Increase Your Marketing Success With Business Goals
Before you get into marketing your business, you need to identify its business goals. Although we take for granted that a business’s goal is to increase revenue, that’s not the end of the story. There are many other types of goals companies strive to achieve. We create a strategic plan as well as a marketing plan. The marketing plan is based on the goals of the business. If we market a service that is not part of our business strategy, then what is the point? The business plan, strategic plan and marketing plan all need to be in alignment.
Product Creation
Some businesses are driven by the desire to offer excellent products that make life easier for all of us. Your business goal may be to create the most innovative products on the market. This is a wonderful goal because products are at the heart of any business’s success. As you develop new products or services, you also want to create a marketing strategy that works with them. A marketing plan is a constantly evolving document to accommodate the changes that occur within the business.
Customer Service
Your business’s goal may be to serve your customers and help them solve their problems. It may also be to lend help to the community or to strengthen the community of your customers. This is also an excellent choice because good customer service leads to more sales.
Customer Retention
Your goal may be to not only gain new customers and increase revenue, but to keep the customers you have. Businesses do this by creating a community for their customers and by remaining open to their feedback in order to improve their products or services.
Growth and Expansion
Maybe your business’s goal is to grow and expand, eventually moving into new markets and new enterprises. If this is the case, conducting market research to find new areas would be a major part of your overall strategy.
I find that the Internet is often a place that many businesses can expand to. Most brick and mortar businesses do not think about creating revenue from the Internet. Yes, they think of new clients coming from the Internet or online advertising, but they don’t think about offering services directly on the Internet. There are many ways that this can be achieved depending upon the business.
Efficiency
A major goal for your company may be to tighten up your processes. This might include challenging your salespeople to reach an ever higher sales ratio or streamlining your shipping in order to reach your customers more quickly. One way that this can be achieved is with a goal but then regular accountability and engagement meetings. Many, many businesses fail to check in with people on goals consistently. When we use Best Year Yet™ with businesses, this monthly check-in is built in and what I see is an increase in productivity and follow-through on whatever the goal is.
Changing the World
Some companies have as part of their vision to enable social change. Your goal might be to make the world a better place through the use of your products and services. This is a goal for many companies that produce environmentally-friendly products or work to streamline their operations so that they’re more ecological. There are several different models for changing the world or having a social impact. Some businesses have a buy one/give one model, like Tom’s Shoes. Others make a donation to a cause for each purchase or a percent of profits. Others support mission trips.
Increasing revenue and profit isn’t the only goal of most businesses. Look at your business currently and ask yourself what other goals you have. This will help you as you plan your marketing.
