Top Marketing Tips: Setting Your Objectives

Establishing a set of marketing objectives can help your company to focus its future marketing activities and achieve greater success along the line – simply stating ‘I want to market my company’ isn’t specific enough. 21^st century marketing is an extremely varied practice, and with so many outlets to explore, achieving success or failure can hinge on how rigorously you adhere to your objectives.

So, what might you want to achieve with your marketing activities, and how can you realise those ambitions?

‘I want to: increase brand awareness’

If you’re a new brand looking to create a buzz about your products and services, or even an established brand with the intention of broadening your appeal, there are numerous marketing techniques you could employ.

In this instance, you may find that traditional local advertising is more successful than online marketing, as a more passive kind of exposure could benefit a business lacking a pre-established name and reputation amongst certain audiences.

Thinking about audience, the position of your brand and the objectives you wish to achieve will help to clarify the marketing techniques you ought to employ. If you’re a local Leeds company only able to service your more immediate audience, there’s no sense in gunning for placement in national papers at the very start, for example.

‘I want to: sell a new product’

If your brand has a new product that needs marketing, your approach is likely to be considerably different to that you might take if you were a fledgling company looking to drum up brand awareness.

A brand in a position to launch a new product will probably have an existing client base, and the aim of marketing this product could initially be to reach those existing clients rather than to necessarily communicate with a host of new ones.

There’s no point exploring a new market until you’ve made the most of your current client base, who could also provide vital feedback if you have good relationships with them. If this is the case, you might find that online and social media marketing will be a more effective means of communicating with an existing audience than any other method. Remember: marketing is about more than simply advertising.

‘I want to: reach a new market’

Some growing businesses will wish to take their products or services to a new market – be it a foreign country or different domestic demographic. If you decide that your objectives involve communicating with an entirely new audience, your marketing activities will need to vary depending on whom you’re targeting. Certain techniques and channels will work well in one territory but bomb in another, and the same is true with age, social, ethnic and economic groups. Defining your marketing objectives will allow you to hone in on the most effective marketing strategies to undertake.