Do you know your marketing objectives?
Become a pro at understanding marketing objectives to make more informed decisions for your business.
Having a well-thought marketing strategy is vital for any business. Technology has dramatically changed the marketing landscape. It can sometimes be hard to discern where to focus your attention and funds with new avenues emerging. Understanding your marketing strategy starts with understanding your objective. Setting realistic expectations and goals will also help you measure how you are doing.
Of course most businesses’ end goal is to make more sales; however, with digital marketing it’s important to understand that customers come through a marketing funnel. Customers are more likely to take an action and eventually make a purchase if they already know who you are. This is why it’s so important to be objective when qualifying your potential customers so you can decide on the best strategy for each group. All Things Hospitality can help you build out your marketing strategy.
Marketing Objectives: Brand Awareness
You’ve probably heard all about brand awareness, but do you know why it’s so important? Brand awareness is at the very top of the marketing funnel. Without brand awareness it would be difficult to ever convert a customer as they don’t yet know your brand. Brand awareness campaigns can be aspirational and educational and their purpose is to let people know about your brand.
Brand awareness campaigns are a great way to test your theories on who you think your product is for. For example, if you have a trendy hotel with appealing lifestyle amenities, you may think it would appeal to millennials looking to travel to your city. You can run a Google Ad campaign with the objective of generating awareness and see how it performs with that group. You can also cater the ad content to that kind of viewer and even test different creative with a slightly different demographic.
Brand Awareness Tools
One common mistake many businesses make when engaging in digital media advertising is assuming that social media is a conversion tool. This seems to become more common as some businesses have unique success stories after using TikTok to scale their businesses. Contrary to some belief, social media is a brand awareness tool used to generate awareness and interest in your brand. Most marketers can expect to eventually convert social media users after continually providing them with valuable content. The idea is that you allow a potential customer to build trust and a relationship with your brand. When they’re ready to purchase, you are top of mind. Influencer marketing can fall under this category as well.
Brand awareness is vital for any business, but if your budget is slim, I always recommend starting with Google Ads first as they are the most affordable tool for getting your messaging out there effectively.
Marketing Objectives: Influence Decision
The second objective down the marketing funnel is influencing decision. As your customer moves down the marketing funnel, at this point you know they are interested in the product you are selling, but now it’s your job to educate the customer on why your product will be a better option than your competitors.
Google has valuable data that can help you target users who are in-market for certain services or products. You can target as straight forward as targeting the exact product you are selling or you can use an in-market target to create a unique group that you know may need your product. For example, if you’re selling a book for college age students, you may target parents in-market for SAT Tutors as the two are related interests.
Although social media is typically a brand awareness strategy, social media content can encourage influencing decision in its nature. Content that directly compares your product and a competitor can be a way to influence a potential customer’s decision making. Content that educates on why your product is different than what’s out there is also another great tactic to influence the customer’s decision making.
Marketing Objective: Conversions
Finally, your customer will arrive at the point where they may make a purchase. If you’ve already laid the groundwork of building a relationship with your potential customer, converting your passive viewer to a paying customer will be easier. Google Ads are a more affordable way to engage in a conversion marketing campaign.
With platforms like Google Ads or Meta’s advertising platform, it’s easy to quantify how much each sale is costing you in ad dollars. As long as you are able to set up simple code on your website, you can see a cost per conversion each month that can inform future marketing decisions. For example, if you are selling a t-shirt for $25 and you know it costs $5.25 in ads for each shirt to sell, you can build that expense into your business plan and invest more in ads knowing that you are coming up with an ROI.
Conversion Tools
Influencer marketing and social media are notorious for being opaque when it comes to measuring conversion results. However, it’s not impossible. Using UTM links, it’s possible to see how many customers click through to your desired URL from a social campaign. It’s also important to account for the limitations that each social platform poses.
For example, Instagram posts do not get their own URL’s. So, you have rely on the customer to visit your story or bio to click through. The less actions, the more effective the campaign usually. So, I always recommend using social media marketing in conjunction with paid ads. For example, you can always retarget people who have previously engaged with your content using Instagram ads. This way you know they know who you are and they’ve already engaged with your content. So, the are far more likely to click through when delivered a sponsored ad.
To summarize, having a better idea of your marketing objectives will help strengthen your efforts. We’ll return with a deeper dive on each objective. We will include how you can optimize them for each ad platform soon.
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