Does setting a short-term or long-term goal sound daunting?

Especially when you think of short-term or long-term goals, you will find yourself racking your brain and questioning goals and how they differ from one another. No need to worry because doing so can help you create more effective (and attainable) goals overall, creating both short-term and long-term marketing goals.

To realize the goal you have in mind, marketing goals are a crucial area to concentrate on. A goal should constantly be in mind since a dream is only a dream unless you make it your reality.

With this, you have a distinct idea of where you want to go, a predetermined strategy, and a target date to work towards.

Short-term marketing goals

If you think about it, setting short-term goals seems much more accessible than long-term goals simply because long-term goals contain many unknown factors.

Short-term marketing goals are doable and advantageously adaptable. You can adjust your plan to experiment with something new and get better outcomes if one of your short-term goals isn’t working.

Your short-term objectives are those that you wish to complete in six months to 2 years. These objectives typically take days, weeks, or months to complete from beginning to end.

An example of a short-term goal and how it can be applied.

For example, Increase your social media presence by using Facebook to advertise activities and discounts, Instagram to display your goods and the individuals using them, and Twitter to engage with your customers more positively, as Twitter is an excellent platform to interact.

Another Short-term marketing goal and effort might include holding events, effectively promoting a promotion, or boosting sales by 15% each month.

Long-Term Marketing Goal 

Did you ever shy away from establishing long-term marketing objectives because you lacked faith in your capacity to succeed? You’re not the only one, so don’t fret. It doesn’t focus on fixing the present issues or even the question of how you might increase your company’s profitability in the following years.

These goals are for making significant strides in your company’s future expansion into something more meaningful and better than it is now.

These objectives cannot be accomplished in the following two to three years without creating instability in the business. Therefore, they need serious consideration of the course you want your company to pursue, then preparation, funding, and cautious implementation.

Goals that far off have drawbacks:

Firstly, the staff loses focus and loosens up because there is insufficient urgency. Underestimating the workload and working last minute to achieve deadlines are simple mistakes.

Feeling overpowered is the second downside. Generally, long-term goals are big ones. However, numerous people respond to stress in unique ways, and they might not feel capable of completing their tasks.

To sum up, the steps and duration required to complete long-term and short-term marketing goals differ significantly. If short-term goals help long-term goals, they could be more rewarding and meaningful.

You could wish to select specific short-term goals that represent these ideals, for instance, if your long-term objective is to experience a more profound sense of belonging and connection within the society.

Establishing a short-term goal of engaging in acts of service for at least 5 – 10 hours each month will help you get closer to your long-term objective of strengthening relationships and communities.

Suppose that one of your long-term company objectives is to create the finest website within your sector; for instance, you might want to select short-term objectives that mirror this

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In this digital age, branding forms an integral part of any marketing plan. Branding is the process of creating a certain image in the minds of the customers which helps the firm to sell its product and services. One of the best examples of excellent branding is Coca-Cola, rather than their product being the focus, Coca-Cola focused on their brand. This worked splendidly as people are now more likely to try new flavors of soft drinks if there is a Coca-Cola label on the can.

Why you need to focus on branding

One of the biggest reasons why branding is so important within this age of social media, is that consumers are being introduced to new brands on a daily basis, so having a strong brand image will help distinguish your firm from your competitors. Strong branding is how loyal customers are formed, more people will take note of it and won’t easily forget your brand. So, when they are in the market for a new product or service, they will probably pick the brand that had the most memorable branding.

Having a strong brand can also help the firm to build trust with their audience. Gaining the trust of your audience is one of the most important things that you can have as a business. Branding helps the business to come across as a well-established and credible brand, proving that they are trustworthy and ensuring that customers try their products or services, and become a loyal to the brand.

Advertising is an essential part of the marketing process of a business, and is responsible for creating brand awareness, but if the business hasn’t paid attention to branding then then potential customers won’t stay for long. Businesses can come off as untrustworthy and customers won’t feel the need to buy the products and services of your business.

