Happy New Year! January brings ideas of fresh starts coupled with reflections of the year gone by. If you haven’t already taken a look at the successes and challenges of last year, now is the time! The four marketing goals we are going to discuss apply to all types of businesses. It does not matter if you are a small caterer or a mid-sized construction company. Everyone wants and needs steady and consistent growth coupled with customer satisfaction and loyalty. These goals will help you get there.
Align your marketing goals with your business goals.
Before we jump right in and begin setting marketing goals, let’s take a moment to review your business goals.
- Are you planning any new products, locations, or services?
- Do you have any new competitors entering the marketplace?
- What kinds of new customers are you looking for?
- What is your profit goal for the year and how much can you invest in marketing?
Having a clear understanding of your business goals allows you to set marketing goals that make sense for you. This process results in goals that will drive increased ROI, long term growth, and profitability.
4 Marketing goals every business should have and how to measure their success
- New customer acquisition. Set a reasonable goal based upon your history, business goals, and expectations for the coming year. Define the tactics for how you’ll attract new customers and know how you’ll measure results before you begin. How do you know if you are getting new customers? The answers can be found in your customer database. Are you using your POS system to its fullest capability? Capture information on new customers and you will be able to market to them directly, creating long-term relationships and loyalty.
- Increase existing customer loyalty. You know how important it is to build strong personal relationships with your customers. Set a marketing goal that you can measure through your customer database or POS and is based upon actual customer revenues. Include the tactics you’ll use and how you’ll measure each one. A targeted and true customer loyalty strategy contains a variety of methods that are meaningful to your customers.
- Increase your reviews on Google and social media. People buy from a trusted seller and they have confidence in what others are saying about you long before what you tell them. Set a goal for increasing the number of reviews and then ask your customers to help. Don’t be shy about it. Many people are happy to give you a review, they just don’t think about it until asked. Monitor and respond to each new review. It’s a powerful, inexpensive way to find new customers while also increasing the engagement of existing customers.
- Improve the customer experience. No matter how much money, time, and effort you spend on marketing, nothing will matter if the customer experience doesn’t match what your marketing promises. Customer experience directly impacts your customers’ spending habits and brand loyalty and it is almost 100% in your control. Place yourself in your customer’s shoes and walk through your business’ front door. Take note of everything you see, hear, and smell. Are customers being greeted warmly? Are the trash cans overflowing? Can customers easily find what they’re looking for?
Let’s measure!
Goals should not be a set it and forget it process. If you don’t measure your results, how can you correct or improve what you’re doing? At Cox Marketing Solutions, we work with our clients to develop plans for measuring results so that we can quickly adjust to successes and failures. Not doing so can be one of the costliest mistakes you can make.
Are you ready to set goals for your business?
Still not confident about setting measurable and achievable goals for your business? Let’s schedule some time to talk about your marketing goals and how they can enable you to achieve your business goals. Our passion is helping businesses just like yours use marketing strategies to achieve business goals and we’d love to put our experience to work for you