marketing goals essay

Marketing Goals: Achieving Measured Objectives Essay

Swot-analysis, marketing managers, internal problems, list of references.

For businesses to succeed and grow to be competitive they need to set targets that need to be achieved. To explain the SMART goals I will take company Y as an example.

Goals should be specific. Business goals should be definite and clear. The goals should not be vague or ambiguous. For instance company, Y may have a target that it wants to have increased revenue by the end of the year. This goal may not be specific therefore ineffective. To be precise, the revenue increase should be defined. For instance, company Y may say that it wants to increase sales by 20%. To achieve this, the company may increase the price of the products or reach more customers through product promotions. If the company outlines its goals clearly, then it will be easy to achieve the targets. Goals definition is effective in its achievement.

Goals should be measurable. Businesses should be able to determine the capacity or amount of effort needed to succeed. The extent of achievement needed helps the business to know if it is on the right path of attaining the set goals. For instance a company, Y should be able to know how much of the revenue it needs to achieve. Maybe a 20% increase on the previous year’s sales. Alongside a 20% revenue increase, Y could be targeting net profits increase on the new customers. The company should be valuing the profits brought by the new customers and if the value is less than the targeted, then the company should find other ways of increasing sales apart from looking for new markets which are less profitable. Measuring goals is ineffective because some of them are not measurable and can be time-consuming for the business to keep track of what it has gained or not (Chapman 2004, p. 24).

Goals should be achievable or attainable. Company Y should have the ability to attain the set goal. In most cases, the company should set targets within its ability. For instance, the company cannot aim in attaining 50% of new markets in one year, if it does not have money or other resources to help in the product promotion. The ability to control the set goal is important in the achievement of business success (Chapman 2004, p. 24).

The business should have reasonable and realistic goals. Company Y should have targets that are important and relevant in its operation. Goals should be set to create a difference in the company that helps the company to grow. A business always sets realistic goals or that is of gain to the business, for example, by increasing sales the company will benefit from increased profits. Therefore realistic goals are effective for business success (Chapman 2004, p. 24).

The set goals should have a time frame. Company Y should ensure that a specific time is put by which its targets should be realized. Time frame will prevent the company from goal procrastination or time wastage. Time frame is not much effective in goal achievement because some targets do not have a specific time frame. In some cases, external forces may make it hard to achieve the set goals.

SWOT-analysis helps the business in decision-making. SWOT helps in identifying business ventures by analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of an investment. The firm of J. Boag & Sons Company needs to launch premium beer which is its product in Western Australia. For the company to be successful in establishing its foot in the desired market, it has to know the business strengths it has. The strengths will help the firm to gain a competitive advantage against its rivals. J. Boag&sons firm has the finest water and hops resources in Australia. This strength or advantage should enable the firm to gain access to the market and sell its product quickly. For instance, the firm should target that within 90 days of operation in Western Australia, 100000 bottles of beer should have been sold (Fine 2009, p.20).

The firm is specific to the number of sales it needs to achieve, the targeted place, and how to achieve the target within the time frame. Because the firm is launching a new product in the region, it needs to use ways that will attract customers. For example, the firm can sell the premium beer at a lower price as compared to the rival prices. Secondly, the firm may give incentives to the consumers to attract more customers thereby increasing sales. Also, the firm may advertise the new brand through the media, door to door, or any way that will create product awareness to the consumers. By defining the ways in achieving the set goals, the goals are achievable and realistic. The firm sales target is measurable because 100000 bottles need to be sold within three months. In this case, if the target is not achieved within the time frame, the company will check on the diversion of the tools put to achieve the goal. To get back on track, the company will use correcting measures or use other ways of achieving the set target (Fine 2009, p.20). But if the firm sells half of the target by the second month, then it is moving on the right track.

Weakness is features that put a certain business at a disadvantage concerning its rivals. J. Boag&sons firm has a problem because its beer brand has low market recognition. The firm is not able to sell more of the premium beer because the consumers cannot get the difference between the existing beer brand and the premium beer. Despite J. Boag&sons firm having the finest water products or selling the premium beer at a low price, it is not able to sell the beer. Therefore the firm should look into other ways of surviving in this market. The company can target to have a competitive advantage by the end of the year. To be specific on the competitive advantage goal, the company can look at getting 1000 new customers by the end of the first month.

To be realistic, the company may change the packaging and appearance of its premium beer. The appearance should be somehow different and better as compared to the rival beers may be in the shape of the bottle, color, and quantity. The firm may also offer after-sales services like delivery of the beer to the customers’ residence. The services will make the consumers to be happy and therefore tend to buy from the firm. Thirdly, the firm can give gifts or free samples to the customers. Since the company has the best water product in the region, it can be attaching its water to every bottle of beer as gifts. The gift will increase sales as the customers will be getting two products at the price of one. The gift will also create a thought to the consumers that the beer is a good as the water since it is a product of a company with the best water. Therefore the goal for getting a competitive advantage is attainable with the said tools. The firm can address its weakness and have the power to reduce the marginal difference of the premium beer in the market (Rouillard 2002, p.67).

Opportunity is a business chance to invest more or to grow. Opportunities arise from different aspects, for instance from seasonal or fashion influences, information and research, business and product development, global influences, new markets, technology development, and others. J. Boag&sons firm has a new opportunity to sell more of its premium beer. The opportunity is from the market development in which the salary of men aging 18 to 30 has been increased. For this opportunity, the firm should increase production to cater to rising demand. The firm can target to increase its beer production by 80% within the year. The firm is specific on the percentage growth of the beer demand therefore the production should be defined clearly to avoid shortage or excess demand of the beer. The time for the increased demand has also been stated to be one year therefore the production increase should be looked at for one year.

To attain the production target, J. Boag&sons firm should put in the necessary resources, for instance, raw materials like barley should be increased. Therefore more money is needed to acquire the extra materials. Since the firm is an established company, it has the financial ability to expand the production. Likewise, the number of workers or machines should be added to increase production within the period. The goal to increase production is realistic and reasonable to the firm since it is significant in catering to the increased demand that has been brought by income increase. With the production increase, the firm will also be able to acquire more customers thereby attaining high profits that will promote company growth. It can measure the production goal because if the production does not cater to the excess demand, then the goal has not been achieved. In that case, the firm needs to look to other ways of increasing the production or try to find ways of reducing the excess demand by maybe contracting other small beer producing companies.

Marketing managers need to set some goals that will help the business to sell its products widely. Marketing goals are measurable targets set by the business for a certain achievement, like sales increase, creating customer loyalty, and having a market share (Williams 2009, p.59). The main goal of marketing is to create a valuable feeling for customers. Mostly the business will do anything to make the customer satisfied and in return, the customer will give back some value to the business in form of revenue. The marketing process gives different ways of creating customer satisfaction. Customer’s satisfaction is created through utilities. For example, by processing raw material into finished good that is form utility, the customer is satisfied. Place utility brings the commodity nearer to the consumer. Time utility will ensure that the consumer gets the commodity needed at any time. Possession utility gives the consumer ability to obtain any commodity from the sellers. A business will try to create utilities or satisfaction to its customers therefore creating value for them (Kotler & Armstrong 2009, p.0).

When implementing the marketing goals, the marketing manager needs to consider the market forces he/ she can control. Formal marketing controls are methods strategized by the business to help in the achievement of the marketing goals. The marketing manager will use formal controls to assess the success of the marketing strategy (Wilson& Gilligan 2005, p.70). Under the formal control, the manager firstly ensures that the inputs for example the workers and the financial resources are in the best position for production success. The manager can give decisions on resource allocation or ensure that the researches for the business are conducted efficiently. Under the process control, the manager should be committed to the success of the marketing goals. The manager’s behavior and attitude towards the achievement of the goals will also motivate the employees. The manager can also ensure that the business output is in line with the expected outcomes. Some business operations or performances like expenses, machine output, and sales can affect business marketing. Therefore the marketing manager should know any business activity that will affect the business negatively. The evaluation of the business activities will help the manager to strategize other ways of achieving the goals or use managerial strategies to control the situation (Hutt& Speh 2009, p. 460).

