Goals

How many times are specific goals for a project clearly defined in advance so that a given project may actually provide the desired results?

Lately, I have been in several seminars where we have discussed great marketing campaigns, connecting with people emotionally, raising awareness and then GETTING results.

If you think back to some of the greatest marketing campaigns or memorable characters you might think of Mean Joe Green and Coke. Although

many people remember the commercials - Coke defined the campaign as a

failure because the ROI and awareness building just didn’t add up. Or how about Pets.com Commercials background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">  - Do you remember those or just the sock puppet that went on to do work elsewhere when Pets.com closed shop?

Now these are two extremes but there are goals for all marketing activity and in the old days of plain old TV ads they may not have been that specific - i.e. increase market share 2% or hope people show up at the store.  Now we can be very specific and there are so many great tools on the market - that can help.

But all the tools and creativity will get you nowhere if you don’t know what your goal is and communicate that with your marketing partner.  So when you start to consider a marketing campaign think about what your real goal is and who you are targeting.  Also, be ready to share your “before” data - whether that means installing analytics on your website or opening up your CRM to show where leads and sales currently come from.  This way you can work together to define the goal and measure it.  And, don’t wait till the campaign is over in 3 months to look at the data - be on the lookout for intermediate data that indicates that your campaign is reaching people and getting results.  If it’s not, make changes!