The key to marketing is being clear about what you offer. Why? Because if you’re not clear, how are you going to communicate with your customers? Your potential customers, supporters or members will respond to a clear message. So, setting a goal can help you convey exactly what you are offering visitors to your business and / or website.
From time to time you will have marketing campaigns and so you need to be clear about your goals. This applies equally to marketing products or services for sale and to marketing a cause.
Your goal isn’t always to sell as many widgets as possible in the shortest possible time. You need to be clear about the following, when setting a goal:
- What are you marketing? This can be the hardest question to answer, especially where you’re selling a service. You may know in your own mind what it is and need to find a way to describe it to the public. Frequently, you’ll find you’re actually not entirely clear yourself, which can be a problem.
- How many do you need to sell? You may have a warehouse full of widgets and so you know how many you have, which is not necessarily the number the market needs. Or with an online product you may have no limit to the number you can sell. For a service the number is some function of your capacity to deliver and the number you need to break even. For a cause your goal may be a target number of supporters or an appeal for financial support, for example.
- When do you need to sell them by? For some businesses there is a natural time limit as their product or service is tied to a time of year, eg Christmas. Some businesses find a product launch effective and so sell over a very short period of weeks or days. Other products or services are evergreen and have no particular time limit. Causes are often time limited and a good campaign will draw attention to particular events to marshal support in particular places or reach goals for financial appeals.
- Price is important, you need to know your price and take care not to over or under price your product or service. This may be less obvious for causes although some causes will incur costs and these may be met through supporters’ giving.
Some Possible Goals
One approach is to interview potential clients and find out what products or services they need. So, here are some possible goals you may set as a result. Do note you will set different goals from time to time, as circumstances develop:
- Build your email list
- Promote a cause
- Raise funds for your cause
- Raise funds for a new business venture
- Research a product or service
- Find members for your organisation
- Create an online community
- Find authors for a blog or other form of journal
- Invite people to attend a meetingFind volunteers
- Help people learn about a particular topic
- Encourage debate on a particular topic
- Find partners or affiliates
- Collaborate on a project, eg through a seed launch
- Build a network around a shared interest
- Arrange a flash mob or other on-street campaign
- Sign a petition
- Get people to pass on your details to others who may be interested
I’m sure you can add to this list. The main thing is to work on one goal at a time or at least, if you have several goals, make sure you don’t put them all on your home page! Website visitors respond to clear messages and clear requests.
This post is part of a series based on the circuit questionnaire, the branding element.
