Before even deciding on your strategy (what you are going to do and how), it's important to know what you are trying to achieve (where do you want to be).

There's a basic principle to appreciate when you put in place marketing programmes: You can only really decide on objectives, and ensuing strategy, after you have a good understanding of your current situation, e.g. "where you are now".

Broadly, you have two types of objectives -- marketing objectives and communication objectives.

Marketing objectives refer to your measures about your sales, market shares, customer satisfaction, customer retention, distribution, product launches, profitability, and so on.

You can also categorise these according to whether they relate to your existing, adjacent or new markets, or existing, modified or new products.

For instance, your market audit may have revealed opportunities to increase your market share in existing markets with a slightly modified product. However, good objectives require numbers -- something specific against which you can measure your activity and results.

You should be specific about your objectives… …quantify wherever possible. You want to make sure that, when it's time for you to look back and appraise yourself, you can see very specifically how effective your campaigns have been.

Consider the vague objective of "increasing sales". It's far too imprecise. Where? By how much? When? And, yes, objectives should also have a deadline.

Instead, look at for instance:
Increasing sales of your product XYZ by 12% within 8 months in German subsegment C
Launching new product codenamed "Sawgrass" in France in Q3 and obtain market share of 15% in 9 months.

The other thing to remember is that your objectives should be realistic. You need to have all resources available -- people, money, and time.

Your marketing objectives may also be underpinned by financial objectives relating to profit levels, margins, contribution, break-even and, very often, cash flow.

Communication objectives refer to the "state of mind" of your target market and are mostly derivatives of main marketing objectives.

For instance, to reposition a printer product line from being targeted as a component used in the in process manufacturers' production to, say, a wider market including airlines ticketing - essentially the same product with the same functionality, but positioned differently.

It's useful to form communication objectives according to the purchasing process. For each phase of this cycle, you should form different objectives.

Some examples:
Raise awareness of your enhanced service offering amongst Italian medium-sized companies from 36 to 45% by the end of a 12 week campaign
Ensure that 66% of prospective buyers in Scandinavian tier 1 segments include your newly launched turn-key product on their tender list.

Here's a useful tip for writing good objectives
Make sure you create SMART goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time related.

Once you know where you are going (with good objectives), it becomes much easier to decide on the path (strategy) to get there.

Finally, you can only really set good and meaningful objectives on the basis of knowing where the shoe pinches.

That is, you must have practical action-oriented information about customers, markets and competitors.

That's what we fix at LEC. We have a number of techniques and tools to help you understand market requirements and your situation.

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For further information about getting you action-oriented information so that you can pinpoint specifically which objectives to set, call us now at 0870 745 6899, email, or use the form.

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