10 Marketing Objectives with Examples

Clear and measurable marketing objectives are critical to successful marketing planning. That’s because they clarify future actions. They provide a roadmap consisting of well-defined tasks designed to get your team, and the company, across the finish line. 

One of the instant benefits of clear marketing goals is the increased productivity and measurable progress they enable. Conversely, vague or incompletely defined objectives can hamper your plan or make it fall face down. 

If you find that your marketing plan for the year is big on rhetoric but short on measurable actions, use this guide to improve and upgrade your plan. 

What Are Marketing Objectives?

Marketing objectives are specific goals set by a company to boost its reach and outcomes. These targets, which should be achievable within a set timeline, guide promotional efforts and align with broader business aims.

Typical examples of marketing objectives include to increase brand awareness, retain existing customers, increases sales, boost website traffic, or penetrate new markets.

These objectives should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This framework ensures targets are clear, trackable, realistic, in line with business goals, and have a set deadline.

They can differ based on the industry, company size, and audience. The goals inform strategy, align efforts across different channels, and enable quantifiable success assessment. To craft effective ones, a deep understanding of the target audience and the competitive landscape is essential.

10 Objectives and Specific Examples

The path to business success is hinges on articulating well-defined campaign goals. Here are ten common but important targets, supported by detailed marketing objectives examples.

1. Enter a new market 

Suppose your company has maxed out growth opportunities in its current territory or industry and wants to expand to a new vertical, location, or market. While saying “We want to expand our international business into South America” is an ambitious goal, it’s vague and hard to measure. 

An attainable objective can be to research current product leaders in the target market and their marketing strategies. Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in this case could include:

• Develop appropriate messaging for target customers based on market research findings within 1st quarter 2022
• Increase form submissions from Brazil by 10% within 3rd quarter 2022
• Boost Facebook impressions in Colombia by 1,000% by 4th quarter 2022

Notably, these examples showcase objectives that are time-bound and measurable. Apart from providing a clear route to your goals, they also offer a framework to track progress. 

2. Launch a new product

New product launches are standard in marketing. Typically, the team is expected to drive consumer interest through various channels.

Your marketing strategy here may differ depending on the individual tasks of each marketing unit. For instance, your social media manager might focus on generating 10,000 unique Twitter impressions during the first month before the official product launch. 

In email marketing, the goal may be to a) build a 5,000 strong email list of prospects interested in the new product; and b) create and administer a five-week nurture sequence with a 10% end-date conversion rate. 

3. Increase sales 

Achieving increased sales is one of the most common marketing efforts for obvious reasons – effective marketing brings high-quality leads that eventually convert into paying customers. 

There are many different strategies for increasing sales, including cross-selling and upselling. You could plan to: 

• Increase upsell conversions by 15% year on year or quarter on quarter
• Boost cross-sell click-through rate (CTR) by 13% through redesigned calls to action (CTAs) in your e-commerce email sequence
• Increase landing page conversion rate by 3%

Marketers have their own term for the dollar value of a sales goal. Target revenue is defined by Monash University as “the desired income from sales of the goods and services produced.” As taught in marketing courses, revenue is the product of sales volume and price. Target revenue reflects not just the amount of sales but also the average price.

4. Amplify brand awareness 

Every company wants to extend its brand reach and engage more customers. But attaining this goal depends on selecting and measuring the right objectives. 

For example, while higher sales figures are good for the company, they don’t necessarily mean more people are buying. It could just be the same customers buying more from you. 

Instead, engagement-related objectives would likely tell a better tale if your goal is to amplify brand awareness. Some objectives your marketing team could implement are to: 

• Increase website traffic by 50% within the first half of the year 
• Increase social media mentions by 160% in March
• Generate 500% more likes and comments on company tweets by year-end 2022
• Increase new signups by 40% in the 3rd quarter by sponsoring a YouTube influencer.

You may notice that digital marketing channels form the basis for brand amplification in these examples. According to Lerna Courses (Australia), digital marketing programs “cover online technologies and data metrics, along with customer experience, business strategy and marketing management.” An advantage of digital marketing is that data is readily available to measure your effectiveness at achieving any defined goals.

5. Enlarge market share 

Greater market share often means higher valuation and a larger slice of industry sales. That’s why this is such a coveted goal for companies. 

But achieving this goal can be challenging due to the considerable commitment involved and the numerous variables that contribute to a firm’s sales growth. For instance, Investopedia defines a company’s market share as the total sales in its industry compared to that of competitors. However, gaining higher sales depends on many factors such as customer base, competitor performance, brand dominance, etc. 

