Define marketing operations goals
Define marketing operations as the processes, systems and tools that enable marketing teams to be more productive, efficient and effective.
Define marketing operations goals as the operational targets that you set to meet your overall business goals. These can be aligned with your growth plans or tied to strategic initiatives such as expanding into new markets or launching new products.
Marketing operations goals need to be measurable, achievable and realistic – they should be specific so you can track your progress towards them over time.
Align with the business strategy to define operational goals
- The business strategy is about increasing revenue.
- Operational goals should be about increasing revenue.
- How can you do this?
- Increase customer satisfaction by providing excellent service and products.
- Decrease costs by reducing waste and streamlining processes so that you have more resources to invest into growth initiatives, like marketing and sales campaigns that bring in new clients or retain current ones or lead generation efforts that yield a higher number of qualified leads for your sales team to follow up on (and close).
You’ll also want to make sure your operational goals are aligned with each other—that is, if one goal focuses on improving efficiency by cutting costs while another focuses on increasing productivity by hiring more staff members, don’t try to achieve both at the same time unless there’s a clear reason why doing so will benefit your company overall.
Incorporate customer-centric metrics into operational goals
Incorporating customer-centric metrics into your goals is a great way to measure the success of your operations. Customer lifetime value (CLV) is an example of one such metric, which shows how much revenue you’re generating from each customer over time. Another example is customer satisfaction, or how happy customers are with their purchases after making them.
Customer retention rate refers to how many customers stay with a company for multiple transactions or purchases over time. This can be measured by examining the percentage of customers who purchase again after purchasing once and comparing it against the percentage who purchase more than once but don’t come back again (i.e., those who made just one purchase).
These types of metrics are important because they show marketers what kind of impact they have on their organization’s bottom line: if they increase CLV by 10%, then that means that 10% more profit will be generated as a result; if they increase their average order value by 5%, then 5% more money will be spent on marketing activities overall; if they improve customer satisfaction ratings by 25%, then customers will likely become happier with their experience interacting with the brand over time; etcetera—the possibilities go on!
Identify partners and stakeholders to create operational goals
Stakeholders can include anyone who is affected by the goals, such as:
- Customers
- Employees
- Vendors (suppliers)
- Consultants
In some cases, you may need to consult with people outside of your organization. For example, if you’re working on a marketing campaign for a new product or service, you might want to include members of the sales team in these discussions so that they can provide insights into how the project will impact their work.
Improve cross-team alignment.
You should make sure that your team is aligned with the sales team. That way, they will know what they are supposed to do and how they are supposed to do it. It’s also important that you can provide a clear picture of your organization’s goals so everyone knows what their responsibilities are in achieving them.
Marketing operations can’t just focus on lead generation but should make sure leads are also high quality. This means that you’ll want to look at how many qualified leads are coming through your website and sales team pipeline, as well as what percentage of those qualified leads convert into closed deals or customers (which might be a different metric than closed deals).
The data you have available will depend on where in the funnel your company is focusing its energy—if you’re just starting out with a new tool, then it’s likely that most of your attention will be focused on lead generation; however, if you’ve been using an online tool for some time now and have seen an increase in qualified leads through the funnel, then it may make sense for you to shift some resources around so that more attention can be paid towards closing those deals (and helping customers get set up with their new account).
If this sounds like something you need help with, we can help! We have developed a framework for how teams should work together in marketing operations that ensures cross-team alignment at every stage of the process. This framework has been used by many companies worldwide; if you’re interested in learning more about it or working with us on developing it further, contact us today!
Prioritize the goals to ensure their success
- Define the problem before you start solving it.
- Be ambitious, but realistic. Don’t worry about what other people’s goals are: It’s better to focus on your own priorities.
- Prioritize goals so that they’re balanced and achievable.
Once you define your marketing operations goals, you can set up processes to ensure that your team meets its objectives.
Once you define your marketing operations goals, you can set up processes to ensure that your team meets its objectives.
For example, let’s say one of your goals is to increase the number of website visitors by 20% over the next 12 months. To do this, there are many things that need to happen:
- The business strategy needs to align with this goal. For example, if the company is trying to build a new product or expand into a new market, increasing website traffic will help achieve those goals. If not, then improving website traffic may not be as important as another metric or project (like launching an advertising campaign).
- This goal should also line up with customer-centric metrics like conversion rate or purchase intent—otherwise, it won’t have any impact on sales!
- Marketing operations teams should work closely with other teams within their organization because each team has different perspectives on what success looks like for each goal and how it can be achieved across all channels (e-mail marketing campaigns vs social media ads vs mobile app downloads). It’s important to collaborate throughout every step of the process so no one gets left out at any point along the way!
