What Unique Challenges Arise When Aligning Marketing Objectives With Business Goals?

What Unique Challenges Arise When Aligning Marketing Objectives With Business Goals?

In the quest to synchronize marketing strategies with overarching company objectives, we've gathered insights from six esteemed professionals, including CEOs and Business Development Directors. They address challenges ranging from adapting to marketing's rapid evolution to connecting marketing metrics to revenue. Dive into the unique perspectives these leaders offer on navigating the complex terrain of aligning marketing and business goals.

• Adapting to Marketing's Rapid Evolution
• Refining Content for Target Audience Growth
• Balancing Short-Term Sales and Long-Term Branding
• Aligning Different Time Horizons
• Navigating Executive Buy-In with Privacy Changes
• Connecting Marketing Metrics to Revenue

Adapting to Marketing's Rapid Evolution

One unique challenge in aligning marketing objectives with broader business goals is the dynamic and rapidly evolving nature of the marketing landscape.

The challenge often arises from the need to adapt to emerging technologies, changing consumer behaviors, and evolving market trends. In some cases, businesses may struggle to keep their marketing strategies aligned with the overall business goals due to the fast-paced nature of the digital environment.

The quick rise and evolution of social media platforms, shifts in search engine algorithms, or sudden changes in consumer preferences can impact marketing strategies. Adapting to these changes quickly while maintaining alignment with broader business objectives requires flexibility, continuous monitoring, and the ability to swiftly adjust marketing campaigns.

As a digital agency, we're always keeping abreast of the constant changes to the digital landscape, but nonetheless, this challenge highlights the importance of regularly reassessing and updating marketing plans to ensure they remain in sync with the overarching business goals.

We believe effective communication and collaboration between the marketing team and other departments within the business are crucial to addressing these challenges and ensuring objectives are flexible and adjusted based on the ever-changing market dynamics.

Refining Content for Target Audience Growth

Aligning marketing objectives can be a challenge as a company grows and adopts a new or refined target audience. This is an issue we faced at SmashBrand when we needed to shift our content to a more seasoned CPG audience. To accomplish this, we adopted a second strategy where we delivered insights in addition to expertise. Insights are received by even the biggest brands, and as a result, we have seen our lead generation for this target audience increase significantly.

Balancing Short-Term Sales and Long-Term Branding

A unique challenge in aligning marketing objectives with broader business goals is often the balancing act between short-term sales targets and long-term brand building. For instance, while immediate sales boosts can be achieved through aggressive promotional campaigns, these might not always align with the long-term goal of establishing a premium brand image. A specific instance of this was when a business, aiming to position itself as a luxury brand, found that frequent discounts and sales promotions were eroding its high-end perception.

The challenge was to recalibrate the marketing strategy to focus more on brand storytelling and customer experience, rather than short-term sales. This required a shift in investment toward content marketing and customer engagement, aligning marketing more closely with the long-term goal of building a prestigious brand identity, even though it initially slowed down sales growth.

Aligning Different Time Horizons

A unique and challenging fact is that marketing objectives and business goals typically have different time horizons. Let me explain. A top-level marketing goal is to create awareness by using branding and positioning. These are long-term goals, and changes in brand perception and positioning take months or even years. The marketing goal of awareness is challenging to align with a short-term, top-level business goal: sales and turnover.

True, short-term marketing goals, e.g., the number of leads won, contribute to the turnover goal. However, the level and hierarchy of the two goals are different. The lead goal is granular, while the turnover goal remains broader.

The task of marketing management is to set expectations to address this challenge.

Navigating Executive Buy-In with Privacy Changes

The biggest challenge marketers currently face is getting buy-in from executives due to the increasing lack of attribution from marketing channels.

I consider 2008-2018 the 'golden years' for marketing. We could track almost anything and attribute dollar-for-dollar ROI to our digital efforts. With an increased emphasis on consumer privacy, how we measure marketing efforts has drastically changed. A lot of executives still want to see that granular ROI before investing in new initiatives, which makes it hard to align objectives.

Connecting Marketing Metrics to Revenue

Businesses need dollars, and many marketing initiatives use the currency of engagement or impressions. So, with marketing efforts, we push forward with the connection to actual dollars coming in wherever possible. We want to keep the accounting team busy, and we do that by aligning our campaigns as closely to the final sale as possible.