6 elements of branding

Now that we’ve established why branding is important for any business, there are six elements to consider in order to pull off a successful rebrand:

1. Brand voice

According to Sprout social, brand voice is the distinct personality a brand takes on in its communications. The reason why your brand voice is so important is that it helps your business to stand out. Just the logo and a catchy slogan is not enough, the way the brand presents itself in front of customers is very important. Your brand voice can give customers better insight into who you are and needs to be consistent and recognizable. Who your ideal target audience is will determine the tone of voice used, healthcare or financial institutions may require a more formal and professional tone of voice whereas the latest dating app will be much more informal.

2. Brand identity

Investopedia states that “brand identity is the visible elements of a brand, such as color, design, and logo, that identify and distinguish the brand in consumers’ minds.” The reason why it is important for a business the pay attention to brand identity is that it is essentially the mascot for the business’ brand, it encompasses how a company expresses and describes itself from the images on its marketing materials. A strong brand identity helps in strengthening a company’s popularity and presence in a competitive market.

3. Brand promise

The third element is Brand Promise and according to Adobe “a brand promise is a value or experience a company’s customers can expect to receive every single time they interact with that company.” The brand promise articulates the unique value that a business provides its customers and includes the mission and vision statements of the company which tells the customers what the business wants to achieve in the short and long term. The more aligned the business’ actions are with the brand promise, the more trust and loyalty the business will cultivate from its customers.

4. Brand values

According to The Branding Journal, “brand values can be defined as the foundational beliefs that a company stands for.” By aligning the brand and its values to something bigger than the brand, the customers will find them to be relatable, this will help the business to create and deepen the trust between the business and its customers leading to a higher degree of customer loyalty.

5. Brand targeting

Investopedia defines a target market as “a group of people that have been identified as the most likely potential customers for a product because of their shared characteristics such as age, income, and lifestyle. Brand targeting allows the business to segment and target the ideal group of people the business wants to appeal to.

6. Brand positioning

The last element is Brand Positioning, according to Kotler brand positioning is defined as “the act of designing the company’s offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of the target market”.  Brand positioning involves strategizing the marketing efforts to make sure that the business’ tactics are effectively reaching the targeted market segment and position themselves in the mind of their target audience accordingly.

Conclusion

Branding plays an important part in a business’ marketing plan especially in the age of social media, it allows a business to stand out from the crowd and make an impression on the customers allowing them to gain the trust of the customers which can be converted into brand loyalty. Need a more in-depth analysis of branding personalized for your own business? Contact Robotic Marketer to find out how we can assist your company to establish a strong brand identity.

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When it comes to marketing budgets, many marketing teams can contest that they wish they had more to play with.

Especially after the pandemic of Covid-19, many businesses have not had the bounce back that others may have, leading to an even more lower marketing budget.

But whether you’re dealing with budget cuts or not, getting the most out of your marketing budget should be the main focus for marketing leaders.

With marketing seeing a drop in budget share last year that was unprecedented in recent history, falling from 11.0% to 6.4%.Spotting opportunities that reward you with higher return on investments and professionally tweaking your budget to finessing in all areas of the operation to produce better results.

With this in mind, we will be going over ways on how to maximise your marketing budget.

Focus on Customer’s Retention

The smartest thing you can do in maximising your marketing budget is by focusing on your customer’s needs.

This can be done by working on customer satisfaction and upselling the products or service, which must correlate with best serving your clients as well as the customers.

Everyone knows that the cheaper option is to continue to retain customers than to gain or lose them, this is why it’s vital to focus the marketing strategy on customer needs.

It is said that acquiring new customers is 5-25 times more expensive than if you were to focus on retaining existing customers.

Allocate your budgets to campaigns with the goal to improving relationships with current customers such as loyalty campaigns and customer feedback surveys just to name a couple.

Refreshing than Creating

With an enormous amount of old content at the marketing team’s disposals, there is a lot of those contents that are still relevant to use as a refresher.

Refreshing the use of old campaigns is definitely a lot more cost-effective than creating new ones from scratch.

This a great approach for marketers that find themselves with very minimal budgets and want to optimize their budgets as efficiently as possible.

Take time to find previous ad campaigns that have performed exceptionally well and recycle the elements that made them work to build new campaigns.