On the other hand, Informal controls deal with individual objectives and character and also the group norms and expectations. Therefore the marketing manager needs to control the individuals. Informal controls are in three ways. Firstly is the employee self-control in which the employees manage their behaviors consistent with the firm’s goals. For the employees to exercise self-control that is supportive of the marketing goals, the marketing manager needs to ensure that the workers are rewarded intrinsically both in payment and good work recognition. Secondly, the marketing manager can control the social groups within the company by giving incentives favorable to the groups. The social groups are so influential to the employees’ performance both in positive and negative ways. Under Cultural control, the manager needs to control both behavioral and social norms of the business employees. The success of the marketing goals for employees needs to have shared values among themselves (Ferrell & Hartline 2008, p.34).

During the execution of the marketing goals, some problems may arise that may prevent the achievement of the set targets. Internal problems are issues brought by the business staff or operations, for example, lack of motivation for employees to work. On the other hand, external problems are brought by forces not within the business, for example, natural disasters, economical problems, political instability, and others. During goal implementation, the manager should put measures to detect and control any issues that may arise during the goal execution. Although control measures are put, sometimes problems occur, therefore affecting the achievement of the marketing goals. For the detection of any problem, the manager should always check the progress of activities. Every stage of the execution should be measured and compared with the target. If the execution results show some diversions, or if the set goal stages are not achieved within the stipulated time, then there is a problem. The managers should inform the team members. The team should try to identify the problem and later delegate new action to correct the problem (McDaniel & Gates 1998, p.05).

A marketing plan helps the business to make strategic plans to satisfy the customers. A marketing manager can set marketing goals that will target a certain market, establish market opportunities, and improve marketing operations and other goals that aim in satisfying the customers. Firm incompetence involves a lack of motivation for staff to work and cooperate in the marketing process. The business may also lack funds or other input resources necessary for the achievement of marketing goals. The inability of the marketing process to control the business products, prices, product, and product promotion may also pose a problem in goal execution. In the emergence of issues from the firm that would affect the marketing process, the marketing plan is used to detect the problem. The plan outline the team involved in the marketing process, the tools to be used, and the expected results. If for example, the goal was to achieve a 30% sales rise within one month, through product promotion, then failure to hit the target will require the plan to be reviewed to know the reason for the failure. The plan enables the firm management to be on track on the excursion of management skills both at the corporate and business level.

A business may be affected by Changes from the external environment and which are beyond the control of the firm. The external factors involve the economic cycles that affect the firm’s sales, political instability or government laws that are not favorable to the business, technological changes that the business is not able to cope with, and social factors that create a negative psychological attitude on the consumption of certain commodities. A marketing plan is supposed to involve the possibilities of the business experiencing such pressures. If the problem occurs, the firm will be able to use its strength to survive the situation. The plan also prepares the marketing manager for any shock and therefore the business does not suffer much from the problem. In any case, the diversion is controlled in time. The business puts accounts to the issues and can cope with the same problem if it occurs in the future (Jain, Trehan& Trehan 2009, p.29).

Chapman, T. D 2004, Passport to performance: raise your business performance , USA: Red Jacket Books.

Ferrell, O. C, and Hartline, M. D 2008, Marketing strategy , Canada: Cengage Learning Publishers.

Fine, L. G 2009, The SWOT analysis: Using your strength to overcome weaknesses, using opportunities to overcome threats , USA: Create Space Publisher.

Hutt, M. D, and Speh, T. W 2009, Business marketing management , Canada: Cengage Learning Publishers.

Jain, T. R Trehan, M., and Trehan, R 2009, Business Environment , India: Rahul Jain publishers.

Kotler, P and Armstrong 2009, Principles of marketing , USA: Pearson Publisher.

McDaniel, C, and Gates, R. H 2008, Marketing research essentials , USA: Taylor & Francis Publisher.

Rouillard, L 2002, Goals and goals setting: achieving measured objectives , Canada: Cengage Learning Publishers.

Williams, C 2009, Management , Canada: Cengage Learning Publishers.

Wilson, R. M and Gilligan 2005, Strategic marketing management: planning, implementation, and control , USA: Butterworth-Heinemann publishers.

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IvyPanda. (2022, May 9). Marketing Goals: Achieving Measured Objectives. https://ivypanda.com/essays/main-marketing-goals/

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1. IvyPanda . "Marketing Goals: Achieving Measured Objectives." May 9, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/main-marketing-goals/.

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IvyPanda . "Marketing Goals: Achieving Measured Objectives." May 9, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/main-marketing-goals/.

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10 Marketing Goals Examples to Achieve Your Objectives

ClickUp Contributor

December 15, 2023

Everyone knows marketing goals are important.

One, the competition is tight with growth hacking helping rockstar startups reach impressive heights. And two, you must know what you want, or you’ll be wandering without a destination while everyone else walks past you.

However, for your marketing strategy to be successful, you need to set goals right away.

In this article, we’ll define marketing goals, explore its top ten examples, and answer a few FAQs that you may have about marketing goals.

What are Marketing Goals?

1. increase brand awareness, 2. boost brand engagement, 3. rank higher in search results, 4. increase website traffic, 5. generate qualified leads, 6. increase revenue, 7. increase customer value, 8. establish brand authority, 9. improve customer retention, 10. enhance social media presence, how to track marketing goals, faqs about marketing goals.

Marketing goals are specific objectives defined in a marketing plan .

They outline the intentions of the marketing team, provide them clear directions, and offer information for executives to review and support.

These goals can be:

• Tasks like brainstorming a digital marketing plan
• Improving in KPIs like conversion rates 
• Specific sales quotas

Or other performance-based benchmarks that you can use to measure marketing success.

To make it simpler to understand goals, ask yourself what you want.

• Increase sales or revenue?
• Improve brand recognition or thought leadership?
• Strengthen your inbound marketing efforts ?
• Initiate digital marketing or social media marketing campaigns ?
• Focus on content marketing?

Any of these are marketing goal examples.

Why is goal-setting important?

Strategic marketing objectives let you envision the marketing tactics and strategies you need to achieve them.

They’re like vision goggles that let you see all the possibilities. 🥽

A basic marketing funnel has three levels:

• Discovery (top of the funnel): People discover your brand when looking for a product or service
• Consideration (center of the funnel): The consumer is done browsing and is now ready to buy
• Purchase (Bottom of the Funnel): Your company closes the deal

When you set goals, you glide from one level of the marketing funnel to the next smoothly.

Without them, you’ll drift aimlessly from task to task, with no clear understanding of how your work makes a difference.  

So go set goals !

Bonus: SWOT Analysis Software for Businesses and Teams

Top 10 Marketing Goals Examples

Here are some sample marketing objectives that you’ll need for a stellar marketing strategy! 

When you want to photocopy something, you likely want to “Xerox it,” right? 

Here’s the thing: Xerox isn’t a verb or generic noun for photocopying. It’s a brand .

And the reason they’re so synonymous with this activity is because of brand awareness .

And your company needs to increase its own.

This goal is simple: You need to get your brand in front of more people .

Your brand has a unique personality, just like you! 

Amplify it to increase brand awareness.

Another strategy around this goal is to consider the places where your target buyers spend the most time. Maybe try a social media strategy to get a platform to engage with your target audience.

You can achieve your social media goals by:

• Posting about your company culture
• Sharing interesting industry-related articles
• Or conducting polls to connect with your audience

The point is to engage with your audience on social media and make your brand seem approachable.

Be friendly to your audience to turn them into admirers and patrons of your brand. 🤝

And then watch them share your content and their positive brand associations with their circle.

Soon, your brand name will be a synonym for your product too. 😎

Need more help with product management? 

Take a look at our product management guide and check out the top product management tools .

