In life, we want to be the best we can be.
Magic trumps mediocrity. Excellence ousts the ordinary.
The same can be said for business; we enter our respective industries with aspirations of reaching the top of the tree, with marketing growth a target for many marketing teams.
Companies continue to write success stories in which marketing plays a key role.
However, such triumphs don’t manifest by chance. You need to adopt a rigorous approach to setting high, yet attainable goals to support your strategy, particularly given the competitive nature of the business landscape.
This article will answer key marketing growth questions, including:
Marketing growth isn’t a nice to have. It isn’t a luxury.
It’s a key ingredient to the success and sustainability of your business.
It has to be factored into your overall business strategy and measured through appropriate metrics such as return on investment (ROI), customer acquisition costs, and organic traffic growth.
However, some companies make the mistake of overlooking its importance.
In the Career & Salary Survey 2024, 46.5% of respondents said marketing is viewed as a cost, as opposed to an investment, with a further 15.2% of marketers indicating marketing isn’t understood at all outside of their department.
Somewhat surprising, given marketing’s role in increasing revenue, market share, brand awareness, and customer engagement.
So, with the importance of marketing thrust into the spotlight, how do you translate commercial goals into marketing KPIs?
Translating commercial goals into marketing objectives and KPIs is no piece of cake. But as the saying goes, “If there’s a will, there’s a way.”
For many B2B businesses, commercial growth targets balance several revenue goals. You’ll be targeting growth through:
On top of this, you’ll no doubt have specific growth targets for different service/solution types, market sectors/verticals, and account/customer sizes (from small to enterprise or key accounts).
Long story short, chances are you’re targeting growth through numerous channels and strategies. This makes setting clear marketing objectives difficult.
Well, you can thank your lucky stars, because we’re gonna make things a helluva lot easier for you with our ‘inverted funnel’ approach.
Let’s break it down into steps using a simple example.
Firstly, you need to ask a few questions:
Answering these questions will put some meat on the figurative bones and help you attribute percentages of your growth goals to marketing.
In this example, you’ve decided that:
Voila. This is your overall marketing revenue goal.
But the hard work doesn’t stop there. Now we need KPIs to measure against.
Marketers will typically want to know how many sessions they need to drive and how many contacts they need to create. This can be done by reverse-engineering a funnel, but to do this, you need to know a bit of key information:
With this in mind, you can reverse-engineer a funnel (if you don’t have these numbers, you can use the conversion percentages below as benchmarks). That'll give you something like this:
Once we flip this around, it gives us a rudimentary marketing funnel:
From this funnel, you can then do two things:
As you’re setting marketing goals, we could pick ‘MQLs’ as the SMART goal, as that’s the thing marketing can influence.
So you’d set the following goal:
Our SMART goal is to generate 90 new MQLs by the end of the financial year.
The job then is to measure your performance against this overall SMART goal and use the other numbers as KPIs.
You won’t achieve the exact numbers in this model - some conversion rates will be higher and lower than others.
But tracking them as KPIs allows you to see which areas are falling short of the goal, and therefore make sure marketers are spending time wisely on activities that will make a difference.
Oftentimes, companies spend money in the wrong places because their marketing campaigns and strategies are ill-prepared and haven’t been built on concrete findings from meticulous analysis.
If you jump into the deep end with your eyes closed, we guarantee you’ll squander precious resources on marketing channels and methods that aren’t suitable for your target persona.
With this in mind, here’s how to identify where to allocate your marketing budget effectively.
Start by clearly defining your business goals. Are you looking to increase brand awareness, boost sales, enhance customer retention, or enter new markets? Your marketing goals should align with these broader business objectives.
Analyse past marketing efforts to understand what has worked and what hasn't. Look at the performance of different channels and campaigns in terms of generating leads, sales, and engagement. This review should include:
Evaluate each marketing channel's effectiveness. This involves:
Segment your customer base using demographic, psychographic, and behavioural data to identify the most profitable segments. Allocate more budget to channels that effectively reach and engage these key segments.
Understand your competitors' marketing strategies and budget allocations. Use tools like SEMrush for digital marketing analysis and Nielsen reports for traditional media. This helps to identify any competitive advantages or gaps in your marketing strategy.
For each channel, calculate the expected ROI based on historical data and predictive analytics. Use formulas like:
ROI = (Gain from Investment - Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment.
Consider both direct financial returns and other strategic benefits, such as increased market share or improved brand recognition.
Stay informed about emerging marketing trends and shifts in consumer behaviour. For instance, the increasing importance of social media influencers or changes in consumer privacy concerns can impact where you should allocate your budget.
Allocate a portion of your budget to test new channels or strategies. This could involve piloting new digital marketing platforms, experimenting with different messaging, or trying innovative campaign tactics. Monitor performance and scale up successful experiments.
HubSpot can be used to help you improve your decision-making via:
Prepare for flexibility in your budgeting to swiftly respond to performance data and market changes.
This means regularly reviewing marketing spend and adjusting allocations as needed.
Collaborate with stakeholders across the business to ensure marketing objectives and budget allocations align with overall business strategies and goals.
