Today, it’s pretty hard to launch a business idea that hasn’t been done before. Once upon a time, chicken rentals were a unique business idea. Now, I can Google “rent-a-chicken” and find a handful of options near me. (It’s true.) 

No matter what you’re selling, it’s becoming harder and harder for products and services to stand on their own two feet and hit those business goals. That’s where marketing goals come in. 

Marketing is the bridge to many of your business goals. Once you’ve built this bridge, you’re well on your way to hitting your targets.

So let’s start building that bridge today. As part of our Digital Marketing Series, we’re providing an in-depth guide on three marketing goals that can help you reach your business goals. You’ll know just what to do to see results go up and to the right. 

First, Let’s Set the Stage

To me, examples always make things easier to understand. So picture this: A friend of a friend of mine just launched an eco-friendly food delivery service. Let’s call him Reuben. (Yes, like the sandwich.) Reuben knows there are already big players in the game. (GrubHub, Uber Eats, DoorDash, the list goes on.) But he’s confident he can still set his brand apart from the rest—with a solid plan in place. 

Source: Forbes

First, he sat down and wrote out his business goals—a list of outcomes he wanted his company to achieve:

• Grow audience
• Grow brand
• Drive sales & repeat customers
• Increase market share
• Expand into new markets
• Increase ROI & reduce costs
• Increase customer engagement 
• Build trust and credibility

Then, he wrote down a list of marketing goals—and narrowed them down based on their impact on his business priorities. If any of the above business goals are yours as well, read on. Here are the three impactful marketing goals he came up with: 

1. Increase Brand Awareness

As you already know, many successful food delivery services already exist in the market. To stand out and be successful, Reuben knew he had to increase brand awareness. 

Brand awareness is a general term that describes how familiar or aware consumers are with a brand, product, or service. Put simply, it’s the measurement of how memorable or recognizable a brand is to its target audience. 

While it’s connected to other top-of-funnel marketing goals, like brand visibility and recognition, this marketing goal focuses on building a deeper level of connection with your audience. You want them to know who you are—and more importantly, what makes your company different from and better than your competitors. In the case of Reuben’s food delivery service, its brand awareness goal is to position itself as an eco-friendly alternative.

Having a strong social media marketing strategy is very important for increasing brand awareness. With millions of users on social platforms every day, they’re the perfect channels to boost your brand’s story.  

Source: Convince and Convert

How does brand awareness relate to your business goals?

If your target audience can recognize your company and differentiate it from others, you’re on your way to growing your brand. Once they start choosing your brand over your competitors, you’ll drive sales and increase your market share. 

How do you start?

Increasing brand awareness starts with understanding your audience. You need to know who you’re serving, what their needs are, what their pain points are, and how you can reach them. To build this knowledge, Reuben did two things:

1. Create a buyer persona: A buyer persona defines who is buying your product or service. For example, Reuben’s food delivery service targets adult professionals who live in urban areas, work long hours, want fast and convenient food options, but are environmentally conscious. 

2. Conduct a competitive analysis: Researching your competitors helps you understand how to reach your customers and what you can do to differentiate your product or service. After conducting a competitive analysis, Reuben uncovered which social media platforms are best for engaging their audience and nailed down their unique value proposition: eco-friendly packaging and delivery. 

Marketing metrics you should follow

How do you know if you’re building brand awareness? Keep an eye on these top-of-funnel marketing metrics. If they’re increasing, your brand is growing: 

• Social likes, follows, mentions, and shares 
• Engagement with your organic content and ads
• Subscriptions to your email list 

2. Become a Thought Leader

Thought leadership is a content marketing tactic used to build credibility and trust with your audience. You want to be the go-to resource in your industry for any related topic. What’s the endgame? When your audience trusts your information, they’ll trust your company and what it’s selling.

Source: Marketing Insider Group

You may be wondering: How will Reuben become a thought leader in the food delivery industry? You can become a thought leader in any industry! You just need to create forward-thinking, insightful content. 

What does thought leadership content look like? Often, you’ll find them in the form of blogs. These posts should offer valuable information related to your field—it shouldn’t be a sales pitch or ask for anything in return. 

To help you find your angle, think about your company mission and ways that you’re innovating the market. Your thought leadership content should support that story. For example, Reuben’s food delivery service is merging two once-separate worlds: You can order takeout, and the environment doesn’t have to suffer. With this message as his guiding star, he can create content that supports it.

