After the analysis on buyer’s personas, we need to determine the marketing goal/s. So, what IS our goal/s? Is it to increase traffic amount and sell expensive advertisements like Google? Or is it to improve search rankings (ranking of web pages when a person searches for the subject) and to increase sales? Or is it to increase brand awareness and improve reputation management? Or to establish thought leadership (the spread & share of knowledge to establish online reputation)?
There may be other goals which haven’t been pointed out. For a company, the Internet Marketing team should have at least one goal to achieve. If there are more than one marketing goals, they should NOT be combined together as one. Each of the goals should stay separate and the methods of achieving the goals should be different to each other. This is to avoid complexity and to make sure that the goal is possible to achieve.
The author of “The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web” Tamar Weinberg pointed out a method to measure if our goals are appropriate. He names it S.M.A.R.T. By “SMART” he means that they should be Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely.
Specific The goals should include specific details. This will be the only way to measure if the goal is reached.
Measureable It is essential to analyze “How” you will manage to achieve the goal and “What” are you required for this.
Attainable Goals can be challenging, but it has to be achievable. Analyze what and how you have achieved so far and if it is possible to achieve your next goal.
Realistic Make sure that you have the requirements to achieve your goal. Do you have the money? Do you have the right person to aid you?
Timely Set a limited time for you to achieve your goal. The goal shouldn’t be something that you put your money and effort into forever until it is fulfilled. If the goal is not achieved by the end of the estimated time, then there has to be analysis done before you set onto the next goal.
As a local Diaper company’s marketing team, our goals are:
1. To Establish Thought Leadership. The aim is to develop an online knowledge database for our unique customers (different buyer’s personas) which answers any of their queries on diapers. The goal is to achieve at least 60 pages of information. The projected time period is one year, effective from 31st December 2010.
To achieve the goal:We understand that this type of customer (the earlier example of buyer’s personas) is eager to learn new knowledge and in the fastest way possible. Therefore we can act as an educator online. We can develop our own knowledge database which includes information on the type of diapers, the materials they are made, comfort comparison of different materials and basically answering any type of questions that they can possibly have in their mind. We can establish our own video tutorials on how to put on diapers. We can also create a YouTube channel for the company and upload these videos onto the web and interlink each of the videos to the company’s knowledge database. The online knowledge database should be a customer and company interaction center. Questions will be proposed both by the company and the customers. Answers and solutions are replied by the company for the customers. All of the information should be professional, because we need to be trust worthy for the customers to build loyalty and relationship with the company.
The scenario provided is just a short summary of how they should look like, but in the case when you are to design the Buyer’s Personas, the Goals and the Method of Achieving the goals, they should be further elaborated to provide detailed description for other people. And again, the example provided only presents one goal; there can be multiple marketing goals for a company.