Tuesday, March 7, 2017

How to Set Marketing Goals Based on Business Goals


Below are the 10 steps for setting well-defined marketing goals that are in sync with the goals of the business:
1. Identify How Much Revenue You Need to Generate from Your Inbound Marketing Efforts

This is easy. Say your business did $2,000,000 in sales last year. Your CEO just said that he wants to grow the business 30%. You know that you already have $1,800,000 on the books for next year and expect another $200,000 from other marketing efforts, such as trade shows. That leaves you with a gap of $600,000 that you need to close within the next 12-months.

2. Determine How Many Sales You Need to Hit Those Revenue Goals
Take your revenue gap and divide it by the value of your average sale. For example, if the revenue needed is $600,000 and your average sale is $50,000, then you need 12 new customers.

3. Identify Your Closing Rate and How Many Opportunities You Need
We'll continue working backwards to identify how many opportunities you need. For example, if you need 12 customers and your closing rate is 50%, and 50% of your opportunities go for a close, then you'll need 48 opportunities in order to hit your business goal.

4. Identify How Many SQLs You Need
A sales qualified lead (SQL) is a lead that will be passed to the sales team. If this is your first inbound marketing campaign, then you may not know this number, so take your best estimate. I often find that 50% is a good number to start with and adjust over time. For our example, we can estimate that we need to pass 96 SQL's to our sales team.

5. Identify How Many MQLs You Need
A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is a lead that is qualified, but not sales ready. MQL's need more marketing such as lead nurturing to become more sales ready. Again, 50% is a safe number if you have no history and you can always adjust this later. Going off our example, we'll need to generate 192 MQLs within the next 12-months.

6. Identify How Many Leads You Need

We define a lead as a visitor that has converted on one of your offers. Not all of your leads will be qualified, so it's important to estimate a number that will provide you with enough MQL's to achieve your goals.

The more attractive your content is for your qualified leads, the higher your conversion rate from lead to MQL will be. To generate 192 leads, in this example, I would estimate that 500 leads will need to be generated to achieve your revenue goals. Monitor this closely and make the necessary adjustments over time.

7. Identify How Much Traffic You Need to Achieve Your Goals
Based on our experience, we would estimate a traffic to lead conversion rate of 2.5% over the next 12-months. We'll plan on this being lower in the beginning as content is being created and higher in the fourth quarter of the program. In our example, you'll need 20,000 website visitors within the next 12-months.

No comments:

Post a Comment