A strong brand is the ultimate game changer for businesses today. With the world in a state of constant information overload, it gets a little bit harder to create a memorable brand day by day. Still, it remains essential to the long-term success of a business. Because a memorable brand is one of the only things that can make a consumer pause and re-evaluate their choices.
So, how can your brand be memorable? The simple answer is to provide your audience with something that resonates and adds value to their life - quality content. Whether it be informational, entertaining, or the less common - surprising, the aim is to give your audience an experience that sticks with them. TwoDo is here to help with that.
The Power of Creative Content in Achieving Marketing Objectives
Think of your favourite brand. What is it that made you interested and involved in their journey? Most likely, it’s something they communicated that stayed with you - something unique. This is where the power of creative content shows. Without offering something that mattered to you, there’s no way a brand could get you interested in their offering. At the same time, the brand wouldn’t have known how to resonate with you without knowing where to find you in the first place.
For a brand to find the right audience, research and introspection is a must. This is why, before even thinking about content, the first thing every brand must nail is a clear vision. And a clear vision comes only from setting goals that match your expectations.
You may think that setting goals is not worth the effort now, but without having an end goal, there’s no way to know what your brand is working toward. Simply because there’d be no way to analyze the results. Instead, spend some time determining what you want to achieve and make an actionable plan to do so. Trust us - it’s the best way to ensure long-term results.
Let’s look at a couple of things you need to know before setting your marketing goals.
Have your business goals in front of you
Are you just starting out or are you already established? The business goals you outline form the basis of your marketing goals. Is your business's goal to increase sales for the quarter? Or maybe it’s to retain your existing customers? Both of these goals would require different approaches. This is why it’s important to set marketing goals that align with your business goals. Because ultimately, the purpose of goal-setting is to grow your business.
Determine your brand’s current position
Figure out where your brand stands in the market. This is important, because your brand’s current position will become the starting point of your creative efforts. It will help you see how far you’ve come by the end. Let’s try to understand this with the AIDA model.
The Awareness-Interest-Desire-Action (AIDA) model is a helpful tool you can use to see where your brand stands among the audience. Essentially, the model’s four stages describe your audience’s position in relation to your brand. Your marketing goals will therefore need to be built around your audience’s position in the AIDA model to see actual results.
Want to figure out where your brand’s audience lies in the model? Start asking questions. Is your audience already aware of your brand and its products? Then you need to build interest for your product. Is there already enough awareness and sufficient interest among your audience? Then it’s time to inculcate desire and prompt the audience into action to buy your product.
Only after determining these two aspects - your business goals and your position in the AIDA model - can you zero down on your marketing strategy. If you skip this step, you may end up accomplishing something entirely different than what your brand currently requires.
Now that we’ve figured out everything we need to know before setting goals, let’s move on to how to set marketing goals and objectives.
Firstly, and most importantly, marketing goals and marketing objectives are not synonymous. While sometimes used interchangeably, marketing goals are generally the overarching goals that you wish to achieve through your marketing efforts. The marketing objectives on the other hand, entail actionable targets that your results will be geared towards.
Let’s look at some examples.
Marketing goals will set the direction for your brand-related activities and outline the desired outcomes. Here are some goals that could apply to your brand:
Increase brand awareness
Improve website traffic
Increase revenue
Essentially, your marketing goals simply aim to communicate what you want to achieve without any extra fluff.
Now coming to the more actionable part - marketing objectives.
Your marketing objectives are a subset of the marketing goals. Along with everything we’ve looked at so far, these goals need to be realistic, and achievable. And most importantly, your goals need to be built on a timeline. Without a set timeline, measuring your progress and results would become extremely difficult.
So, what actually goes in your objectives? How you plan to use creative, value-adding content to draw your audience in. Because in the end, your objectives must aim to achieve certain creative standards that make your brand truly shine.
For example, if you’re a fairly new brand looking to increase brand awareness, your objective could include a new brand identity that sets you apart from competitors. Plan a campaign around it, build your social media presence for the quarter, and measure your results. Similarly, if you’re looking to improve website traffic then your objective could entail revamping the UI/UX to achieve a higher rate of conversion.
This is why following a step-by-step process is the best way to set objectives that match your business goals. Do your research, set achievable goals and use creative means to achieve them. Of course, there will always be more to do. But for now, rest assured you’re on track to see your brand’s efforts succeed.
TwoDo’s Two Cents
Setting up goals can seem pretty daunting the first time around. But it’s something that is integral to the success of your brand. While there’s a lot to know before diving into brand-building, we hope that we’ve demystified the first step for you. All that’s left to do now is set achievable goals that align with your business and brand position. Oh, and make sure the goals are on a timeline! At TwoDo, we’re pretty meticulous about our timelines as well.