You will not manage to achieve your target if you do not specify what is inside it. The same principle refers to your company and products and services that it offers.
Marketing objectives
An objective is what you what to achieve. It determines a direction. Marketing objectives are created on the basis of company’s aims and strategy. They are a version of those, which focus on the market and on the customer. Thanks to determination of targets, it is known, where separate marketing actions head, what effects they are to bring, how to find out whether thy have been realized, and to what extent it was successful. You will need them while preparing a marketing plan, separate marketing strategies or a business plan.
Marketing objectives are used to achieve financial aims. For example, if a company provides itself with a financial target being to achieve profit in an agreed amount, it needs to provide itself with a marketing objective being to achieve sales, which will allow to generate such an income (Kotler 1999: 98).
They may be divided into general and detailed objectives. General marketing objectives are planned to be realized in the nearest future and they encompass, among others: increase of share of a given company in a market, an increase of turnover or profits, abandoning a present market and launching on a new market (having a new technology or a new line of products on one’s disposal), improvement of company’s image thanks to advertisement and promotion, development of a new pricing strategy, change of distribution channels. General objectives need to be changed into detailed objectives, which require numbers and a time framework (Bangs 1999: 33).
Instructions
- Marketing objectives should be:
- concrete and possible to be measured, i.e. expressed in categories of values or amounts;
- described by results that need to be achieved;
- realistic, but at the same time they are to pose a challenge for executors of the plan;
- hierarchically ordered, with respect to sequence of realization;
- take the date, when aim achievement is to take place, into consideration.
Templates
Marketing objectives – templates
Achieve turnover to the amount of ……….., which poses ……….. percentage increase in relation to the previous year.
Achieve sales ……….. pieces of devices.
Performance of a promotional campaign, which aims at creating a company’s image as an enterprise heading towards ……….. .
Increase the number of incoming orders by ………..% within next ……….. years.
Realize a possibility to sell our products through ……….. in at least ……….. countries of Eastern Europe.
Development of distribution channels from ……….. to ……….. warehouses within the whole country.
An increase in the market share from ………..% to ………..%.
Development of loyalty of customers towards the brand through ……….. .
Deepen the customers’ knowledge of the brand from ………..% to ………..% within ……….. years.
An increase in the number of accessions to a partnership program by ………..% in relation to the previous year.
Increase the focus of our customers on our products from ………..% to ………..%.
Examples
Marketing objectives – examples
Increase of the incoming orders from Germany by 10% in relation to the previous year.
Achieve a turnover to the amount of 200 000 $ in 2014, which poses a 5 percentage increase in relation to the previous year.
Introduction of a new product on the market and achievement of income from sales to the amount 120 000 $ per year within 3 years.
An increase in the number of sales points by 15%.
An increase in the market share from 10% to 15% within 2 years.
Achieving a sales size of 30 000 pieces, which will pose about 5% of market share.
Increase consumers’ focus on ecological aspects of our products from 5% to 15% within the period covered by the plan.