When people land on your website or social media pages , you want to keep them engaged.

But they have high-speed internet connections and no time to waste. 

Engage with your audience by:

• Posting regularly
• Responding to comments on social media (including Facebook ads comments !)
• Updating all online pages with the latest information

If you don’t engage them, your audience won’t think twice before hitting the back button. 

They’ll bounce off your website faster than LeBron James can shoot a 🏀.

And as soon as Google gets a whiff of high bounce rates…

And that brings us to…

Getting buried on the second page of Google search results is every brand’s worst nightmare.

If you don’t want this to come true, aim to be on top to increase web traffic! 🚀

Because higher search ranking means:

• Increased brand awareness
• Higher lead generation
• Reduced ad expenses 
• Hitting lead and revenue goals

But how do you reach the top?

A digital marketing strategy with a focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will increase your visibility in search engine rankings.

Your everyday tasks may include:

• Optimizing your content for search engines
• Targeting your business-related keywords
• Identifying crawl issues
• And link building

These tasks will ensure that your website is strong enough to reach your ideal customers. 💪

Improving your website’s visibility can also help your marketing communication goals like boosting social media engagement.

You’ll feed two birds with one scone. 😎

Ask marketing teams what they’d like most in the world. 

They’ll probably say ‘new customers.’

For this to happen, you need to have a simple goal: get more people to show up to your website so you can engage with them on your terms.

We’ve already figured that ranking higher in search results lets more people find you.

Easy to find = more web traffic

But you can’t have them land on your website and leave right after. 

Ensure your visitors get the answers to their questions.

• Help them discover more about your business, products, and services
• Include internal site links
• Add call-to-actions (CTAs)

And most importantly, ask for their contact information for your lead generation efforts.

Not only will it benefit your company, but it also helps guide your website visitors and encourages them to the next step of their journey with you. 

Once you’ve acquired their contact information, lead them through a customer journey that suits their demands to ensure that they have the best experience with your brand!

The ClickUp Content Management Template is your ultimate content marketing tool—whether you’re tracking site traffic or social posts across all your channels. Say goodbye to the hassle and hello to an easy, versatile marketing workflow that covers everything from request intake to editorial calendar maintenance and content delivery.

You want to move your site visitors from the awareness stage into the consideration stage.

So your next marketing goal is qualified lead generation .

A qualified lead is someone who can become a potential customer based on criteria and identification data that they’ve provided.

Basically, it’s someone who hasn’t confessed that they’re interested in you, but you know what’s on their mind. 😏

So you gotta make a move. 

But first, it’s necessary to note two things about such a lead:

• The criteria are unique to your business
• Qualified leads can only be those who have provided information willingly

How do you generate qualified leads?

• Target keywords that potential customers will lookup
• Try a content marketing approach like guest blogging
• Host a webinar and collaborate with an influencer or brand

Qualified leads are your shortlist for potential customers. So focus on them to – 

This is one of the most common smart marketing goals that everyone’s chasing. And it’s one that all your marketing efforts should point towards.

Time to go full throttle!

Set revenue goals and identify every marketing channel best suited for your marketing business .

Then shower all the love and attention on your potential customers.  

To help them connect with your brand on a personal level, you can:

• Connect with your leads like calls, email, chats, social media, etc.
• Offer them promotions, ads, and discounts
• Present relevant content depending on the stage of the buyer’s journey

Eventually, you’ll convert the lead to a sale!

Looking for more tips on marketing your project to increase sales? 

Check out these 20+ project management tips for marketers .

So you found new customers! But once you’re done celebrating, it’s time to think long-term. 

As a marketer, your strategy can’t just focus on just new customer acquisition.

It’s more important to care for your existing customers.

Earn their loyalty, and they’ll be your brand ambassadors, bringing more customers like them. 

And that’s not it. 

A happy customer will buy from you again, increasing their customer lifetime value. Moreover, it costs way less to retain customers than to acquire new ones.

How do you keep existing customers happy and increase customer value?

• Educate them about your products, services, and valuable opportunities you can provide them
• Run retargeting campaigns to sell more products or services 
• Come up with marketing campaigns where customers promote you and, in turn, gain some perks or privileges
• Provide quality customer service
• Give them privilege access to new products or services

Check out these marketing analytics tools!

Brand awareness is great.

But what about brand authority in the industry?

It refers to the trust your brand has earned among customers and the degree to which they view your brand as an industry expert.

Let’s say you sell some killer custom sneakers. 👟

We don’t want a customer’s journey to end there. 

If anyone wants to know what kind of dye works for shoes or how to clean sneakers without damaging them, they should hit your website.

That’s brand authority.

How do you establish it?

• Create quality and educational content that answers searchers’ questions. Your reputation will increase, and people will consider you a trustworthy source. This can be at the top of your list of content marketing goals too
• Employ social proof and display your positive testimonials for the world to see. It proves that your business creates happy customers
• Ditch the sales pitch and marketing words. Instead, show your authentic self, so people know who your brand is. Let your personality shine! ✨
• Keep focusing SEO optimizing all your online content so that you can remain numero uno on Google.

Finally, offer consistent customer service.

Learn how to manage campaigns with content marketing software !

We’re caught up in chasing new customers and assuring we have massive conversion rates.

But it’s just as important to track your existing customers’ satisfaction levels, especially for subscription-based businesses.

Evaluate how satisfied they are with your brand, products, or services.

A quick survey or regular feedback can help you understand their needs better!

Here’s what you can do:

• Track how often customers repeat purchases
• Consider following up with your customer a week after their purchase to ask for feedback
• Monitor for unhappy sentiments and resolve the issue immediately

If the customer knows that you’re constantly working to improve their experience, they’ll be more likely to stick with your business.

In today’s digital era, maintaining a strong social media presence is pivotal for a brand’s success. It serves as a platform for direct communication with the audience, promotes brand visibility, and provides opportunities for customer engagement. The goal here is to consistently increase your brand’s followers, likes, and shares across various social platforms. Accomplish this by:

• Regularly posting engaging and relevant content
• Interacting with your followers through comments, messages, and shares
• Collaborating with influencers to expand your reach
• Running contests or giveaways to encourage audience participation
• Utilizing tools for scheduling posts and tracking metrics

A robust social media presence can significantly drive traffic to your website, enhance brand reputation, and ultimately, contribute to increased sales.

Apart from a very talented marketing team and defined goals, what else do you need?

A powerful tool to manage marketing projects and goals .

ClickUp is relishing success with the help of these three aspects. It’s one of the world’s highest-rated productivity tools used by teams across the globe .

Our marketing team got us where we are by focusing on all goals and achieving them with our world-class software .

And for a company that prides itself on its marketing ways, we had to develop a tool that can be a marketer’s perfect aid .

You can use ClickUp to plan, set, and track marketing goals efficiently.

1. Set marketing Goals

Good news. ClickUp Goals , are high-level objectives that you can split into smaller Targets .

This is where you can set a digital marketing goal to track social media posts, blog posts, or revenue generations.

Use them to track:

• OKRs (Objectives and Key Results)
• Weekly scorecards

A Target is a measurable objective or result. You can attach Targets to task completion, numerical values, money, or simple true/false fields. As you complete each Target, it’ll automatically add to your progress in completing the Goal.

Additionally, you can use the ClickUp Strategic Marketing Plan Template as a blueprint for your company’s annual marketing efforts. This template helps you outline the steps you need will take to achieve your marketing goals.

And in turn, that could be anything from increasing sales to expanding into new markets.

Your marketing plan should include specific targets, as well as a detailed plan of action for achieving those targets, and a method for monitoring progress and staying within budget. And with this template, you can use it as a roadmap to guide your marketing efforts over the course of a year.

2. Measure ROI with Dashboards

Dashboards are where you can view all insights on projects, tasks, people…just about anything.

Customize your Dashboards with Custom Widgets and oversee marketing campaign results at a glance.