Regularly review the performance of marketing spend against set KPIs and adjust the strategy as necessary. This ongoing optimisation should focus on enhancing ROI and achieving business objectives.
By meticulously analysing data, calculating ROI, testing new approaches, and staying adaptable to market changes, you can strategically allocate your marketing budget to maximise business outcomes.
Adjusting marketing targets is crucial for staying relevant and effective in an ever-changing business environment.
Several specific situations and signals indicate when it's appropriate to revisit and potentially revise your marketing targets:
If your overarching business goals or strategy shift—perhaps due to new product launches, entering new markets, or changes in company direction—it's essential to realign your marketing targets to support these new objectives.
Changes in the market such as new competitors, regulatory changes, technological advancements, or shifts in consumer behaviour can impact the effectiveness of your current marketing strategy. When such changes occur, it's important to adjust your targets to remain competitive and relevant.
Regularly review your progress against existing targets. If you consistently miss or exceed these targets, it might indicate that they are either too ambitious or too conservative. Adjusting these targets to more realistic levels can help maintain team motivation and improve strategic focus.
As new data becomes available or new analytics tools are adopted, you might gain insights that were previously obscured. This new information can reveal opportunities or challenges that necessitate a revision of your marketing targets to better leverage or address them.
Increases or decreases in your marketing budget due to economic factors or company financial performance can require adjustments to your targets. More resources might allow for more ambitious targets, whereas budget cuts might necessitate a more focused strategy on high-ROI activities.
The adoption of new marketing technologies or platforms can enhance your marketing capabilities. For example, new tools for data analysis, customer relationship management, or automated marketing could improve efficiencies and effectiveness, prompting a reassessment of your targets.
Feedback from customers and findings from ongoing market research can indicate whether your marketing efforts are resonating with your audience. If feedback is generally negative or suggests misalignment with customer expectations or needs, it's crucial to adjust your targets and strategies accordingly.
New regulations or changes in compliance requirements, especially in sectors like health, finance, and data privacy, can impact how you market your products or services. Adapting your marketing targets to stay compliant while still being effective is essential.
Economic downturns, shifts in consumer spending power, and other macroeconomic factors can influence market dynamics significantly. In such cases, it may be necessary to adjust marketing targets to reflect the new economic reality.
If competitors launch new marketing strategies or innovative products that strongly resonate with the market, it might be necessary to rethink your strategies and targets to maintain competitiveness.
To effectively implement these adjustments, maintain a flexible planning process and ensure regular communication across all levels of your organization. This includes:
Adjusting marketing targets isn't just about responding to failures or shortcomings; it's about proactive management and ensuring that your marketing efforts are as effective and aligned with your business strategy as possible.
Gather quantitative and qualitative data from internal and external sources. Internally, this includes sales data, CRM records, website analytics, and past marketing campaign performance.
Externally, consider market research reports, industry benchmarks, and competitor data. Utilise tools like Google Analytics for web data, social media analytics for engagement metrics, and sales databases for revenue and customer transaction data.
Utilise statistical tools and software to analyse the collected data. Identify trends, correlations, and patterns.
For instance, use regression analysis to determine how changes in marketing spending correlate with sales or a time-series analysis to predict future trends based on past performance. Analytical tools like Tableau, SAS, or even Excel can be employed for deeper insights.
Refine the insights from your data into specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals. For example:
Deeply analyse customer data to segment the market more precisely. Use demographic, psychographic, and behavioural data to identify high-value segments. Apply machine learning techniques for predictive modelling and to uncover hidden patterns in customer behaviour that traditional analysis might miss.
Regularly assess how your company's performance stacks up against industry standards or key competitors. Use resources like IBISWorld for industry data or competitive intelligence platforms like SEMrush for digital marketing benchmarks. Setting targets relative to these benchmarks ensures they are both ambitious and realistic.
Allocate resources based on data-driven ROI calculations. Use historical data to identify marketing channels with the highest return on investment and prioritise spending on these channels. For instance, if paid search advertising consistently shows a higher ROI compared to other channels, increase its budget proportionately.
Implement a dynamic dashboard using tools like Google Data Studio or Microsoft Power BI to monitor real-time data against your targets. Set up alerts for deviations from expected performance, allowing for rapid response and strategy adjustments. Regularly scheduled reviews should be institutionalised to ensure continuous improvement.
Use advanced statistical models and AI algorithms to predict future market trends and consumer behaviour. Tools like Python’s Scikit-learn for machine learning can help forecast sales growth based on external variables such as economic conditions and internal data like seasonal sales patterns.
Create a loop of feedback and learning by regularly collecting and analysing data on the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
HubSpot provides insights such as NPS scoring that can help you gauge customer satisfaction and uncover areas for improvement. Continuously refine your models and strategies based on this feedback to enhance the precision of your marketing targets.
By expanding each of these steps into a more comprehensive and data-centric approach, you can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your marketing strategy and ensure your targets are not only well-defined but also grounded in solid data-driven insights.
Marketing growth won’t land in your lap - it’s the byproduct of hard work and investment.
Growing your marketing on your own accord may be satisfying, but outsourced support and expertise can expedite the process, help you reach your targets quicker, and free up valuable resources.