Traffic, Leads or Sales: How to Set Goals to Define your Marketing Campaigns

“There are some things that money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s________ “. I don’t need to complete the slogan, do I? Mastercard! The answer jumps right at you without even thinking. This is exactly what seasoned and successful marketing efforts aim to achieve, but it’s not as easy as it seems. Creating a complete new marketing campaign may definitely seem like a daunting and complex task, especially if you are a new entrepreneur trying to find your feet, but as long as you set your fundamentals straight and most importantly align your strategies towards a specific goal (e.g. traffic, leads or sales) it shouldn’t be too hard to get your business out there.

HubSpot defines a marketing campaign as “Marketing campaigns are organized, strategized efforts to promote a specific company goal, such as raising awareness of a new product or capturing customer feedback. They typically aim to reach consumers in a variety of ways and involve a combination of media, including but not limited to email, print advertising, television or radio advertising, pay-per-click, and social media.”

The Achilles heel of many failed marketing campaigns is the fact that they have no specific targets in mind. An effective marketing strategy requires you to align all your efforts towards a particular goal. Especially if you are dealing with a limited budget, trying to go all out on all fronts will surely not get you the results you expect. As your digital marketing strategy matures, your goals need to be evolved as well. Use the Sales funnel approach as a guide to evaluate which areas of your marketing strategy need to be addressed. Based on the different stages of the buyer you can then use different tactics to yield results. 

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Traffic

You are all set with your shiny new website and the only thing you now need is, visitors. Recent surveys indicate that 81% of customers use the internet to research the products they need before going ahead to purchase them. Setting up your marketing strategies to generate traffic requires you to concentrate your efforts at the top of the sales funnel. So if you’re starting a new business or maybe aiming towards selling a different product or service, setting your initial goal to gain traffic will be the best way to move forward. Your marketing focus needs to be more towards providing impactful and informative content relating to your business. Remember, the prospects are at the initial stage of their buying journey, so trying to pitch to them without providing enough material to build trust will not lead to a successful campaign.

Here are a few guidelines to help you get started:  

• First and foremost make sure your website is fast, responsive, and mobile-friendly.
• Optimize your website with the right keywords.
• Use SEO and content optimization to be able to rank higher and receive relevant traffic.
• Generate regular blogs, whitepapers, research papers regarding your product or service – make sure they are genuinely informative and not sales pitchy.
• Be active on social media – engage your followers and respond to their feedback.
• Create informative videos about the product e.g. tutorials.

Leads

Getting leads as a goal is required when your website is receiving traffic and now you need to convert them to prospects. This strategy resonates further down the sales funnel and your content needs to do the same. Generating leads requires you to go ahead and connect with your visitors to get to know them. Build your buyer persona and cater your content towards them. The key here is to make the information you provide interactive and enable the visitors to share their names, numbers and email addresses. 63% of marketers say generating leads is one of their top challenges. Feedback forms and Q&A’s can lead to more interactions with potential customers. Following are 4 strategies for effective lead marketing:  

• Catch leads through forms- in exchange for valuable content like eBooks, advanced guides and newsletters you can ask interested visitors to fill out forms
• Use paid promotion – you can target your audience based on region, age, gender, and various other parameters by using paid advertisement. Google ads, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn all provide a popular platform for you to generate relevant leads
• Online PR – You can gain significant online publicity with publications, blogging and expertise websites within your industry
• Email Marketing – it is one of the earliest yet most effective ways to generate leads. Structure your email with suitable subject lines and provide a preview or demo of the service to reach out to potential buyers

Sales

You have generated constant traffic and created a reliable database of product leads interested in your product, now it’s time to seal the deal with sales. Your marketing strategy has to be completely focused on personalized content. This content needs to be different as your potential buyer has gone through the awareness and research stages and now needs a final push towards your service or product. Now is the time to promote content that sells instead of content that educates. Share value propositions where precise pain points will be addressed and challenges will be solved. Move towards a more direct and straight forward approach with the main features that your product or service provides. Here are a few tips that will be helpful:

• Offer free trials and subscriptions – What better way to build the confidence of your customers than to provide a preview of the service According to a case study by Groove HQ, free trials and simplified pricing lead to an increase in conversions by a staggering 358%.
• Personalized email with offers and discounts – Follow up using your email lists to offer enticing deals and discounts. Make sure you target your most solid leads with personalized propositions first. The right offer can increase your response by up to 300%.
• Track stats with analytics – use tools like Woopra, Leadfeeder, or Google Analytics to measure your success rate and redefine strategies based on what works. 
• Don’t forget to follow up – 60% of customers say “no” four times before saying “yes”. Keep following up with new information, guides, tutorials, and offers. Don’t give up. Keeping your business up-to-date with your leads will lead to more recognition and build trust.