fruits we seek.
In the world of digital marketing , it is easier than ever to accurately measure the return on investment, since we can know the cost per click or per conversion of our actions. Of course, it is necessary to keep a good track of the metrics over time.
5) Introduce the company into new markets internationally or locally
As in the case of a new product launch , positioning and communication strategy are key. We must also take into account the cultural and consumption differences in different markets.
6) Increase the profits of the company
In this case, the company will focus on improving its financial results during the period of time to which the plan refers. To do this, actions and metrics can be oriented in two different directions: reducing costs, increasing profits, or both. In the first case, the optimization of advertising in search engines, social networks and other digital media can be key.
7) Optimize the conversion funnel
It is useless to get a large number of impacts if we cannot get users to convert. That’s why a good marketing plan takes into account the different phases of the conversion funnel to reduce churn and get as many users as possible to become customers.
8) Attract new customers
A classic marketing goal : to increase the brand’s customer base. Discounts and onboarding offers are the classic tools to achieve this, and the measurement is usually quite intuitive.
9) Build customer loyalty
The other side of the coin from the previous marketing objective : we not only want to attract new customers, but also to get them to stay with us for a long time, since it is always cheaper to keep a customer than to get a new one. Therefore, whoever has a loyal customer has a treasure.
Here the different loyalty and rewards programs come into play, designed for the user to make repeated purchases over time and recommend the product to their family and friends.
10) Increase sales
And finally, we come to perhaps the most obvious marketing objective : to improve the company’s sales. Here we can distinguish between two complementary objectives, but which may require different actions and tools: increase the number of transactions (motivating users to convert) or the average amount of each of them (for example, through cross-selling actions) .
