Why do we need to set goal in digital marketing?

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Purpose of the objective phase

The objective phase sits at the heart of the process of creating a digital strategy. Setting clear objectives for your digital marketing activity should be the starting point to build an appropriate digital strategy.

Objective setting activities

These objectives should be business objectives that can be realized through digital marketing, for example, increase e-commerce sales, drive more leads, build audience engagement with your brand. The objective phase should be focused clearly on beginning with your key success outcome and then identifying your KPIs. Once you have achieved this, then you can begin designing the strategy that is measurable and clear.

The biggest challenge for digital is that there is so much that you can do. Being clear and concise is crucial. You have got to make use of all your resources in an efficient manner; know where your money is best spent and try to minimize budget waste.

Some key objectives throughout a digital marketing strategy are:

• Conversion/sales: That is commercial success.
• Consideration: That is evaluating if the product or brand meets your needs.
• Awareness: This is about audience reach
• Retention: This enables you to establish customer engagement.

Digital can help deliver on any of these goals and it’s important to establish what is your priority to help choose channels and measure success.

Business performance is an important expectation because it is often misguided in solely looking at direct sales. Outside of just focusing on sales, it is important to understand success can also be measured in leads and engagement. It's important to know what metrics or KPIs are most suited to measuring the success of your overall strategy as well as its different channels that make up the strategy.

For example:

• PPC and SEO, when used as conversion channels, can be measured in sales or leads delivered
• Email and Mobile Apps when used as customer retention channels can be measured in customer retention, repeat use, engagement, leads and sales
• Display and Social media when used as awareness channels can be measured in reach and engagement
• When you understand what the measurement and goal of a channel is, you can use diagnostic metrics to evaluate success even further. Some examples of metrics used to diagnose success include:
• CPA and CPL for conversion channels
• Sentiment and Awareness for customer engagement channels
• New versus returning users and increased sales or conversions for customer retention channels

SMART goals

Objectives are the resulting outcome of a number of KPIs combined to create an outcome that is used as a marker of success. Firstly, you should create a rough list of all the possible success outcomes that are relevant to your brand. Then, using the SMART goal system, you should stress-test your objectives.

As a quick reminder, SMART goals are:

• Specific: Is the goal clear and singular. Try to avoid multiple results and being vague, for example, “we want more site traffic and positive sentiment”.
• Measurable: How are you collecting and generating data from your activity?
• Achievable: Is the goal feasible given the circumstances and the resources available to you? Can you do it?
• Realistic: Is this a goal that is realistic for the business?
• Timely: Can you achieve results within your given time period?

SMART goals are important for your organization as they are the success outcomes on which your performance on digital channels will be measured.

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Jessica Preddy

Jessica is a consultant with experience in marketing and an in-depth knowledge of the latest marketing techniques. Her previous roles have included working in a marketing agency and numerous customer-service-facing positions that have given her exposure to a wide range of customers and clients.

How to set digital marketing goals and objectives

It is worth noting that the digital marketing goals and objectives mentioned above should only act as broader aims. It is also important that your teams set SMART marketing goals. That is to say that all digital marketing goals and objectives should be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant 
• Time-bound

Let’s take the example of generating more leads as one of your digital marketing goals and objectives. Below, we’ll detail some of the elements you might want to consider before starting the campaign for SMART goal-setting.

• Specific: What are the audiences or personas that we are targeting to gain these new leads? Which channels will we use to reach them?
• Measurable: How many leads should we aim to get in total from the campaign? What will be the exact KPIs that we track for this campaign or set of campaigns?
• Attainable: What is the percentage we will need to increase our leads by and is that realistic to achieve? What has been our performance over previous quarters?
• Relevant: How can we appeal to the pain points of this audience and how does our product or service seek to solve them? Can we offer them very specific benefits?
• Time-bound: How long will this campaign run for? When would we like to measure how successful our digital marketing goals and objectives have been?

Depending on your specific digital marketing goals and objectives, you may want to think about taking steps such as:

• Researching keywords and creating keywords for which you’d like to rank
• Building landing pages that provide information and enable potential customers to register their interest
• Better understanding the customer experience or journey — what is the best channel to reach your customers? What are their top concerns when considering purchasing?

Lastly, don’t be afraid to experiment with the channels and messaging you use to reach your potential new customers. Use your digital marketing goals and objectives to find what works.

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