Custom Widgets let you bring in all the data you want in the form of bar charts, pie charts, calculations, portfolios, etc.

Check out these ROI templates !

ClickUp’s Portfolio widget gives you quick insights into the status of your projects at a high level

Create a specific Dashboard for every campaign. This way, you can easily refer back to past campaigns to optimize for increased ROI.

Pro tip: ClickUp offers a goal-setting templates too. Don’t forget to try.

3. Define timelines for your goals with Gantt Chart view

Make sure your goals have a start and end date.

Make your marketing goals a ClickUp task and schedule them on ClickUp’s Gantt Chart view .

Use marketing planning software to visualize how awesome your marketing plan is.

Messed up a timeline somewhere?

Just drag and drop to rearrange your goals.

ClickUp’s Gantt view lets you plan time, manage resources, visualize dependencies, and much more

Running behind schedule?

No worries.

Gantt Chart lets you calculate the critical path automatically so you can hit the marketing goals as soon as possible.

Have more questions on your mind? Let’s answer some of them.

1. How do I to set SMART marketing goals?

For the purpose of marketing plan, every objective should be a SMART marketing goal .

Once you know your marketing objectives, it’s time to drill down to the details.

The types of marketing objectives that work best are SMART , so use this system to ensure every goal you set is worth the hustle.😎

• S pecific: Define the desired outcome in clear and specific terms so that everyone understands the objective. Set real numbers and deadlines to hold yourself accountable
• M easurable: Objectives should be measurable goals with Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and specific milestones that let you measure your success
• A chievable: Ensure they’re realistic marketing goals within the capacity of your company and team
• R elevant: The goals should be relevant to your brand mission and add to the big-picture plan
• T ime-bound: Your goals need to have a timeline that shows a start and end date

For example, a SMART website traffic goal for your blog can look like this:

By the end of this month (time-bound) , there should be a 5% rise in traffic (measurable) by increasing our weekly posts (specific) from 5/week to 8/week (achievable) .

The increase in traffic will boost brand awareness and generate more leads (relevant) .

2. What are some advertising objectives examples?

Some of the most common advertising goals or objectives include: 

• Introduce new products or services
• Demonstrate their effectiveness
• Expand into a new target market
• Build company or brand image
• Gain social media followers and improve engagement
• Generate demand and lead
• Drive more click-throughs on paid ads

3. How do I connect marketing goals to business goals?

Your business may differ from marketing department goals.

Make sure you understand what these are. Only then can you be sure of what your company wants to achieve.

Your business goals give your marketing goals some direction by giving them an outline.

This should give you a clear picture of whether you’re investing your marketing resources in the right places or not.

For example, your business objective is to increase revenue, and your company’s marketing goal is to attract more customers. That’s the connection you’re looking for.

More customers = Increased revenue generation

Start Tracking Marketing Goals With ClickUp

Your goals will be far from perfect. Even the most ambitious and inspired marketing strategies aren’t.

But they are SMART, and you can only succeed if your goals are too.

So as you create your upcoming marketing strategy, use this list of goals, SMART goal guidelines, and a powerful project management tool like ClickUp to set goals.

With ClickUp, you can plan your marketing goals, set a timeline, plan go to market strategies , track your KPIs, manage campaigns, measure ROI… 

Just show this list to your marketing team, and they’re gonna be impressed.

Join ClickUp for free to beat the marketing strategies of startups and giants…

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Marketing goals & objectives: setting & achieving them + example.

• What are marketing goals?
• Types of marketing goals
• Creating effective marketing goals
• What are marketing objectives?
• Creating effective marketing objectives
• Importance of setting marketing goals & objectives
• How Workamajig can help you achieve your marketing Goals & Objectives

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Setting marketing goals and objectives is crucial for any business that wants to succeed in today's competitive market. Without clear goals and objectives, marketing efforts can become aimless and ineffective, leading to wasted time, money, and resources. 

By establishing specific targets to work towards, businesses can focus their marketing efforts on activities that are most likely to drive growth and achieve their desired outcomes.

Let’s talk about how you can create effective goals and objectives for your marketing team so you can create relevant results in your business.

What Are Marketing Goals?

Marketing goals are essential objectives that businesses set to achieve their desired outcomes through their marketing efforts. Examples of marketing goals are increasing brand awareness, generating leads, improving customer engagement, boosting sales, or expanding market share. 

Setting smart goals for marketing helps businesses to stay focused and align their marketing strategies accordingly to achieve their desired outcomes. By defining clear marketing goals, businesses can track their progress, evaluate the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and make necessary adjustments to improve outcomes.

Types Of Marketing Goals

The type of marketing goal your team can have will depend on several factors which may include the information you have available, the company’s goals, and your team’s skills and tenure. Let’s go over the types of goals you can consider.

Time-Based Goals

What Are They:

Time-based goals are centered around specific timeframes, such as a week, month, or quarter. By setting these goals, you can ensure that your marketing efforts are aligned with your business objectives and can help you achieve your desired results.

Time-based marketing goals can be used to measure a variety of metrics, including lead generation, website traffic, and sales conversion rates. 

With clear timelines in place, you can monitor progress and adjust strategies as needed to ensure you stay on track to achieve your marketing goals.

When Is It Best Used:

It’s great to use time-based goals when there are event-related milestones relevant to the company. For example, if the company intends to launch a new product by Q2 of the next year, then it might be important to start building hype and community in preparation for the launch. This can also be true when working with sales quotas and cutoffs.

• Build an engaged community of casual and professional runners within the year, preparation for the launching of a premium running shoe
• Increase sales by 5% this month to reach the quarterly quota

Outcome-Oriented Goals

Outcome-oriented marketing goals are the ones that focus on achieving results that align with your business objectives. 

The key is to measure your success based on the outcomes you want to achieve, rather than just the activities you're doing. This approach helps you stay focused on what truly matters and ensures your efforts are aligned with your business priorities. 

Results are the main focus of outcome-oriented goals. It’s usually used to provide a clear picture of what needs to be done, giving the team the flexibility to set the marketing objectives that support its completion. 

According to Hubspot, “For big picture changes, leadership transitions, and other types of major business milestones, outcome-oriented goals are used to communicate a new vision and era within a company.”

• Elevate the company’s positioning as a premium provider of property management services
• Create a new visual brand that represents the quirky and outgoing personality of the company

Process-Oriented Goals

Process-oriented marketing goals are goals that focus on the steps you need to take to achieve success, rather than just the final outcome. For example, instead of setting a goal to increase sales by 50%, you might set a goal to improve your customer outreach and engagement.

By focusing on the process, you can identify actionable steps and measure your progress along the way. One way to monitor process-oriented goals is through project management tools such as Workamajig . Workamajig is the only project management tool built for marketing teams. 

This approach can help you build a more sustainable marketing strategy and achieve long-term success for your business.

When streamlining procedures to make efforts more effective, process-oriented goals may be the best to use. It can also be useful for new teams to establish pipelines that will eventually usher in efficiency and productivity. 

• Increase the frequency of publishing long-form articles by 3x in the next three months
• Improve customer outreach and engagement

Creating Effective Marketing Goals

Your marketing goals will help your team generate the right action plans to achieve relevant business targets.

Align With Business Mission And Goals

When it comes to crafting marketing goals, it's important to remember that they should always be aligned with the overall mission and goals of your business. This will help ensure your marketing efforts are strategic, focused, and ultimately effective. It will also help stakeholders become more supportive of your efforts.

Whether you're aiming to increase sales, build brand awareness or generate leads, be sure to keep your business's mission and goals at the forefront of your mind. By doing so, you'll be able to create marketing goals that are both realistic and attainable, while also providing meaningful value to your customers.

Be Clear, Not Clever

While it may be tempting to come up with clever or catchy slogans, this can often lead to confusion among your audience. Instead, focus on making your goals crystal clear and easy to understand. This means clearly stating what you hope to achieve through your marketing efforts, whether it's increased sales, greater brand awareness, or improved customer engagement. 

