At CPV, we’re all about goals. In fact, we think it’s the singular most important thing you’ll ever talk about in relation to your marketing. Goals can be a lot of different things, but we find that they generally fall into five categories. Not every project will have a goal in each category, but you’ll often utilize two or three. We find it helpful when working with clients to use this list as a starting point for helping them think about and develop marketing goals.

1. Brand Development – These can be the lofty goals that set you apart from your competition. You may develop goals that focus on where you want to take your brand – to be known as the biggest, best or only. These goals can also be less lofty, but no less crucial. For instance, perhaps your website experience does not match your desired overall brand experience. So, your website redesign goal could be to make those two experiences comparable. 

2. Lead Generation – If you are in a sales-driven organization, you may be asked to set lead generation goals in support of your sales team. With a little data and some math, these goals can be easy to identify and set, but don’t forget to think beyond the quantity of leads you are generating. Instead, start thinking about the quality of your leads. (Your sales team will thank you.)

3. Revenue – Revenue goals are often the most difficult for marketers to measure. Unfortunately, they also happen to be the goals that leadership asks marketers to prove. If you are actively using a CRM system that connects to sales, then these goals will probably be easy to identify. For the rest of the world, get creative when thinking about how to connect revenue to marketing, or look at other financial indicators, such as Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) or your Marketing Percentage of CAC.

4. Cost Savings – We find very few projects come through our doors with the primary goal of saving money; however, we also find that many projects can help reduce cost in some way. While working to improve the online experience of MyBMW, we were able to not only bring the website up to par with the BMW brand experience, but also drive signups for BMW’s paperless invoicing and, as a result, reduce the cost of mailing monthly invoices.

5. Customer Support – Customer support and cost savings can often work hand-in-hand. In addition to helping BMW increase signups for its paperless invoicing, we also increased usage of its automatic monthly payments. Now customers don’t have to login to pay their bill each month – and BMW does not need to mail invoices.

Look for the next post in our series Let’s Talk Marketing Goals.