How does thought leadership relate to your business goals?

Thought leadership is one of the most underrated marketing goals—it helps you across the entire customer lifecycle. How?

When you position yourself as a thought leader, you gain more exposure, engage your audience better, differentiate yourself from other brands, and build a community of advocates.

It’s this sort of advocacy that will help you grow your audience, expand into new markets, and ultimately drive sales and repeat customers. 

How do you start?

To be a thought leader, you constantly need to be ahead of the curve—not only with your ideas but how to inspire and motivate others. To tackle this marketing goal, Reuben explored three strategies: 

1. Partnering with influencers: Find other public figures who believe in the same ideas you do—and use their platform to shout these ideas from the rooftops. 

2. Guest posting: Like influencer marketing, identify high-traffic blogs that align with your mission and write a blog for their audience. 

3. Find ways to engage: Thought leadership isn’t a monologue. Look for ways to engage with your audience on these topics—like starting threads on community forums and social media. 

Marketing metrics you should follow

Thought leadership doesn’t happen overnight. But if you see these marketing metrics increasing, then you’re moving in the right direction: 

• Web traffic (unique page views)
• Referral traffic 
• Blog subscribers 
• Social mentions
• Backlinks 

3. Evaluate Your Marketing Funnel

Optimize your marketing funnel. You’ve probably read this once or twice before and wondered: Hold on, what’s a marketing funnel? And more importantly, how does it connect to my business goals? 

The marketing funnel is a visual depiction of the buyer’s journey—from the initial stages when someone learns about your business to becoming a loyal customer.

Source: Clatter Chatter

When you evaluate your marketing funnel, you can pinpoint when and where your target audience drops off the buyer journey. Suppose you see low engagement rates with your social media campaigns but excellent performance at checkout. In that case, you may want to focus on strengthening your top-of-funnel campaigns. 

How does the marketing funnel relate to your business goals?

Through a careful analysis of your marketing funnel, you’ll learn what stages of the buyer’s journey need to be improved to meet your business goals.

Optimizing the top of the funnel will help you grow your audience and brand. It could also help you expand into new markets. 

Refining your middle-funnel campaigns would improve customer engagement and build trust with your audience. 

If you focus on the bottom of the funnel, you can expect to see better sales, more loyal customers, and increased ROI. There are also opportunities to reduce business costs. 

How do you start?

To know what part of the marketing funnel needs some extra TLC, you need to evaluate it first—and that boils down to data tracking. 

As a startup, Reuben’s eco-friendly food delivery service will launch all sorts of campaigns—from top-of-funnel social media posts to bottom-funnel paid ads—to accumulate data. If you’re a new business, you should do the same.

Let the campaigns run for a few months, then look at all the campaigns’ performances and ask yourself these questions: Which campaigns are performing well? Which aren’t? Where do they sit in the funnel? 

If you’re looking for data tracking tools, here are some top-rated platforms: 

• For top-of-funnel social media marketing: Sprout Social, Hubspot, and Buffer
• For mid-funnel email marketing: Hubspot and MailChimp
• For bottom-funnel web and landing campaigns: Google Analytics, Crazy Egg, Google Optimize

Google Analytics is a favorite among marketers. Watch this video to learn more: 

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Marketing metrics you should follow

For this marketing goal, the metrics you need to monitor will vary. Here’s a breakdown of common marketing metrics for each stage of the funnel: 

• Top of the funnel: social engagement; social reach; brand lift; website traffic; leads; bounce rate
• Middle of the funnel: blog, email, and webinar subscribers; website traffic; time on page; survey engagement
• Bottom of the funnel: number of conversions (sales and signups); cost per conversion and customer acquisition; customer lifetime value 

To Meet your Business Goals, You Need Marketing Goals

As a business owner, you have business goals—lots of them. If they’re feeling out of reach, you may need to build a bridge to get there, which is why we introduced these marketing goals to you. 

As you can see, these three goals are linked to many different business goals. That means you can hit many of your targets with one stone! 

You don’t need the most unique business idea to be successful. No matter what you’re selling—from chicken rentals to eco-friendly food delivery—if you set your marketing goals intentionally, the rest will follow. 

Want a team of experts by your side? Reach out to the Galactic Fed team. Let’s conquer those marketing goals together!