Use of Digital Marketing Strategies

If you haven’t done so, it’s recommended to start shifting your marketing strategies into these digital content marketing strategies:

Content Marketing (Blogs):

The most cost-effective strategy to choose is the use of blogs.

This is a way that marketing teams can reach out to their customers with relevant information through content.

It establishes relationships as well as driving traffic which promotes engagement with your customer base as customers will be able to like, share and comment on your blog posts.

Social Media Marketing:

This is how you can connect to a personal level with customers.

If you would like to have a stronger engagement with customers, finding the social media platforms and posting relevant and engaging content up on them will instantly get customers more interested in the business.

Email Marketing:

With 77% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months, it would be absurd to say email marketing isn’t the way to go.

Implementing the right A/B tests as a user experience research method, will produce results even quicker.

Landing Pages:

Landing pages is a great call-to-action method that leads customers to the right pages at the right time.

The main focus is to get customers to purchase the products and services, so with a call-to-action that takes them directly into the page to do so will lead to conversions.

Ensure Decisions are Data-Driven

When it comes to maximising marketing budgets, it’s imperative to be using the right technology in order to identify how your budgets are impacting the business and to decide how to allocate budgets for your marketing strategies.

With marketing strategy technology platforms such as Robotic Marketer, they can develop, manage, execute, report on marketing strategy performance and as well as producing you with higher return on investments.

Optimize Marketing Budgets

There are a few ways that you can optimize your marketing budgets and get the absolute most out of.

It’s important that regardless of your marketing teams’ budget, that there is always a different angle of opportunity for you to target in order to make the most of it.

Marketing strategy technologies have become the most efficient way to assist in development marketing strategies.

If you would like to learn more about Robotic Marketer, visit us on https://www.roboticmarketer.com/

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The year 2020 gave individuals across the globe a subtle push to follow their dreams and start a small business. It was the year of home bakers, thrift stores, crochet, art, and unique start-ups. The year is 2022, and a well-defined marketing strategy could put you back on the map if your small business took a backseat.

The notion that marketing strategies are meant for large businesses may stop smaller enterprises from investing in one. We’re here to tell you that a small business can profit just as much from marketing.

Marketing strategies are aligned with your business values and are produced to offer you the best outcomes. Start small with a short-term marketing plan; as time passes, the results will flow in, allowing you to invest in an ongoing long-term marketing strategy.

If you are unsure and can’t navigate your way through a marketing strategy, let us help you:

• Plan your goals

The first step of your marketing strategy must outline a list of goals your business wants to achieve in a set period. These goals can range from acquiring more sales and gaining social media followers to launching a website.

Once your goals are planned, evaluate them based on attainability. Then, carefully research how your goals can benefit your business by aligning with your values.

• Prepare a budget

Once you’ve listed your goals, the next step is to mark an amount you’d be willing to spend on marketing efforts. Then, bifurcate the total amount, assigning it to each goal based on its priority.

Beginning your marketing journey with a planned budget will allow you to track how your money is being spent and if it is enough for the best results.

• Choose your audience

Choosing your target audience is one of the most important steps when preparing a marketing strategy. Defining who you want to market your product to can help tailor your marketing strategy in the right direction.

Analyzing who the right audience is for your services is paramount in ensuring your goals are achieved, and your budget is well spent.

• Define your strategy

As the goals and budget come into play, you can start building your strategy. Your strategy is a comprehensive plan that includes methods to attain your goals. It consists of a clear outline and definition of the marketing efforts you will undertake to reach your target audience.

Your strategy should include thorough market research and information on your KPIs and market trends.

• Choosing the right channels

Once your marketing strategy is in place, you should analyze the proper channels to execute your plan. For example, choosing the appropriate social media app based on your business and its goals is essential if your marketing strategy is social media-focused.

Similarly, communicating with your target audience through a website, email marketing, and content marketing can help build brand image and produce positive outcomes for your marketing strategy.

• Executing your strategy

After the decision-making process and thorough analysis of your strategy, you can execute your plan through your selected channels. The execution of a marketing strategy must be consistent and in line with the platform’s guidelines.

Irregular efforts around your marketing strategy can affect your business goals and reduce your chance of gaining a positive outcome.

