Aligning Business Objectives with Marketing Investment: Easier Said than Done

Marketing objectives, strategies, and tactics—oh my! This is always the first moment of serious fretting when we begin to wrestle with resource investment in marketing.

• On “paper,” not so confusing.?
• In B-school, it was crystal clear.?

An “objective” was a quantitative metric:

• Increase new customers by 5%
• Grow revenue in new markets by 10%
• Increase website traffic by 15%

Once clarified, a strategy was needed to define the work to be done in order to achieve it. The tactics constituted the “how.” No biggee.

But now, enter the real world.

What Is “Growth,” Really?

When I work with EOS companies , they’ve already worked hard to define their business objectives. While there’s traction in the business growth path, often the specific role of marketing gets muddied.

In one strategy session, the objective was declared as “Growth.” Well, let’s see how many interpretations we can come up with to define that objective.

• An increase in topline revenue
• An increase in unit sales
• An increase in profit margin across a franchise
• An increase in visitors to an ecommerce platform

Well, what’s it gonna be? For the business, they all matter. For Marketing, we have to be selective because there are investments and risks associated with each.

Determine the Role of Marketing

We can’t really define a marketing strategy as a driver for growth until we determine the role of marketing in a growth plan. For example:

Growing topline revenue can be achieved in a multitude of pathways. Some reside in the marketing organization, others in sales, and still others in finance. Your task is to decide which of these deserves the marketing resources to make it happen.

Focusing on one path, and doing it well, is better than dabbling in all of them, particularly if you have limited marketing dollars in your plan. For example, decide that the role of marketing is any one of these:?

1. Increase the sales pipeline
2. Increase average order value per new customer
3. Upsell existing customers to a new product
4. Improve loyalty and frequency of purchase among first time customers

Which of these will deliver the most lift against your business objectives for the year? Which can be most directly affected by marketing? Once you determine the answer, you can invest in marketing that makes the most sense in the near term.

Same Objective, Different Strategies

Let’s presume you land on a marketing objective to increase unit sales. That objective can be supported by a number of different strategies and tactics:

1. Reduce pricing to compete more effectively in a crowded market.
2. Expand marketing into a new geography.
3. Bundle sales of different product offerings into a single package (it costs less to service a single new customer with multiple products than it does to support more customers with bite-sized offerings).

As you can see, depending on what the specific marketing objective is, there are different strategies (and therefore tactics) that relate to that goal.

Let’s blow this out a bit more with the mother of all marketing objectives: increasing topline revenue.

Take a look…

Strategy Alternative #1: Increase your sales pipeline with high intent leads.?

Tactical Options:?

• Acquire a list of your optimal prospects for a multi-touch email campaign. In each email, drive the recipient to an engagement asset (a checklist, a how-to instructional, a video webinar). Explore open rates to identify high-intent prospects to provide to your sales team.
• Build awareness through organic content to publish on the personal LinkedIn page of a team leader. Engage via LinkedIn messenger to nurture interest in an additional piece of content available in exchange for an email address. Then, add these contacts to your weekly newsletter list for additional nurturing. Use LinkedIn messenger to nurture further in order to get a call scheduled.
• Support your brand by publishing this content on your company page for SEO value. But remember, LinkedIn doesn’t support company pages with the same love as they do a personal LI profile.

Strategy Alternative #2 : Increase the number of new customers per year.

Tactical Options:?

• Offer educational seminars, complementary training, and DIY analysis tools that deliver value in advance of the purchase timeframe.
• Test an entry level offering at a lower price point to onboard a broader set of new customers with a back-end upsell option.
• Set up a referral program among your strongest customers.

Strategy Alternative #3 : Decrease churn of existing customers so new revenue remains truly incremental.

Tactical Options:?

• Make sure your CRM tags customers in your database in order to develop customer-specific content that rewards them for being part of your family.
• Develop a partner program that offers a select portion of your existing customer base access to pricing promotions, first-in-line for new products, a dedicated account manager.
• Create a customer-specific newsletter by repurposing LinkedIn content and case studies crafted with language that identifies this content as “for customers only.”
• Develop a component in your sales process that keeps you top of mind for your customers (e.g., monthly reporting, access to new content as a reason for an out-of-sequence sales check in call, etc.).

So, as you can see, defining a single objective for your marketing organization can be supported by any number of strategic directions. If you can invest in more than one, good for you. Many small businesses cannot.

Here’s an example:

I’m working with a small M&A company now who needs some near term pipeline enhancement since they have an 18 month purchase cycle. Before we dig into high cost paid programs, we will start with email marketing to give the sales team opportunities to work qualified leads while the marketing team digs into longer term projects such as content marketing or a website revamp.?

We faced the reality of resources and started where the investment will resolve the largest friction point in meeting their topline revenue objective.

We’ve Got to Do the Work

Sometimes my clients think about this and groan. It’s hard work to define a marketing objective and select the strategy that makes the most sense this year.? But if we don’t, we’re boiling the ocean. And we don’t have the budget to do that.

Next up Warren Buffet Talks Inflation?

About Ilene Rosenthal

As a fractional CMO, I help ambitious leadership teams say bye-bye to the waste and risk inherent in most marketing plans.

My clients are ambitious B2B CEOs who have marketing and sales teams in place, but are still frustrated with the return on their marketing investment.

I also run the Marketing Strategy Lab for small business.??

After 16 years in leadership roles on enterprise brands at Y&R, I’m the CEO of White Space Marketing Group, a marketing strategy consultancy established in 2012.

Ilene on LinkedIn ?

White Space Marketing Group