How do you develop a clear roadmap for this goal? Marketing campaigns that may help include to:

• Increase customer engagement (web traffic, CTRs, and conversions) through a series of blog posts that showcase your company’s unique value proposition
• Run a print and TV ad campaign to increase the number of discovery calls by 30% quarter on quarter
• Increase customer base by 20% by year-end

There are various other ways of gaining more customers, apart from this. Ideally, your marketing objective should look to concretize a time-based plan covering how your company intends to reach its desired market share. With this in hand, it’s easier to break the goal down into bite-sized actions that can be time-boxed and properly tracked.

6. Enhance brand authority

Brand authority can also contribute to brand dominance and a larger market share. Regardless, this goal can also be separate and distinct because it is an end in itself.

Gaining brand authority means setting your company up as the go-to in specific niches or industry use-cases. As a result, you want any marketing goals you curate here to rally around those particular areas where you want to build authority.

Sample objectives you could consider here include to:

• Convene a conference on x topic within 1st quarter 2023
• Actively participate on 5-6 expert industry panels by year-end 2022
• Develop and publish 5 whitepapers on x topics in 2023 with respective conversion rates of 10% each.

7. Boost company profit

Marketing, at its core, is a profit-seeking activity. Resultantly, marketing actions ultimately have revenue and cost considerations at their bottom line. If your marketing objectives or top-level goals do not focus on profit or profit-driven actions, then you’re likely barking up the wrong tree.

As the folks at Impact put it, “At the end of the day, if you grew traffic but sales plummeted, no one would be celebrating marketing.” That’s worth remembering.

Profit boosters can be cost-cutting or revenue-increasing measures. For instance, your marketing objective for 3rd quarter 2022 could be to reduce social media ad spend by 15% while keeping conversions at 6%. Or, staying with the social media example, you could launch campaign x with the goal of 5% greater revenue at 4th quarter-end.

Another common way that marketers pursue profit-driven actions is by optimizing ROI across marketing strategies.

8. Optimize sales funnel

If you’re getting low-quality leads or find too many leads prematurely exit your funnel, your marketing goals might focus on correcting this. After all, maintaining an efficient sales funnel is not just up to sales; marketing also plays a part in consistent messaging and prospect education.

Though many things can go wrong in a sales funnel, your specific objectives will depend on where you think something isn’t working. You might decide to:

• Reduce the number of failed leads by 20% within 1st quarter
• Decrease the percentage of lost deals by at least 50% by year-end
• Implement account-based marketing by 2nd quarter 2022 to increase lead quality

9. Entice new customers

Focusing on attracting new customers not only helps freshen up your customer base, but it’s also one of the fastest ways to increase revenue. Besides, a healthy rate of new customer influx is a universal litmus test of effective marketing.

Common marketing approaches that target this goal include to:

• Grow e-commerce email list by 5,000 new subscribers within half-year 2022
• Launch business page on x social media platform with a target of 6,000 new followers by 3rd quarter 2023
• Generate 3,000 new leads quarterly from x social media platform

10. Craft or strengthen social voice

Social positioning has become an emerging focus of marketing departments, especially considering customers’ increasing preference for brands that care.

If your marketing plan for the year includes strengthening your company’s social positioning, you might consider:

• Concretizing your diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) commitments with at least 3 new women in leadership hires by 3rd quarter-end
• Sponsoring a community event to commemorate Black History Month
• Creating an education trust fund for students from a disadvantaged community

Ultimately, your marketing objectives will be defined by your specific goals for the year. While there’s a lot to choose from in terms of objectives and the strategies you adopt to achieve them, it’s worth remembering that marketing plans are only effective when they are clear, measurable, and attainable.

Turning Targets into Career Opportunities

Crafting precise and attainable marketing objectives guides not only successful business strategies but also paves the way for a flourishing career. Gaining hands-on experience in setting and achieving these goals primes you for roles such as brand manager, digital marketer, and market research analyst.

Practical application of goal-setting can greatly enhance your employability within the expansive field of marketing jobs. This offers invaluable business insights and skills, which are crucial for devising and executing real-world strategic plans.

It’s important to remember that business and consumer landscapes are continually changing. Adapting your marketing plan to meet these evolving needs is crucial for both your business’s growth and your personal career development. The ten examples detailed here provide an excellent starting point, but the true challenge lies in skillful execution.