Most people agree that goal setting is important for their business, but are you confident that you are setting the right goals for your business? If you set the wrong goals, it can end up with the right answer to the wrong question. But the right goal ensures that you move in the right direction from the current situation to the desired situation and is a guideline for the entire organization.
How to set the right goals?
Everyone wants a good effect from their advertising investment. Therefore, it is surprising that very many organizations do not have clear goals for their marketing. Very often we become too preoccupied with the tactical, ie how the individual message works in the individual media channel or towards a simple target group without the ability and see everything in context. At least once a year, we must look to set goals for how our brand will develop in the coming year. This is an essential part of the strategy work and can be divided into three categories.
- Business goals
- Behavioral goals
- Communication goals
Feel free to look at these goals as a pyramid where the business goals are the holy grail that all parts of the organization work towards and which form the top of the pyramid. Your role as a marketer is to set the right behavioral goals and communication goals to support the business goals.
Business goals are normally linked to business goals and most common are increased profitability or increased market share (increase top line and bottom line). These goals are often defined by top management and your job as a marketer is to break them down to goals the marketing department can work towards achieving.
Behavioral goals should help you achieve your business' business goals. It is a measure of the marketing communication's ability to get the target group to perform desired actions. Increasing the proportion of the target group who have purchased the product or service, increased willingness to pay or the number of visits to the store or website can be good behavioral goals.
In order to achieve the behavioral goals, we are dependent on setting the right communication goals. The communication goals function as a means of achieving the set behavioral goals. The most commonly used communication goals are the target group's knowledge (top of mind, unaided knowledge, helped knowledge), knowledge, attitudes or what associations consumers have with our brand.
Once the goals have been set, this will serve as a guideline for all campaigns we will run throughout the year. Although the idea for a campaign is fantastically good, you should go at least one extra round if it does not support the goals that have been set. If you think this is a demanding landscape then fear not. There is a lot of good literature here that can help you along the way and in Schibsted this is something we discuss daily and do it with you. Look up, set long-term goals and work every day to get one step closer.