Make It Inspiring

Your goals should not only be achievable but should also motivate and excite you and your team. A lackluster goal can lead to a lack of enthusiasm and effort, which can ultimately impact the success of your marketing campaigns .

Take the time to think about what drives you and what gets you excited about your business. Use this as inspiration when creating your marketing goals.

While your goals should be feasible, don’t let this limit your creativity and ambition. Be bold in setting your targets and strive to achieve more than what you think is possible.

What Are Marketing Objectives?

Marketing objectives refer to measurable results that a company sets for its marketing activities, to support marketing goals. They can vary depending on the nature of the business, the target audience, and the marketing strategy.

So what’s the difference between marketing goals and marketing objectives ?

They’re often used interchangeably, but they actually have different meanings. Marketing goals refer to the broad, long-term accomplishments that a company hopes to achieve through its marketing efforts. These goals help to guide the overall marketing strategy and can include things like increasing brand awareness or improving customer satisfaction. 

On the other hand, marketing objective examples are specific, measurable targets that are set to achieve these broader goals. 

Here are a few examples of marketing goals and examples of marketing objectives, and how they might work together:

Creating Effective Marketing Objectives

Marketing objectives need to provide concrete results that the team can work towards. They need to be S.M.A.R.T. –specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

Be Specific

When it comes to marketing, specificity is key. Your SMART marketing objectives should be clear, concise, and specific to your business goals. By being specific, you are able to create a roadmap for your marketing efforts that align with your overall strategy. This will not only help you stay focused but also ensure that you are able to measure your progress and adjust your tactics as needed.

Make Them Measurable

Marketing goals should be specific and quantifiable to track the progress of your marketing efforts. By setting measurable objectives, you'll be able to determine whether your marketing campaign is delivering the desired results or not.

Measuring your marketing campaign's success will help you identify areas that need improvement and make necessary changes to achieve your goals. So, it's crucial to set measurable objectives that are relevant to your business and align with your overall marketing strategy.

Ensure Feasibility

When it comes to marketing plan objectives, it's important to set goals that are both ambitious and achievable. You want to push yourself and your team to strive for greatness, but you also need to be realistic about what you can accomplish. That's why it's crucial to make sure that your marketing objectives or brand objectives are feasible from the get-go.

Align With Goals

By aligning your objectives with your marketing goals, you can ensure that every step you take is working towards a larger purpose. This will help you stay focused and motivated in achieving your marketing targets.

Set A Reasonable Time Frame

A time frame can help you set a deadline for your goals and help you better plan, organize, and execute your marketing strategies. Having a specific timeline in place can also help you track your progress and measure the success of your marketing campaigns. 

Importance of Setting Marketing Goals & Objectives

Identifying your goals and objectives as a marketing team can take a lot of effort. However, putting in the work can help you maximize several benefits.

Provides Direction

One of the main reasons why it is essential to set marketing goals and objectives is that they provide a clear direction for all marketing efforts. It indicates a clear roadmap for achieving desired outcomes and helps in measuring the progress toward them.  

By defining what you want to achieve, you can create a roadmap for how to get there. This helps you align your marketing efforts with your overall business strategy and ensures that everyone on your team is working towards the same goals. It also allows you to measure progress along the way, so you can adjust your marketing strategy as needed to stay on track.

Clarifies Priorities

In addition to providing direction, setting marketing goals and objectives also helps businesses prioritize their marketing activities. With so many different marketing channels and tactics available today, it can be challenging to decide where to focus your efforts. 

By establishing clear goals, you can identify which activities are most likely to drive results and allocate your resources accordingly. This can help maximize your marketing ROI and ensure that you are getting the most out of your marketing budget.

Long-Term Focus & Purpose

Another key benefit of setting marketing goals and objectives is that it helps businesses stay focused on their long-term vision. When you have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve in the future, it becomes easier to make decisions that support that vision. This can help you avoid getting sidetracked by short-term distractions or trends that don't align with your overall strategy. 

By keeping your eye on the prize, you can ensure that every marketing effort is moving you closer to your ultimate goal.

How Workamajig Can Help You Achieve Your Marketing Goals & Objectives

Marketing goals and objectives are crucial to the success of any marketing team. It provides direction and clear indicators of the team’s relevant contributions to the growth of the business.

Direction is provided by marketing goals, while clear action points are provided by marketing objectives. Used together, they help define your team’s focus so you can maximize the results of your efforts.

Workamajig is a project management tool built for marketing teams. It helps you and your team stay on top of your tasks and targets so you’re always mindful of the best ways to manage your efforts and resources. This way, you can be sure that you’re always on your way to achieving your team’s goals.

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What Are Marketing Goals? Learn The Marketing Goal RAP (+ 2 Big Examples)

When I was a kid, I had a goal: to become the most famous author in the world.

And also a singer. And an actor. And a veterinarian in my free time.

As you’ve probably guessed, none of those things has happened — and that’s OK. I’m happy with what I did achieve, which was to end up right here, telling stories to smart marketers like you.

The moral of the story? It’s important to have a goal — but in marketing, like in life, that goal might take you down a different path than you expected. (The second moral of the story is to make sure your goals are realistic, but we’ll get to that later.)

Marketing goals are the benchmarks you use to measure success among your current and potential customers. Here’s how to choose, fulfill and get the most out of them — and it all comes down to the marketing goal RAP.

The Marketing Goals RAP

You’ve probably been told that every goal needs to be a SMART goal — S pecific, M easurable, A chievable, R elevant and T ime-Bound. I agree wholeheartedly.

The only problem is that I heard way too much about SMART goals in college, and I’m ready for something fresh. Digital marketing is supposed to be about telling stories in new ways, right? 

So we’re going to try something different. Allow me to introduce you to the marketing goals RAP:

• R ealistic.
• A ctionable.
• P ractical.

To use the RAP, start by choosing something you think could be a digital marketing goal. We’ll look at more examples later, but here are some ideas to get you started:

• Increasing new customer conversion rates.
• Boosting social media engagement.
• Growing your audience across multiple channels .
• Enhancing brand recognition through consistent messaging.
• Improving website traffic with SEO optimization.

Once you’ve identified your potential goal, it’s time to start the RAP. Ask these questions:

Is This Goal Realistic?

Now that I’m grown up (by which I mean I have a car payment and go grocery shopping for fun), I’ve realized my childhood goals probably weren’t realistic. Why? Well, aside from my inability to sing, act or do basic math under pressure, it simply wasn’t possible to be all those things at once. 

Think the same way about your marketing tactics and goals. If you could do this thing, but only with 10 extra hours in the day and maybe 3 more hands, the truth is that you actually can’t do this thing. 

Is This Goal Actionable? 

It’s great to have ambition — but if you’re pursuing something like “the spirit of adventure,” that’s not a goal. That’s a motto.

The point is that you need to be able to take clear, specific actions to fulfill your business objective. If there aren’t real-world steps to get you there, smack those pretty words on an inspirational poster and choose something else to be your marketing goal. A specific goal could be to increase email marketing open rates by 10% in the next quarter, which is actionable through various email marketing strategies.

Is This Goal Practical?

Although there’s plenty of room for optimism in strategic marketing, you also need to be practical. That means you need to have a results-focused marketing approach . What’s the measurable value of pursuing this goal? How will this benefit your target audience, reputation or bottom line? At the end of the day, is this goal really worth your time?

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Long-Term vs. Short-Term Marketing Goals 

One big difference between the marketing goal RAP and SMART goals is that “T,” which stands for time-bound.

The RAP doesn’t discriminate based on the timeliness of your goals. Instead, it leaves you and your marketing team in charge of deciding whether a particular business goal should be short-term, long-term or a little bit of both. That’s because goals, like your marketing plan overall, should be ready to shift at a moment’s notice. Therefore, I left time out of my acronym as a metaphor for the inevitability of change. And also because “the marketing goal TRAP” just isn’t as palatable.

