- For marketers, there are three types of objectives
to consider in their annual plan:
business, marketing, and communications.
A business objective is what the entire company
sets out to achieve.
It's high level and relevant
across all internal disciplines,
including marketing, sales, finance,
human resources, operations, and more.
A marketing objective specifies what marketers must achieve
to help deliver the business objective.
A communications objective is what communications
across touchpoints must accomplish
to achieve the marketing objective.
Now, some people use the term advertising objective.
I recommend the term communications objective
because it encompasses all touchpoints
in your marketing campaign,
including paid, owned, and earned media.
Here's a brief example to make sure you understand.
Let's say you're the chief marketing officer at a company
that sells printer cartridges to other companies.
Your CEO's business objective
is to grow sales 8% by year-end,
so your marketing objective could be
to increase trial of printer cartridges 10% by year-end.
And your communications objective could be
to increase awareness of this brand
and its benefits 20% by year-end.
So basically, when you write objectives for the year,
you start with business and work your way down
through marketing and communications objectives.
I've included an exercise file you can use
to write your objectives.
Understanding the relationship between business, marketing,
and communications objectives will help you align strategies
and tactics to help grow your company.