Marketing activities work better if you have a clear set of goals and KPI's that are attached to them. Well-defined goals and objectives make it easier for you to measure and account your ROI to determine what is working and what is not working. But first...
What is a Marketing Goal?
A marketing goal is a medium to long-term target that is one of the cornerstones of your marketing plan to hit your marketing KPIs. Marketing goals can be specific or more generalized. For example, you could set a marketing goal to grow your social media following, or you could set a marketing goal to grow your Instagram following by 10%. Marketing goals are sometimes confused with marketing objectives, though objectives are more specific and do not take as long to achieve.
What is a Marketing Objective?
Marketing objectives are short-term, specific targets that a business must hit to eventually achieve a marketing goal. For example, a business that sets a goal of increasing its Instagram following would create several marketing objectives to ensure they are moving in the right direction. Examples of marketing objectives could include gaining a certain number of followers per week or increasing the average engagement rate of the posts.
How Do They Differ?
Marketing goals are:
- Long-term
- Big picture
- Contain several marketing objectives
In contrast, marketing objectives are:
- Short-term
- Specific
- Components of marketing goals
Use SMART to Create Marketing Goals
Marketing professionals often use the marketing SMART goals framework to create objectives. SMART is an acronym that describes the facets of a good marketing objective. The acronym stands for:
- Specific: Exact numbers (impressions, followers, website visitors, etc).
- Measurable: Progress can be tracked by your marketing tech stack.
- Attainable: Goals should be challenging, but possible for your marketing team to achieve.
- Realistic: Your marketing team should be capable of achieving the goals.
- Timed: Goals must be completed by a set deadline.
If you are creating a marketing objective, ensure it meets all five of these criteria.
Creating Marketing Objectives for Events
If events are a part of your marketing strategy, then you need to define marketing objectives for your event and then capture event metrics to prove your event’s success. For example, objectives might include “x” number of content downloads, or average length of engagement. Your objectives will likely change over time as you learn which objectives contribute the most towards achieving your goals, and change is okay. The key is to set the initial objectives and then shape the landscape as you learn.
One of the selling points for virtual event technology is the considerable amount of data you can collect on your event attendees’ behavior. You’ll know which PDFs were downloaded and how many times. You can capture which virtual activities were most enjoyed, and the average length of engagement. You can identify which user profiles attended which presentations. And this is just a small sampling. All this data means you can continually improve your events to ensure you’re achieving your marketing objectives.
The following metrics are available in a state-of-the-art event technology platform:
- Registrations: the number of people who registered for the event
- Session registrations: the number of people who registered for a specific session
- Demographic information: data such as location, age, and gender can help you better understand your audience
- Speaker engagement: number of speaker profile views
- Speaker and session engagement via live polling: measure attendee engagement during specific sessions and identify popular speaker(s)
- Session feedback and ratings: data such as attendee satisfaction, attendee session engagement, content relevance, speaker performance, etc.
- Qualified sales leads: number of customer prospects generated by the event
- Connections: data such as the number of people who attended networking events, exchanged contact information at networking events, set up 1:1 in-event meetings, engaged in 1:1 chats, etc.
- Attendee Surveys: data regarding attendee satisfaction
- Sponsorship Engagement: attendee-sponsorship engagement such as visits, views, likes, actions, etc.
6Connex Offers Powerful Event Marketing Tools
If you want to host virtual events or hybrid events, you need to be able to successfully market and measure your event. The 6Connex virtual event platform offers powerful reporting tools that can help you showcase how your event contributed to your marketing goals and objectives. If you’re interested in industry-leading virtual event solutions, request a demo today.
