What’s Your Goal?
David Meerman Scott
Author of 12 books including NEW RULES OF MARKETING & PR and WSJ bestseller FANOCRACY | marketing & business growth speaker | advisor to emerging companies
I am often asked to critique marketing plans and programs as well as tactics like websites, and social networking feeds. My typical responses—“What's the goal?” and “What problems do you solve for your buyers?”—often throw people off.
It is amazing that so few marketers have established goals for their marketing programs. Often, they can’t articulate who their buyers are and what problems they solve for them.
An effective web marketing and PR strategy delivers compelling content to buyers and gets them to act.
And no, metrics like the number of “likes” or the number of inbound links aren’t good goals because these don’t directly contribute to business success.
Organizations that understand the new rules of marketing and PR have a clearly defined business goal—to sell products, to generate contributions, or to get people to apply or vote or join. These successful organizations aren't focused on the wrong goals, things like press clips and advertising awards and social media likes.
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At successful organizations, content draws visitors into the sales-consideration cycle and then funnel them toward the place where action occurs. The goal is not hidden, and it is easy for buyers to find the way to take the next step. When content effectively drives action, the next step of the sales process—an e-commerce company's “Products” button, the B2B corporation's “White Paper Download” form, or a nonprofit's “Donate” link—is easy to find.
Working from the perspective of the company's desire for revenue growth and customer retention (the goals), rather than focusing on made-up metrics for things like website traffic, yields surprising changes in the typical marketing plan and in the organization of web content.
Website traffic doesn't matter if your goal is revenue (however, the traffic may lead to the goal). Similarly, being ranked number one on Google for a phrase isn't important (although, if your buyers care about that phrase, it can lead to the goal).
Ultimately, when marketers focus on the same goals as the rest of the organization, we develop marketing programs that really deliver action and begin to contribute to the bottom line and command respect. Rather than meeting rolled eyes and snide comments about marketing as simply the T-shirt department, we're seen as part of a strategic unit that contributes to reaching the organization's goals.
Retired public relations professional and former part-time adjunct professor. Now, copywriter, speech writer, and writing consultant for selected clients.
11 个月David. Great reminder. I think your traders would also like a companion post on what makes a ‘best’ goal statement. For example, should it include objectives? How soecific should it be? Thanks. Don
Professor, Author, Researcher
11 个月Exactly David! I was just making this point in class yesterday. It’s the most common mistake I see. On the business marketing side its often a lack of focus trying to appeal to everyone without a distinct positioning. On the marketing communications side it’s often a lack of focus on marketing performance objectives. It’s tempting to want to just jump ahead to making social media posts. But those post won’t be effective until you first understand the business problem/opportunity, target market/audience, and goal/objective.
Experienced Marketing Leader | Strategic business & Marketing Management, Social Community| Crypto, Blockchain and Web3 | iGaming Advisor
11 个月Well written ! Thank you for sharing and stressing out the important of setting up goals, keep measuring them. I do believe though that in 80% of the cases , what we miss are clear business goals meaning that even for marketeers becomes difficult to translate those busienss goals in marketing objectives! I like to make this differentiation because in most of the cases our job as C-level is the ability to translate those goals into nano mktg objectives for the team to work against each, without loosing the overarching business goal. For example if the business goal is to penetrate a new market, or increase ARPU, or increase market share, improve retention then the single marketing objectives could vary according to the main business goal. What you think David Meerman Scott ?