We've talked about digital marketing and inbound marketing strategies before, and how to create one that will work for your business, but there's one thing you don't want to forget: your digital marketing strategy needs to align with your company goals. If your digital marketing is talking a big game and bringing in more than your business is prepared for or expecting, you can end up in a really bad position. The same is true if you're spending too much on marketing to the wrong audience and you're spending more than you bring in.
It's easy for the marketing team to get caught up in trying to be creative. Their focus is on marketing methods. But, it's important to make sure marketing is always on the same page with your company's overall goals.
Follow these steps to ensure your digital marketing aligns perfectly with your business goals so that you have a cohesive strategy throughout your company.
1. Follow the same calendar.
If your company creates a calendar at the beginning of each year or each quarter with products or services that need to be focused on and sold, be sure to share it with your marketing team so they can be on the same page year round. Having an idea of what you need to sell when, but leaving your digital marketing agency or team in the dark is only going to hurt your business.
Many business owners, especially when working with a digital marketing agency, tend to keep their business calendars separate and let their marketing agency or team do their own thing. It's certainly not intentional; they simply don't realize the value of working on the calendar together.
This way, if at the end of a quarter you really need to make a push for a particular product or service, you can keep your marketing team notified so they can focus their content and campaigns on promoting that product or service. After all, you don't want your digital marketing, traditional marketing, and sales teams to all have different messaging and missions!
2. Keep your goals front and center.
Make sure everyone within your company knows what your goals are. You should have annual and quarterly goals. At the beginning of each year, sit down and decide what you want or need your revenue to be for the entire year, and revisit that each quarter so you and your team know if you are ahead or behind.
Although you might not want to share your business's entire revenue information with the entire team, it's good to have some transparency so everyone knows what they need to work towards.
Each quarter, have a meeting with your team and your digital marketing agency to revisit goals for revenue, ROI, conversions, and more. If any of your team members have gotten off track from their personal goals towards your company goals, meet with them to see how you can help them succeed for the year.
3. Match your target audience.
It's essential to ensure that all facets of your marketing and sales teams and/or agencies are targeting similar messaging to the same audience. If one area of your company did market research and another area did separate market research, it's very possible that they could be targeting two completely different audiences. This is a waste of your business's resources.
Instead, do one comprehensive market research study for all facets of your business. Make sure you know who your target audience is for every product and/or service you sell. Make sure your sales and marketing teams and agencies both know who the target audience is. And lastly, make sure they're using the same messaging and targeting the same people -- the difference is that one will be doing so online, and the other will be doing so in person.
4. Make SMART goals.
SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely. This means you don't want to create random goals with no real end that or that are not realistic or that will take too long to accomplish.
Instead, you want to create goals that have very specific criteria, measurable endings, achievable results, that make sense for where your business is at right now and can be done within a specified time frame (ideally a quarter or a year).
Meet with your executives and/or directors to help you come up with these goals and share them with your entire team in an email, pep meeting, or team building event. This can help amp your employees up and get them excited to help your company meet your goals. Offering incentives for high-achieving employees is also a great way to increase morale in the company and meet goals.
Again, be sure to keep these goals front and center so that everyone within your sales and marketing team/agency is aware of them. It's essential to keep your digital marketing strategy aligned with your company goals so that all of your marketing messaging is cohesive and makes sense. Contact us to learn more about how we create a comprehensive digital marketing strategy for your business around the goals you're already working towards to make them even more attainable. Request an assessment of your marketing strategy.
Written By: David Carpenter
