Setting The Bar: Unveiling The Power of Marketing Goals, KPI’s, and Industry Benchmarks

Looking to become that marketing superhero for your company, take your marketing operation to the next level, and receive that big 10X return on your marketing investment? You need to start with Goals, KPIs and Industry Benchmarks, the first pillar of the Great 8 Pillars of ROI-Driven Marketing. This pillar serves as a guiding light for your organization, leading you towards success and allowing you to measure your growth. 

Importance of Goals, KPIs, and Benchmarks

This first pillar of the Great 8 Pillars of ROI-Driven Marketing is designed to help you set actionable targets that will help you gain huge returns on your marketing investment. In a world that constantly evolves and grows more competitive, understanding the significance of these three components is essential to begin your ROI-driven marketing journey.

Goals

Most likely, you’ve set marketing goals before. Unfortunately, a lot of the time hitting the goals you’ve set for yourself won’t lead to returns. This is why G8Ps first pillar emphasizes setting SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely) marketing goals tied to a return on investment. That means your goals are:

• Specific - Your goal should have a clear objective that you can either achieve, or not achieve, with no gray area in between. In other words, whether you achieve a goal or not shouldn’t be subjective.
• Measurable - Your goal should target a key performance indicator (KPI) you use to measure the performance of your efforts.
• Attainable - You should have a realistic shot of achieving your goal. 
• Relevant - Your goal should align with the overall objectives of your organization.
• Time-Bound - Your goal should have a timeline with a specific end date that you must achieve your goal by.

The largest of your goals should be a goal of a 10X return on marketing spend. Why 10X you ask? Big goals deliver big results. While it is often a stretch goal, we’ve worked with B2B manufacturing companies to actually achieve these results. Plus, even if you fall short of your goal, you are still way ahead of where you are today.

KPIs

The next step in the process is to break down the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will allow you to track your performance. KPI’s provide any organization with a means to measure, evaluate, and optimize their marketing efforts. They enable data-driven decision making and continuous improvement, ultimately leading to more effective and successful marketing strategies. We outline the important KPIs you should track in our Marketing Strategy Template. These include:

• Website Traffic - The number of visitors to your website
• Marketing Leads - Any lead or contact that comes in from marketing efforts 
• Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) - Leads that have been identified by marketing as meeting your ideal customer profile and buyer personas and illustrating some form of intent or interest in your product or service 
• Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) - Leads that have been identified by the sales team as a potential customer 
• Proposals/Quotes - This is the number of proposals or quotes extended to marketing-driven leads 
• Closed Won - The number of proposals or quotes extended to marketing-driven leads that become customers.
• Customer Lifetime Value - The total value a customer generates for a business throughout their entire relationship, on average.
• Customer Acquisition Cost - The cost of winning a customer to purchase a product or service.

Industry Benchmarks

Industry benchmarks are a critical piece of this puzzle. When creating goals, look to some standard industry benchmarks for various KPIs. These benchmarks can be used as targets for your organization, and provide valuable insights into the performance of competitors and the broader market. 

How to Use Goals, KPIs, and Industry Benchmarks to Hit Your Marketing ROI Goals

Now that we have defined and highlighted the importance of goals, KPIs, and industry benchmarks, the next step is implementing these components. To make this straightforward, we created the 10X ROI Goal Template, which will help you easily identify your 10X-ROI goal, analyze your current marketing ROI, and set ROI-driven goals. 

Identify Your 10X ROI Goal

Your first step should be to calculate your 10X-ROI goal. This task is easily accomplished by taking your marketing budget and multiplying it by 10. You just need to be sure that you're accounting for the entirety of your marketing budget, including salaries, benefits, events, etc.

Analyze Current ROI & Set ROI-Driven Goals

Now that you have a 10X-ROI goal, it's now time to find your current marketing ROI using the template. You may not have all the data you need readily available, so if this is the case, just use "best guess" data.

After you calculate your current ROI and see the current state of your marketing operation, you will have a much better idea of how you should be thinking and planning. It will also give you a specific idea of the goals that you need to set to achieve your overall marketing ROI.

Achieving Marketing Excellence: Harnessing the Power of Goals, KPIs, and Industry Benchmarks

Goals, KPIs, and industry benchmarks play pivotal roles in shaping a successful marketing strategy, but it is certainly not the only step you need to take. To learn more about what you need to do to implement the Great 8 Pillars of ROI-Driven Marketing, take the G8P Self Assessment. This free assessment will help you analyze your current marketing state against all eight pillars and give you actionable recommendations on what you should focus on next. 

Also, be sure to check out the Great 8 Pillars: ROI-Driven Marketing for Manufacturing Companies.