Once you’ve used the RAP to determine the promise behind a potential marketing goal, you can add timeliness like icing on the cake:

Short-Term Goals 

Short-term goals can be completed quickly. Of course, your definition of “quick” might depend on resourcing, budgets and other variables — but the idea is to identify and complete these goals in a few days, weeks or months. 

Let’s say I’m a kid again, and I’m setting goals to become a veterinarian. My short-term goals might include:

• Reading books about veterinary care.
• Meeting local vets to talk about their work and do market research.
• Spending time with different kinds of animals.

Long-Term Goals 

As you’ve likely deduced, long-term goals are the opposite of short-term goals. If a particular business objective takes years to complete and spans many different versions of your marketing strategy, it’s long-term. That means it’s likely to grow and change in ways your shorter goals might not.

If I were still trying to become a vet, my long-term goals might look like this:

• Saving money for college.
• Pursuing a doctor of veterinary medicine degree.
• Using a social media marketing and blog content strategy to build an audience that could become my potential customer base someday.

Medium-Term Goals

OK, you got me — I just made this one up. Still, the “medium-term” is an important concept. Sometimes you have a long-term goal that’s made up of several interwoven short-term goals; other times, you have a goal that can’t be completed right away but also won’t impact the “big picture” of your marketing plan. Voilà — a medium-term goal.

Medium-term goals for vet work could include:

• Getting an internship — a long-term goal that requires multiple short-term goals to be completed simultaneously.
• Choosing an area of focus — a goal that should take some time to fulfill but doesn’t change the general direction of my aspirations.

How Goals Inform Your Marketing Strategy

Another thing to keep in mind about the marketing goal RAP is that it’s not intended to structure your entire marketing strategy. The RAP is about choosing building blocks; you still need elements like a solid foundation, a blueprint and a team of dedicated architects. 

Let’s take a closer look at this relationship:

1. Marketing Goals Speak the Same Language As Your Marketing Plan

No matter what industry you’re in or who your ideal customer is, you probably have something that drives your business. It might be a motto, a mission statement or a unique brand personality. These details all come together to create a “language” — the approach you use when your company does just about anything.

This language is what you’ll speak when you create your marketing strategy. Naturally, your goals are communicated in the same way. That means your underlying values should inform:

• Which goals you choose.
• How you prioritize them.
• How you phrase and talk about these goals.
• What steps you take to achieve them.

2. Marketing Goals Bring Your Marketing Strategy to Life

Remember, your strategy is like a blueprint and your goals are the building blocks that turn it into something tangible. As such, each measurable goal should work together, clicking into one another like a set of Legos. (Just for context, that’s the only kind of building I’m actually familiar with.) The end result is a project that might look a little something like this:

What’s that, you ask? Why, it’s only the tallest Lego tower ever . It’s a mosaic of different pieces, shapes and colors, all coming together to create something incredible. That’s what your marketing campaign can be capable of with the right goals.

3. Marketing Goals Are Creative

Your marketing goals don’t have to look any certain way. Feel free to get creative with your tools, steps and approaches. Don’t forget to bring multiple teams into the conversation to create an interdepartmental approach. From paid marketing strategies and social media campaigns to content calendars and SEO management, there’s nothing too niche to include in your marketing activity.

Measuring the Success of Your Goals 

You’ve done the RAP. You’ve distinguished your short-term goals from your long-term goals, even grudgingly using the phrase “medium-term goals” because you secretly think I’m a genius. You’ve chosen all your Lego bricks and are ready to start building your tower.

That’s right: Now you get to track your goals and watch all your hard work pay off. Here are a few tips to start you off on the right foot:

Revisiting Your Original Goals

It’s easy to get so caught up in fulfilling your goals that you forget what the objective was in the first place. When it’s time to measure your progress, remember to revisit your original plan so you know what you’re looking for.

Creating Your Definiti o n of Success

When you choose your marketing goals, you also choose your own definition of “success.” That means it’s up to you to set clear, realistic expectations from the very beginning — that way, you and all your teams can work toward the same thing. 

This is also helpful when tracking your efforts — because if a goal has been fulfilled but isn’t delivering results, you know you probably need to redefine your approach. Similarly, if a goal is delivering results but failing to support your overall marketing strategy, it might be time to switch your focus to a different goal.

Tracking the Right Performance Indicators

Let’s say your marketing goal was to use newsletters to boost customer engagement . In this case, the ultimate definition of success would be to get more customers, right?

The problem is that it’s not always easy to track where those new customers are coming from. They might have been influenced by something else entirely, which means your newsletter isn’t carrying its own weight.

That’s why it’s important to track more specific performance indicators when evaluating your marketing goals. For example, you might look at how many subscribers your newsletter has, how much traffic is being directed to a specific blog mentioned in the call to action (CTA) or whether bite-sized portions of your newsletter are being shared on social media. 

In addition to these indicators, highly specific key performance indicators (KPIs) like customer retention rates, website traffic from Google My Business listings, and countless other possible metrics provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. These metrics help to ensure that you are on track to meet your smart marketing goals and that your digital marketing strategy is in alignment.

2 Big Marketing Goal Examples

Ready to see marketing goals in action? Check out these examples:

#1: Improving Social Media Engagement

Most social media goals are RAP-friendly: They’re realistic, actionable and practical right off the bat. That’s because social media is a huge part of both business-to-consumer and business-to-business content marketing strategies . It’s also easy to align social media engagement with other parts of your marketing strategy, including brand awareness, customer service and more. Simply put, the phrase “social media” is usually a good sign that you’ve struck marketing goal gold.

If you choose this as your business objective, your definition of success is likely “creating valuable conversations online.” You might track performance indicators like these:

• CTA interactions.

#2: Simplifying the Lead Generation Process

This is a great marketing goal. It’s realistic, especially if you already know where your lead generation strategy is falling short; it’s also actionable and practical. 

On top of that, this goal gives you plenty of room to be creative. Depending on your needs, this might involve both internal improvements and customer-facing efforts, which means it’s a true interdepartmental goal. You also have all kinds of tools at your disposal, from video marketing and SEO to better user experience (UX) design.

In this case, your definition of success might be “gaining higher-quality leads with less effort.” To find out if your goal is hitting the mark, you could look at performance indicators including:

• The number of leads overall.
• The number of qualified leads.
• Conversion rates.
• Engagement rates.

Get Your Marketing Goals in a Row

Let’s be honest: Marketing is full of promise, which means it’s also full of tough decisions. If you feel like I did — a kid trying to choose between all kinds of dreams, not all of them realistic or even possible — it might be time to get your marketing goals in a row.

Just remember the marketing goal RAP. Maybe even add some music and a little dance. You never know where it could end up — or what it could do for your brand, marketing campaigns and even your customers.

Editor’s note: This article was updated in Dec. 2023.

By Ashlee Sierra

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Marketing Goals

• Written By Erin Zapcic
• Updated: January 12, 2024

What are marketing goals?

Marketing goals are the key areas that brand marketers should identify — both long-term for a company and short-term in advance of a campaign — to measure a business’ and its products’ success.

Why is it important to have marketing goals?

Setting marketing goals is essential because that is how a company knows what to push budget and resources toward and how to measure the campaign’s results or spending. From a long-term standpoint, goals empower a company to measure what it’s working toward in terms of profitability, influence, and market penetration.

Without setting goals, companies may be able to attain some measure of success, but they won’t necessarily know whether this success is enough to sustain their company. Sustainability is based on providing long-term value while operating economically and socially responsibly. Without long-term value or economic sustainability, a company will not survive, so marketing goals are essentially a way to optimize efficiency and survival.

With marketing teams constantly being asked to do more with less, setting and meeting your marketing goals helps justify the budgetary allotment and makes the powers feel secure in their investment.

How to determine your marketing goals

It’s important to remember that marketing goals do not always have to come back to revenue. Content marketing, in particular, is difficult to quantify, so you may have other objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) that will be your benchmarks for success. 

