How to: Align Media Efforts Towards Your Business Objectives.
In the past 20 years, tech giants have paved the way for people like you and me by creating tools that enable us to align paid and owned media efforts towards business objectives. They created platforms that completely revolutionized the world we live in. Take a second and think how different your life would be if Microsoft, Google, Facebook or Amazon didn’t exist. Well, the case is also true for businesses. Before digital media got invented, businesses had only two ways of attracting new customers: traditional media and word of mouth. Let me tell you, it’s way harder (impossible?) to calculate a return on ad spend from a Newspaper ad or Radio commercial than from a Facebook sponsored post.
As those tools became more refined, so did the marketers. However, one thing remained a priority: Understanding how to align media efforts with business objectives.
Ideally, a great marketer understands its business objectives, identifies the key performance indicators (KPI), defines the metrics and turns them into S.M.A.R.T. goals that he needs to follow for the business to be successful. Not sure how you’re supposed to do that? No worries, that’s why we’re here! By the end of this article, you will have a basic understanding of these concepts, which will allow you to align and scale your business the right way.
At ODM World, clients come to us with all sorts of business challenges. Our relationships always start the same way: a comprehensive audit
- Analytics
- Social Media
- UX
- SEO
Once completed, these audits answer two fundamental questions for the client once completed.
- What is the digital maturity of the business
- How can we use the tools at our disposal more effectively to improve the digital maturity of the client and help him reach its business objectives
From Business Objectives to S.M.A.R.T. Goal
Most of the time, we need to realign our clients marketing efforts in the right direction. How? We start by asking the right questions to discover their real business objectives.
Let’s be clear:
Business objectives are the results your company hopes to reach as it grows. Your business objectives dictate how you should allocate your time, resources and money. The common categories of business objectives you’ll see are:
- Revenue objectives
- Operational objectives
- Productivity and performance objectives
- Customer satisfaction objectives
- Growth objectives
While business goals describe where the company wants to end up, business objectives dictate the directions for getting to those goals.
From Business Objectives to S.M.A.R.T. Goals and Smart Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)
As you set your goals and objectives, we suggest you evaluate them using the S.M.A.R.T. framework. Using this framework, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Relevant, and Time-bound, will help you set solid strategic goals and improve your business performance for maximum efficiency.
The ultimate objective is to pair your S.M.A.R.T. goals with your KPIs, which will direct your business in the right direction to be successful.
From Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) to Metrics
A lot of people use those terms interchangeably, but it’s wrong. Here’s a good way to think about it: KPI’s are the metrics you use to measure each of your goals. They help you define your strategy and clear focus.
Let’s take the example of a Jiu Jitsu apparel eCommerce.
If the owners’ main business objective was to increase revenues, here’s what their KPIs and S.M.A.R.T. goals would look like:
- S.M.A.R.T. Goal 1: Increase the Conversion Rate by 50% within the next 6 months
- KPI 1: Conversion Rate
- S.M.A.R.T. Goal 2: Increase the number of Transactions by 30% within 1 year.
- KPI 2: Number of Transactions
- S.M.A.R.T. Goal 3: Increase the AOV by 25% within the next 6 months.
- KPI 3: Average Order Value
the S.M.A.R.T. goals help dictate what actions should be taken in order to reach these goals and ultimately the business objective while the Key Performance Indicators support a specific outcome.
As for Metrics, they are the common measures that still add value to your organization but aren’t critical to your success. They will vary depending on your targeting creatives and placements. There’s a simple rule you need to remember, every KPI is a metric, but not every metric is a KPI.
An example of a valuable metric would be the daily number of inbound traffic per channel, the number of pages views per session, the average time spent on site, etc.
Here’s a checklist to help you challenge you KPI’s:
- They help you see if the strategy in place is working.
- They focus your attention on what matters most for your business success.
- They become a common language for communicating performance.
- They are valid and realistic.
- They are provable and ensure accurate data.
Still not sure how to align your media efforts towards business objectives? Send us a message and we can take a look at your specific situation to see how we can help you. You’d be surprised how some quick fixes can bring in amazing results!