• Measuring the outcome

The final step of your marketing strategy is tracking the results. Once you’ve executed your marketing strategy, measuring the results through engagement, impressions, and other analytics will help you understand the potential of your marketing strategy.

Additionally, you can analyze the failures and create a better plan to tackle specific pain points around your strategy.

Small businesses can create a minute marketing strategy to complete short-term goals and reap benefits in the longer term. Here is a list of different marketing channels small businesses can invest in:

• Social media marketing

Small business can promote their product to their target audience through social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. In addition, small companies can create more on-brand and trending content to connect with audiences through these platforms.

With LinkedIn and Twitter, small businesses can create a brand image by expressing their business goals, values, and aspirations. This helps customers understand the vision and mission of your business.

• Content marketing

Content marketing includes blogs, videos, and vlogs through which you can promote your business. As a popular form of marketing today, content marketing allows you to create a personal relationship with your target audience.

TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram Reels are excellent platforms to produce content on as engaging short-form and long-form videos can attract a large customer base.

• Referrals

As a small business, connecting with people within your community can help significantly. For example, referrals or word-of-mouth marketing can help spread the word about your business between clusters of people, ensuring maximum exposure.

Marketing strategies provide small businesses with a vehicle to support their business ambitions. However, a small business won’t remain small forever with the right and consistent marketing efforts.

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As a platform with over 830 million registered users, LinkedIn is the most used social media platform for businesses and employees. Besides being a platform for jobseekers and employers that are recruiting, LinkedIn is now a must-use for marketers to level up their digital marketing skills.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is viewed as the premium version of LinkedIn, which is valued at $64.99, it provides you with the opportunity to find leads much more effortlessly. It gives you with a step ahead of your competitors as it helps leverage the competition more effectively, discover actionable insights to have a better understanding and also gives you better precision in terms of target leads relevant to your target.

Now that you understand what LinkedIn Sales Navigator is, we can go over how to use it.

Start Your Free Trial

What better way to start using something you aren’t familiar with then a free trial? LinkedIn gives users the option to use Sales Navigator for free for a month. With this you’ll need to give them your credit card information as the way to sign up for this offer, but don’t worry, you can cancel your subscription before the trial ends.

Finding the Right Customers with Advanced Search

Using advanced search has become quite popular for the Sales Navigator users as it allows the user to identify similar prospects that match with your buyer persona, or past customers that have used your product or services. This can be done by finding a LinkedIn profile of a past or current customer, selecting the dropdown menu and then there will be an option labelled “View similar”, providing you a list of 100 similar leads to the profile chosen.

Sales Navigator also gives you the list of all the people that has viewed your profile in the last 90 days, as well as additional information such as insights on the different demographics, trends, etc. Giving you the option to view all this information is quite useful, but in saying that, you may also be targeting your competitors and past clients. LinkedIn Sales Navigator gives you the option to blacklist names from your list, ensuring that you won’t be sending an outreach message to the wrong people.

To do this, go to:

• Search past client and competitors
• Add them into your account list
• Click on the Workflow tab and select Blacklist
• Click Exclude.

Filtering Sales Preference

If you go over to the settings page on your profile, you’ll see that there’s a “Sales Preference” option. Using this will allow you to narrow down your list into a more targeted approach based on the industry, geography, function and also the size of the business.

Not only is this an effective option to specifically target a more precise audience, it will also show you lead recommendations based on the preferences that are set by you. There are an additional 20 other search filters that can be applied into the search including keywords, company, title and many more.

Optimise your Profile

LinkedIn Sales Navigator will definitely give your profile the boost needed to stand out from other competitors or users on the platform. This is done as it enlarges your profile picture and cover photo, as well as throwing you up higher in the search results. For many B2B marketers, 80% of their social media leads come from LinkedIn, so having this extra push to the top is quite effective.

With this in your favor, it is also important to note that a clear, updated profile with a high-quality photo, clear job title, detailed experience and an interesting summary are vital in complimenting the advantages of the profile boost provided.

Is LinkedIn Sales Navigator Worth the Money?

Now that we come to understand more about what LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator can do, the burning question is whether it is worth the money or not.