With that in mind, different initiatives will have different goals. A new product launch, for example, will have a different set of goals from your social media strategy.

Some common marketing goals include:

• Brand awareness
• Lead generation
• List-building
• Click-through
• Customer acquisition
• Positive corporate reputation
• Community development

These can be broken down even further. For example, “list-building” could mean having goals like increased numbers of:

• Email captures
• Mailing addresses
• Subscribers

Generally, the CMO and marketing directors set top-level goals, while the managers and coordinators are tasked with carrying out the tactical part. So, for example, if a CMO decides that a certain type of targeted SEO content is important to bring in potential users, the director and manager will work together to come up with a plan and then execute it through the work of the specialized strategists , various internal staffers, and managerial oversight.

How to determine if you hit your marketing goals

Today, more information is available at our fingertips than we’ll likely know what to do with! However, if you have your goals clearly established, you’ll know exactly what information you need to determine whether you’ve met, exceeded, or fallen short of those goals. 

Content marketing may be more difficult to quantify, but there are still some key metrics you can consider to measure your efforts against:

• Conversion rate. What percentage of visitors act on conversion actions like subscribing to your newsletter or buying your product? 
• Website traffic. Does your content drive traffic to your site? 
• Sales revenue . How does your content contribute to your sales funnel? Calculate the revenue generated from those content-driven conversions.
• Customer retention. Track customer loyalty, repeat purchases, and other retention metrics to determine your content’s impact on customer retention. 

Just make sure you’ve got the right tools for the trade, including:

• Content marketing software. Modern platforms like WordPress let you track user engagement, conversion metrics, and content performance.
• Marketing automation platforms. Most platforms you’ll use to automate your content marketing processes will have analytics features to track and measure lead generation, conversion rates, and user interactions.
• Web analytics. Don’t underestimate the power of Google! Its analytics function tracks and reports website traffic, providing valuable insights into user behavior and website performance (among others).

ClearVoice can help reach your marketing goals

At ClearVoice, we understand that each brand has different needs, resources, and goals to achieve. That’s why our custom content solutions are built around what YOU need. 

Have content gaps? We’ll fill them. Need to produce content at scale? We’ll get you there. Want better SEO and increased site traffic? That’s our bread and butter.

Content marketing is like going to the gym. You’re never “done.” You might hit your goals, but that just means you get to set new ones! If your content team is already stretched thin or you’re just getting started with content marketing, ClearVoice can create a custom content plan for your needs and resources so that you’ll never pay for content you don’t want or won’t use.

Let us help you reach those marketing goals to get back to what you do best: focusing on your brand and your customers. Talk to a content specialist today !

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Marketing Goal Essay

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Marketing , Company , Planning , Customers , Business , Services papers , Products , Market

Published: 02/23/2020

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Introduction

The Venetian Cruise like any other business will aim at maximizing profit returns and minimizing its costs. Based on this information and the mission statement of the business, we can come up with a marketing goal and objectives of the firm.

Marketing goals

The marketing goal s will include increasing the market share, improve product and service awareness and to increase the customer base or target market (Cohen, 1995). These goals will be the driving path for the business success.

Increase market share

This is achievable through ensuring that the business products are better than those of the competitors. The company must therefore study its competitors and produce products and services that are good in quality and have a better price, distribution channels, meet customer taste and preferences, advertising and having a specific customer target than that of their competitors.

Developing awareness

The Venetian Cruise should target at increasing awareness of its products and services. This would be through vigorous advertisement, public relation and also through promotions instead of reducing prices or using the distribution channels (Cohen, 1995). Since its main target is the tourist industry, it should target the frequent tourists by looking at the literature of the industry. This will increase the customer base and realize more profits.

Creating a brand

The business firm should target at proving to the consumers that it produces and offers the best products and services that are meant for their specific need and it offers the specific benefit for their need. In the various field the business targets to cover, it should therefore create such a brand that sells itself. The brand should establish itself as a convenient rather than an affordable service or product.

Creativity and innovativeness

The business firm aims are open to creativity and innovativeness. This will ensure its growth and realization of better products through the R&D department which helps in research, innovation and creativity in the production of products and service delivery (Cohen, 1995). This will incorporate embracing new technologies in order to provide better products.

How the marketing plan will create long-term growth.

New client base: The firm’s business plan can be used to project the long term business customer base. Once the business has met its initial customer target, it will have a chance to expand more by rewriting new objectives that will help it have a new target of the people who require the products (Lavinsky, 2012). This could include franchising so that the company can have a regional or global outlook. Research: the firm should carry out routinely research that will constantly help it in perfecting its products thus meeting its initial goals. The same will be continued and the research will provide other areas and fields or services and products that the firm can utilize and offer in the market thus expanding its service and product delivery (Lavinsky, 2012). The research will create new opportunities that will help the firm to grow and expand. Decreasing costs: from the business plan, the firm can project on how it will capitalize on decreasing costs of production. These are achievable by utilizing the economies of scale and taking advantages of learning curves. Learning curves helps the firm to be more efficient in the long-run due to 5he experience obtained in its participation in the market and its field of specification. The economies of scale on the other hand are the cost reductions that are realized from factors such as the buying power of the firm and managerial specialization. Online strategy and acquisition: with increased business growth and the wish to reach more consumer base, it would be necessary for the firm to use the internet in marketing and advertising about the services it offers. This will create global consumer awareness (Lavinsky, 2012). The firm may also address the growth through acquisition where it can collaborate with other businesses and thus expand to other markets. For example it can cooperate with the hotel industry to offer some of its services under the hotel or restaurant umbrella.

Cohen, W. A. (1995). The marketing plan. New York: Wiley. Lavinsky, D. (2012). Start at the End: How Companies Can Grow Bigger and Faster by Reversing Their Business Plan. New York: Wiley.

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Research in marketing strategy

• Review Paper
• Published: 18 August 2018
• Volume 47 , pages 4–29, ( 2019 )

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• Neil A. Morgan 1 ,
• Kimberly A. Whitler 2 ,
• Hui Feng 3 &
• Simos Chari 4  

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Marketing strategy is a construct that lies at the conceptual heart of the field of strategic marketing and is central to the practice of marketing. It is also the area within which many of the most pressing current challenges identified by marketers and CMOs arise. We develop a new conceptualization of the domain and sub-domains of marketing strategy and use this lens to assess the current state of marketing strategy research by examining the papers in the six most influential marketing journals over the period 1999 through 2017. We uncover important challenges to marketing strategy research—not least the increasingly limited number and focus of studies, and the declining use of both theory and primary research designs. However, we also uncover numerous opportunities for developing important and highly relevant new marketing strategy knowledge—the number and importance of unanswered marketing strategy questions and opportunities to impact practice has arguably never been greater. To guide such research, we develop a new research agenda that provides opportunities for researchers to develop new theory, establish clear relevance, and contribute to improving practice.

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We follow Varadarjan’s (2010) distinction, using “strategic marketing” as the term describing the general field of study and “marketing strategy” as the construct that is central in the field of strategic marketing—just as analogically “strategic management” is a field of study in which “corporate strategy” is a central construct.

Following the strategic management literature (e.g., Mintzberg 1994 ; Pascale 1984 ), marketing strategy has also been viewed from an “emergent” strategy perspective (e.g. Hutt et al. 1988 ; Menon et al. 1999 ). Conceptually this is captured as realized (but not pre-planned) tactics and actions in Figure 1 .

These may be at the product/brand, SBU, or firm level.

These strategic marketing but “non-strategy” coding areas are not mutually exclusive. For example, many papers in this non-strategy category cover both inputs/outputs and environment (e.g., Kumar et al. 2016 ; Lee et al. 2014 ; Palmatier et al. 2013 ; Zhou et al. 2005 ), or specific tactics, input/output, and environment (e.g., Bharadwaj et al. 2011 ; Palmatier et al. 2007 ; Rubera and Kirca 2012 ).

