First off, we must define what a marketing plan is and the purpose of the plan. A marketing plan is a written document that details the necessary actions to achieve one or more marketing objectives. It can be created to expand on an organization’s manifest. Marketing plans usually cover between one and five years. A marketing plan may be part of an organization’s overhead plan.
Within a marketing plan, organizations will highlight key marketing objectives that must be achieved in order to capture a larger customer group, satisfy customer needs, and identify opportunities to spread brand awareness or reinforce its reputation. A campaign objective is a defined goal that acts as a subordinate to a marketing initiative and provides direction to the team so that they can reach their marketing objectives.
Marketing Objectives
Campaign Objectives
In essence, marketing objectives focus on broader achievements and act as a guide to achieve organizational success by outlining a plan for their achievement, a budget to support the plan, and the management of assets and resources to achieve the objectives. Campaign objectives are more granular and focus on the short term or the duration of the marketing campaign that will contribute to the success of its marketing objectives.
So how does an organization set desirable but achievable objectives for its marketing campaigns?
You may have heard of the SMART principle for setting objectives. It stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. Let’s explain what it means, along with some variations and considerations.
Create a goal that has a focused and clear path for what you actually need to do.
The key to setting any objective is to make it exact, clear, and specific. Being specific gives you direction. You will know your objective is specific enough if:
Examples:
Is it measurable?
Ensure that you know when the objective has been achieved, and how they are going to track progress. This enables you to track your progress, and ties in with the “specific” component.
Good questions to use are “How will it keep me updated?”, and “What will success look like/feel like/sound like?”
Examples:
Is this within your current capabilities and operating process?
Make sure that your goal is within your capabilities and not too far out of reach. For example, if you have not been physically active for a number of years, it would be highly unlikely that you would be able to achieve a goal of running a marathon within the next month.
Highly Unattainable Goals:
Can this be achieved with your current resources?
Try to ensure that your goal is something you will be able to continue doing and incorporate as part of your regular routine/lifestyle. For example, if you made a goal to kayak two times each week, but don’t have the financial resources to purchase or rent the equipment, no way to transport it, or are not close enough to a body of water in which to partake in kayaking, then this is not going to be feasible.
Is there a time limit for your objectives so that opportunities are not wasted?
Give yourself a target date or deadline in which the goal needs to be met. This will keep you on track and motivated to reach the goal, while also evaluating your progress.
Examples:
To summarize, a useful methodology when setting successful objectives is to make them S.M.A.R.T (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound). These S.M.A.R.T objectives should be aligned with the organization’s values and overall goals. When objectives are S.M.A.R.T, it’ll set your organization up for success by providing direction, organization, and ensuring the business is always adapting to market changes.
Attribution
This page contains material taken from:
Effective Marketer. (2010, November 29). Marketing by Objectives. Retrieved from The Effective Marketer: https://effective-marketer.com/tag/marketing-plan/
Lumen Learning. (n.d.). Behavior Change and Goal Setting. Retrieved May 28, 2020, from Lumen Learning: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-monroecc-hed110/chapter/three-levels-of-health-promotiondisease-prevention/
Resourcily. (n.d.). How to set SMART Objectives. Retrieved May 28, 2020, from Resourcily: https://www.resourcily.com/resources/performance-management/how-to-set-smart-objectives
Wikibooks. (n.d.). Business Strategy/Marketing Plans and Strategies. Retrieved May 28, 2020, from Wikibooks: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Business_Strategy/Marketing_Plans_and_Strategies
An Open Guide to Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) Copyright © 2023 by Andrea Niosi and KPU Marketing 4201 Class of Summer 2020 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.