Starting with the end in mind can be more beneficial for your business than you think. Discover the 5 most achievable content marketing objectives.

Not setting goals for your business’s content marketing efforts is like eating cereal without milk.

It’s just sort of… weird.

One of the habits of highly effective people is to always start with an end in mind. Just like people, businesses need goals. Without goals, you can’t be sure whether your content marketing efforts are doing the trick.

In short, no goals no results.

Whether it’s increasing profits, expansion, or increasing market share, setting business objectives will provide focus and directions to business functions.

Think of your business as a fishing boat in open waters and your customers are the fish, marketing would be the current bringing the customers toward your net. Therefore, aligning marketing goals to business goals will help you to attract the right “fish”.

Why set content marketing objectives for your business?

When you realized that content marketing is the key to reach your target audience online, you’re halfway to success. But like what we mentioned, without specific target, you’re simply tossing contents out there without knowing whether they’re really working.

For example, if you’re a new start-up, setting content marketing objectives like increasing 15% web traffic can help you gauge your branded content efforts. If you reach them, bingo! But if you’re not, you probably need to make some changes.

Pro tip: Your content has to be at a state of flux, instead of your goals.

Basically, setting goals help you and your team stay on track on whatever you’re doing. Otherwise they’re meaningless.

The point of setting objectives is to make sure they’re challenging, yet attainable, so you know your business is growing if you really do reach them.

For example, you want to reel in $45,000 online revenue within 3 months. That’s $15,000 per month.

Think it through. Do you have a stable customer base where you can statistically bring in those profits? Can the cost of your services or products realistically meet these numbers? What is the highest amount of sales your content has helped bring in?

Targets that are too lofty can be detrimental to the business as you can’t measure success rate as accurately. Likewise, insignificant goals can be self-defeating to the health of your business in the long run.

Using content marketing as a tool

In our digital age, consumers get all the information and products they need online. Even toilet rolls can be delivered to you at a fingertip. When consumers are spoilt for choice, they need to know there’s someone out there they can trust. As more consumers seek advice from unbiased online reviews and ratings before making purchase decisions, it’s important for businesses to be more than a supplier. Businesses have to be advisors as well, providing relevant impartial views and sharing of industry knowledge with our target audiences. And that comes in the form of content.

You’d probably think, “why compete with information when you can simply pay to have your ads featured in Google or have banners floating around webpages?”

It’s obvious.

When was the last time you clicked on a pop-up ad? Yeah, me neither.

Using content as a marketing tool, businesses gain trust from their target audiences but also higher viewerships from customer recommendation through social media. Drawing attention to the content may aid businesses in creating the image of an organization that wants what’s best for their customers.

Great! Now that you know what you’re getting yourself into, it’s time to set your marketing objectives. While considering your marketing objectives, here are some examples of what businesses consider important.

How do I set goals?

When you’re setting content marketing objectives, what’s crucial is that they should be defined, attainable, and S.M.A.R.T.

See the following for example.

So what basic content marketing goals can you set for your business?

Let’s take a look some of the viable content marketing objectives you can aim for.

Increase website traffic

The pacesetting companies in the Aberdeen study on content marketers experienced 7.8X higher year-over-year growth in unique site traffic compared to followers (19.7% VS 2.5%). That’s some sexy numbers we got there. And surely you want to bring in that for your website. Because that’s the whole point of having a website, right?

Goal example: Increase website traffic by 30% at the end of December 2017.

Generate quality leads

In giving you shall receive. Content marketing has helped businesses generate 3 times as many leads as compared to traditional marketing. Whether it’s through social channels or website, giving contents earns you things more than you can expect. If you’re thinking of generating leads through a certain content campaign, make sure you set a number you can reach.

Goal example: Generate 15% more leads before the end of the month.

Increase sales conversion rate

It’s not about the money, money, money. Sorry to pop your bubble, but it’s always about the money. A study by Aberdeen highlighted that conversion rates are nearly 6x higher for content marketing adopters than non-adopters (2.9% vs 0.5%). What good is your content if you can’t close deals? When visitors feel that they can benefit from the published content, it doesn’t take much longer before they become buying customers.

Goal example: Convert 20% of leads by December 2017.

Improve brand image

Yes, yes. We know we mentioned how important it is to measure a goal. But building brand image is so crucial we can’t bear to ignore it. Statistics show that prospects educated by branded content are more likely to trust the organization. And it takes so much more than just content to build trust. Context, tone, style; your content format should be in a state of flux. Need more quantifiable results? Calculating the total number of social shares or comments is a great way to start.

Goal example: Reach a total of 1000 shares (of a content variations) by the end of the month.

Increase customer loyalty

Again, is this measurable? At first glance, it doesn’t seem like it is. Loyalty can actually be measured. When any of your existing customers purchase from you more than once, that’s when you know it’s happening. Create content targeted towards your existing customers, with the end goal of converting them into sales. You can even entice them with benefits like VIP price or exclusive content.

Goal example: Make sure existing customers constitute 50% online sales for the month.

I’m excited! Get me started!

Setting content marketing objectives is paramount and will aid in the direction of your content and method of presentation. Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t get to your goals. Like any other objectives, it takes time to reach them. Just keep on creating, experimenting, and measuring.