The answer is yes.

Even if you’re still on the fence with using the Sales Navigator, remember that there is a one-month free trial that you can take advantage of. I definitely recommend giving LinkedIn Sales Navigator a go regardless of the size of your business.

Author – Nathan Lay

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At every second of every day, there a new start-up takes birth in this world. What does this mean for your existing business? New competitors in the industry means a new option for the customers to switch to. What can your company do about this? Nothing. You cannot control the external environment of your business. But you can definitely focus on the internal marketing plan for your company. Making changes to it, inculcating trends, and organizing marketing efforts to hold on to your position in the market and retain your customers. How do we do this? A successful marketing plan. Many components make up this concept. However, the integral part is lead generation.

Lead generation is the process of getting a customer’s organic interest into your business. It falls in every stage of a company’s marketing plan. According to Forbes, the five essential elements of a marketing plan are—setting marketing goals and objectives, defining the target audience, researching marketing tactics, planning your marketing tactics, and developing your timeline and budget. When thinking about these five steps, lead generation falls into each category and influences it directly or indirectly. Let us understand how.

Set Goals

The first step of our marketing plan is to set marketing goals and objectives. This is relatively self-explanatory. You need to create a foundation for all your marketing efforts. They will be concentrated around these goals and will be formulated keeping these goals and objectives into consideration. Lead generation comes into the picture for this stage when the goals and objectives are set. The business will target to achieve these objectives by the deadline. Still, it will depend on the plans to determine what emphasis lead generation will be given. For example, suppose the goals are to increase sales by ten percent. In that case, the focus on lead generation will differ from when the objective is to increase lead generation by some other statistic. The business could also aim at entering a new market or plan as its goal, making lead generation extremely important and a core component of the marketing plan.

Choose your Audience

Then follows, defining a target audience. As indicated in the step, lead generation would be influenced highly by this step. While determining the target audience, the company will conduct many forms of research and analysis on different characteristics of the audience. In the end, coming up with a set of features that their customer or customer segment would possess. This makes the target audience for the business. This target audience determines what efforts will be taken to generate leads and what kind of leads the company is looking for. The steps that will be taken to generate leads would also differ with the different sets of the target audience.

Conduct Research

Next, we research marketing tactics. The marketing plan now has data about what we want to accomplish and who we want to target. We will now decide how this can be done. With the constant evolvement of marketing strategies in the marketing industry, a company can choose and incorporate thousands of options into its marketing plan. Through thorough research on marketing tactics and complying with the target audience and marketing goals, the marketing team will deduce a list of shortlisted options that would work and attract the most customers (i.e., generate leads). In addition, the research will give an insight into results achieved by market leaders and competitors. This can help us understand more about what the business needs to focus on to get the best results possible.

Plan your tactics

Then comes planning the marketing tactics. The team has shortlisted all the strategies that have the potential to prove profitable for the business. What needs to be done now is to decide on a particular group of marketing tactics that the company would stick to. These will analyze the competitors and their projected figures, the industry predictions, etc. With this, the marketing team will make sure what they have chosen yields maximum results. And most importantly, total lead generation and conversion from the customers will define the marketing plan’s success.

Work on Execution

Ultimately, we focus on the timeline for implementing this marketing plan and the budget allocated. A particular timeline would give more effectiveness to the marketing plan. The audience doesn’t enjoy a stretched campaign. It should have a good start and a crisp farewell which would retain the customers’ curiosity for marketing efforts that will follow in the future. A proper time-based campaign would affect lead generation positively. The company will also select a timeline that suits its target audience the most, generating as many leads as possible through the marketing strategy. While allocating a budget to the marketing plan, what will be kept in mind is the overall importance of this campaign, the funds available for the marketing team, and the type of target audience. The timeline plays a role in budget allocation for a marketing campaign. If the marketing plan is a primary part of all the company plans to undertake, there would be a high budget. Similarly, the target audience’s characteristics will influence how much must be invested in a successful marketing strategy for the company.

As discussed above, lead generation plays a role in formulating and implementing a marketing plan at every step. The components of any marketing plan are all intertwined. Each significantly influences the other and cannot be ignored. Hence, each business should consider what impacts would be seen in lead generation when a marketing plan is implemented, regardless of how big or small the effect is.