The relative drop in marketing strategy studies published in JM may be a function of the recent growth of interest in the shareholder perspective (Katsikeas et al. 2016 ) and studies linking marketing-related resources and capabilities directly with stock market performance indicators. Such studies typically treat marketing strategy as an unobserved intervening construct.

Since this concerns integrated marketing program design and execution, marketing mix studies contribute to knowledge of strategy implementation–content when all four major marketing program areas are either directly modeled or are controlled for in studies focusing on one or more specific marketing program components.

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Morgan, N.A., Whitler, K.A., Feng, H. et al. Research in marketing strategy. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 47 , 4–29 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-018-0598-1

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Received : 14 January 2018

Accepted : 20 July 2018

Published : 18 August 2018

Issue Date : 15 January 2019

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-018-0598-1

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What is Marketing, and What's Its Purpose?

Updated: January 24, 2022

Published: February 25, 2021

Dictionary.com defines marketing as, "the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising."

If you work in a marketing role like I do, it's probably difficult for you to define marketing even though you see and use it every day -- the term marketing is a bit all-encompassing and variable for a straightforward definition.

This definition feels unhelpful.

The selling part, for instance, overlaps a little too snuggly with a "what is sales" definition, and the word advertising makes me think of Mad Men brainstorming sessions.

But upon digging deeper, I began seeing that actually, marketing does overlap heavily with advertising and sales. Marketing is present in all stages of the business, beginning to end.

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What is marketing?

Marketing refers to any actions a company takes to attract an audience to the company's product or services through high-quality messaging. Marketing aims to deliver standalone value for prospects and consumers through content, with the long-term goal of demonstrating product value, strengthening brand loyalty, and ultimately increasing sales.

At first, I wondered why marketing was a necessary component during product development, or a sales pitch, or retail distribution. But it makes sense when you think about it -- marketers have the firmest finger on the pulse of your consumer persona.

The purpose of marketing is to research and analyze your consumers all the time, conduct focus groups, send out surveys, study online shopping habits, and ask one underlying question: "Where, when, and how does our consumer want to communicate with our business?"

Here, let's explore the purposes of marketing, along with types of marketing, the 4 P's of marketing, and the difference between marketing and advertising.

Whether you're a seasoned marketer looking to refresh your definitions, or a beginner looking to understand what marketing is in the first place, we've got you covered. Let's dive in. 

Purpose of Marketing

Marketing is the process of getting people interested in your company's product or service. This happens through market research, analysis, and understanding your ideal customer's interests. Marketing pertains to all aspects of a business, including product development, distribution methods, sales, and advertising.

Modern marketing began in the 1950s when people started to use more than just print media to endorse a product. As TV -- and soon, the internet -- entered households, marketers could conduct entire campaigns across multiple platforms. And as you might expect, over the last 70 years, marketers have become increasingly important to fine-tuning how a business sells a product to consumers to optimize success.

In fact, the fundamental purpose of marketing is to attract consumers to your brand through messaging. Ideally, that messaging will helpful and educational to your target audience so you can convert consumers into leads.

Today, there are literally dozens of places one can carry out a marketing campaign -- where does one do it in the 21st century?

Types of Marketing

Where your marketing campaigns live depends entirely on where your customers spend their time. It's up to you to conduct market research that determines which types of marketing -- and which mix of tools within each type -- is best for building your brand. Here are several types of marketing that are relevant today, some of which have stood the test of time:

• Internet marketing: Inspired by an Excedrin product campaign that took place online, the very idea of having a presence on the internet for business reasons is a type of marketing in and of itself.
• Search engine optimization: Abbreviated "SEO," this is the process of optimizing content on a website so that it appears in search engine results. It's used by marketers to attract people who perform searches that imply they're interested in learning about a particular industry.
• Blog marketing: Blogs are no longer exclusive to the individual writer. Brands now publish blogs to write about their industry and nurture the interest of potential customers who browse the internet for information.
• Social media marketing: Businesses can use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and similar social networks to create impressions on their audience over time.
• Print marketing: As newspapers and magazines get better at understanding who subscribes to their print material, businesses continue to sponsor articles, photography, and similar content in the publications their customers are reading.
• Search engine marketing: This type of marketing is a bit different than SEO, which is described above. Businesses can now pay a search engine to place links on pages of its index that get high exposure to their audience. (It's a concept called "pay-per-click" -- I'll show you an example of this in the next section).
• Video marketing: While there were once just commercials, marketers now put money into creating and publishing all kinds of videos that entertain and educate their core customers.

Marketing and Advertising

If marketing is a wheel, advertising is one spoke of that wheel.

Marketing entails product development, market research, product distribution, sales strategy, public relations, and customer support. Marketing is necessary in all stages of a business's selling journey, and it can use numerous platforms, social media channels, and teams within their organization to identify their audience, communicate to it, amplify its voice, and build brand loyalty over time.

On the other hand, advertising is just one component of marketing. It's a strategic effort, usually paid for, to spread awareness of a product or service as a part of the more holistic goals outlined above. Put simply, it's not the only method used by marketers to sell a product.

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Here's an example (keep reading, there's a quiz at the end of it):

Let's say a business is rolling out a brand new product and wants to create a campaign promoting that product to its customer base. This company's channels of choice are Facebook, Instagram, Google, and its company website. It uses all of these spaces to support its various campaigns every quarter and generate leads through those campaigns.

To broadcast its new product launch, it publishes a downloadable product guide to its website, posts a video to Instagram demonstrating its new product, and invests in a series of sponsored search results on Google directing traffic to a new product page on its website.

Now, which of the above decisions were marketing, and which were advertising?

The advertising took place on Instagram and Google . Instagram generally isn't an advertising channel, but when used for branding, you can develop a base of followers that's primed for a gentle product announcement every now and again. Google was definitely used for advertising in this example; the company paid for space on Google -- a program known as pay-per-click (PPC) -- on which to drive traffic to a specific page focused on its product. A classic online ad.

Where did the marketing take place? This was a bit of a trick question, as the marketing was the entire process . By aligning Instagram, Google, and its own website around a customer-focused initiative, the company ran a three-part marketing campaign that identified its audience, created a message for that audience, and delivered it across the industry to maximize its impact.

The 4 Ps of Marketing

In the 1960's, E Jerome McCarthy came up with the 4 Ps of marketing: product, price, place, promotion.

Essentially, these 4 Ps explain how marketing interacts with each stage of the business.

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Let's say you come up with an idea for a product you want your business to sell. What's next? You probably won't be successful if you just start selling it.

Instead, you need your marketing team to do market research and answer some critical questions: Who's your target audience? Is there market fit for this product? What messaging will increase product sales, and on which platforms? How should your product developers modify the product to increase likelihood of success? What do focus groups think of the product, and what questions or hesitations do they have?

Marketers use the answers to these questions to help businesses understand the demand for the product and increase product quality by mentioning concerns stemming from focus group or survey participants.

Your marketing team will check out competitors' product prices, or use focus groups and surveys, to estimate how much your ideal customer is willing to pay. Price it too high, and you'll lose out on a solid customer base. Price it too low, and you might lose more money than you gain. Fortunately, marketers can use industry research and consumer analysis to gauge a good price range.

It's critical that your marketing department uses their understanding and analysis of your business's consumers to offer suggestions for how and where to sell your product. Perhaps they believe an ecommerce site works better than a retail location, or vice versa. Or, maybe they can offer insights into which locations would be most viable to sell your product, either nationally and internationally.

This P is likely the one you expected from the get-go: promotion entails any online or print advertisement, event, or discount your marketing team creates to increase awareness and interest in your product, and, ultimately, lead to more sales. During this stage, you'll likely see methods like public relations campaigns, advertisements, or social media promotions.

Hopefully, our definition and the four Ps help you understand marketing's purpose and how to define it. Marketing intersects with all areas of a business, so it's important you understand how to use marketing to increase your business's efficiency and success.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in May 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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