Buss3 Marketing

Understanding Marketing Objectives

Marketing -  The process of identifying, anticipating (predicting) and satisfying      customer needs profitably

A firm’s marketing aims and objectives are the goals or targets of the marketing function. These must be consistent with the organisation’s corporate aims and objectives.

Marketing objectives need to be seen as part of a hierarchy of objectives. A corporate objective influences a marketing objective, which in turn shapes the marketing strategies and marketing tactics employed:

Types of Marketing Objectives

Because marketing is involved in every aspect of a business, you often find that marketing objectives are wide‐ranging. Some examples are provided below:

Objective Area

Example Objectives

Maintaining or increasing market share

-          Achieve revenue growth of 15% per year for the next four years

-          Add 1,000 new customer accounts generating at least £100,000 per account within three years

Developing new products

-          Launch at least 25 new products into the industrial channel in 2010 and 2011

-          Grow average first‐year sales of new editions by 25% in the Higher Education sector

Meeting the needs of customers

-          Achieve at least a 95% excellent customer service rating each month

-          Increase the proportion of sales bookings from repeat business to 45% for the summer season

Entering a new market / market positioning

-          Supply a minimum of 50,000 trial downloads per month

-          Increase the number of customer enquiries from the EU by 10,000 per month

-          Recruit five suitable distribution agents in the four target countries

Internal Influences

Internal influences are those factors within a business, such as workforce, financial position and resources that affect its marketing objectives.

Corporate objectives

As with all the functional areas, corporate objectives are the most important internal influence. A marketing objective should not conflict with a corporate objective

Finance

The financial position of the business (profitability, cash flow, liquidity) directly affects the scope and scale or marketing activities.

Human resources

For a services business in particular, the quality and capacity of the workforce is a key factor in affecting marketing objectives. A motivated and well‐trained workforce can deliver market‐leading customer service and productivity to create a competitive marketing advantage

Operational issues

Operations has a key role to play in enabling the business to compete on cost (efficiency / productivity) and quality. Effective capacity management also plays a part in determining whether a business can achieve its revenue objectives

External Influences

External factors are those outside of a business, such as the state of the economy and the actions of its competitors.

Competitor actions

Marketing objectives have to take account of likely / possible competitor response. E.g. an objective of increasing market share by definition means that competitor response will not be effective

Market dynamics

The key market dynamics are market size, growth and segmentation. Changes in any of these undoubtedly influence marketing objectives. A market whose growth…