Lead generation is done best when the interest is organic. But with this immense amount of competition, you must ensure that your efforts are practical. In this time and age, the audience does not want businesses to buy their attention, instead to earn it. This is where lead generation becomes a challenging concept. To explore solutions for this hurdle, read how you can maximize lead generation.

Author – Ishita Jain

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Like many IT consultancies, you don’t just serve small and medium-sized businesses; you are one yourself. Small and medium-sized businesses require a healthy flow of new customers. However, many IT consulting firms heavily rely on word-of-mouth alone.

Suppose you want to expand your IT consulting firm with predictable and repeatable marketing results. In that case, it is essential to have clear marketing objectives in place. Marketing objectives are actionable targets specifically designed to provide overall direction and clear specific actions. Often referred to as SMART goals, these goals need to be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.

Regardless of the size of your business, marketing objectives are necessary. From lead generation, product awareness, and increasing customer lifetime value, clear and direct marketing objectives will help you work towards your goals. Here is how to develop effective marketing objectives for your IT consulting firm.

Conducting Research

Research is the first step to developing a range of marketing objectives that are effective and necessary to the firm.

Research is conducted to ensure the suggested goals align with the firm’s needs and expected growth. However, suppose you are unsure about the current status of the firm and the direction it is heading. In that case, deciding which goals must be developed can be challenging.

Understanding the firm’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats will create an initial guideline outlining the objectives to be put in place. Then, an analysis of the growth opportunities and significant obstacles shape the objectives and how the firm will achieve them.

This stage builds the question: Why are customers choosing other IT consultancy firms over mine? Why has social media engagement decreased? Why is consumer loyalty poor?

Analysis of Metrics

After identifying the main issues and growth opportunities, it’s time to see where your firm currently stands. An analysis of key metrics can determine the number of conversions, reach and engagement levels, conversion rates per channel, return on investment, and more.

This stage helps develop the marketing objectives on a numerical level. An example of analyzing metrics can be considering the reach and level of engagement on social media. By analyzing each digital marketing metric, such as Facebook Insights and YouTube analytics, your firm can identify the current status of reach and engagement. From this, you can start setting goals such as ‘we aim to grow our Facebook followers by 30%’ or ‘we aim to reach 1K subscribers on YouTube‘.

From here, your marketing objectives are starting to form into achievable goals.

Make the Objectives Achievable

After researching and analyzing the key trends and predicated outcomes, the next stage is finalizing your marketing objectives. When finalizing your marketing objectives, you must remember that you are developing achievable goals.

This is where the SMART goals come in. Here is a rundown of what they stand for and how to use them.

Specific – We must remember that broad goals sometimes just turn into wishes. For a goal to be achieved, it must be specific. This helps everyone in the teamwork towards the same results and have a clear and focused perspective on the expectations.

Measurable – The outcome of the goal must be measurable. Refer back to the analysis stage, where we took the time to create a numerical plan. This sets criteria by which you can identify if the objectives progressing in the right direction. These outcomes provide a clear indication of the progress that has been made.

Achievable – These objectives must be achievable and attainable. Creating goals that are unachievable can contribute to a lack of motivation. Start with small goals and build your way up.

Realistic – You need to look at your new objectives in relationship with previously achieved goals. Develop goals that you believe you can accomplish with the trends of previous goals. Be committed to achieving the objectives that have been set and once you’ve achieved it, set a new bigger goal.

Timely – Deadlines can be stressful, yet they are essential to developing an effective marketing objective. Without a deadline, there will be a lack of energy and focus on achieving that objective. A loss of urgency and motivation will overtake the progress towards meeting your goals.

Effective marketing objectives are essential for any industry. If you’re leading a team of IT consultancies that you know are experts in the field yet have identified an issue in maintaining clients or acquiring new clients, maybe the problem lies in your marketing tactics. Developing clear and concise marketing objectives can help invite new clients and bring back old ones. If you want to discover more ways to improve your IT consulting firm’s marketing, click here to read more about creating a marketing strategy with limited knowledge

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