Expanding Your List of Marketing Objectives Can Help Win More Clients

An interesting survey to conduct—either formally or informally—would be to ask small business owners to identify or list their marketing objectives. Sounds like a simple enough question, but I'm gonna make an educated guess that at least half of the small business community has not given serious or any thought to that question.

In my opinion, a well-thought out response to that question would be more detailed than just saying, "My marketing objective is to get more clients." Everybody wants that, but that answer describes the end result, not necessarily the steps that lead to generating more business. Since sales and marketing is a process, then marketing objectives should focus on first reaching some of the lower rungs on the ladder. Here is a list of some important marketing objectives that may be overlooked or intentionally skipped by business owners failing to look at the big picture:

1. Getting the phone to ring more often
2. Capturing more email addresses and other contact information
3. Generating more customer referrals
4. Establishing more of a recognizable brand
5. Increasing online visibility
6. Increasing off-line visibility
7. Cultivating a reputation as a subject-matter expert
8. Developing an integrated marketing strategy
9. Generating more traffic at your website or physical location
10. Creating 'top of mind awareness' among your target audience
11. Cultivating relationships with customers, potential customers, and/or customer referral sources
12. Interacting more often with prospects on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forums, or through an email newsletter that you publish
13. Scheduling sales appointments with qualified prospects
14. Generating leads and contacting qualified leads more than once 

Knowing what your marketing objectives are and thinking of ways to expand that list of objectives can clarify your business goals and help you identify and make the most of opportunities. Increased clarity can bring many useful marketing ideas to the surface and help keep your small business marketing strategies moving in the right direction.