Ignore These 3 Objectives at Your Peril

In this episode of “How to Sell More,” host Mark Drager breaks down the three powerful campaign objectives that are often overlooked by even the most advanced salespeople, marketers and business leaders.

• Before you spend a single dollar on your next campaign, step back and examine the importance of each of these three levels of objectives that exist for every single project in every campaign: 
• Corporate objectives: Essential for providing direction and purpose for any business investment, including marketing campaigns, product development, and staffing decisions.
• Campaign objectives: Each campaign or project needs well-defined objectives to understand its role within the larger business strategy.

Objectives for each asset in the campaign: Define objectives for each element within a campaign (such as landing pages, ads, and lead magnets) to ensure proper messaging and to understand how each piece plays a part in the customer journey.

Links to This Episode

• Apple Podcast
• Spotify
• YouTube
• Audible

‍

Key Takeaways

• Understand the “Why” in Every Campaign - Clarify your corporate objectives to ensure that all efforts contribute meaningfully to the business's broader goals.
• Get Specific - The individual objectives of each campaign should align with the campaign goals and, in turn, with the top-level corporate objectives. This approach ensures that every component of a campaign contributes effectively to the overall strategy.
• Every Asset Serves a Purpose - Identifying the goal or objective of every single asset within a campaign leads to better planning, clearer communication, and enhanced accountability for the outcomes.

‍

Top 3 Reasons to Listen

Gain Clarity:  Understand why defining your corporate objectives is the first step in planning a successful campaign.

Drill Down: Discover how drilling down on your objectives can drive massive results because each member of your team will have a clear idea of their role and purpose.

Learn More About The Big Five: Mark reveals his motivation for writing “The Big Five” whitepaper and how it factors into setting your campaign’s objectives. Reach out and connect with Mark to get your copy.

More About our Host, Mark Drager

AKA the Badass Brand Architect, 5th Generation Entrepreneur, Host of The How To Sell More Podcast

When he's not podcasting, Mark's the Co-Founder & CEO of SalesLoop. He's a dedicated husband to his high school sweetheart, Jacqueline, and a proud father of four.

Mark didn't follow the typical route to becoming a sales & marketing expert. A connected figure in the entrepreneur community, Mark provides listeners with a unique mix of wit, insight, and straightforward advice.

Some of Mark's unconventional adventures include commandeering a Boeing 737-800 for a day, facing harsh criticism from a billionaire, and shedding 70 lbs in his late 30s. Though he never attended college, Mark stands as proof of the might of maintaining a student mindset and being ever-ready to seek assistance.

‍

A Transcription of The Talk

Mark Drager: Welcome to "How to Sell More. Today, we are talking about goal setting. But I know Christmas has just passed, and New Year's is around the corner. Everyone is talking about goal setting. However, this isn't about personal goal setting; we're actually talking about the three levels of goals and objectives that every campaign has. We're going to break those down for you, coming up right now. I'm Mark Drager; let's get into it.

So, if your LinkedIn feed is anything like mine, it was filled as I scrolled through today. It's jam-packed with people discussing New Year's resolutions, the end of 2023, setting goals for 2024, and Q1 is right around the corner, along with hustle culture and all those things. And this episode is not that. This episode is actually about sharing the three different levels of objectives that exist for every single project and campaign. I want to share these three with you because they are massively powerful and often overlooked by even the most advanced salespeople, marketers, and business leaders.

It's something that I picked up and noticed well over a decade ago. Stay with me for a moment, and I want to share a bit about how I arrived at these, then we will break down what they are and why they're so powerful. I'll even share with you a free download, which you can reach out to me for, called "The Big Five." But let's dig into how I found out about this.

When I first started my agency back in 2006, I was petrified that people would hire us, we would do a bunch of work, and then we would come back to them. They would look at all the work, effort, and budget we spent and say, "What the hell is this? This isn't what I asked for. This isn't what I need. This isn't what I wanted. What have you been doing all this time?" That was a massive fear I had in the back of my mind.

You have to understand that in 2006 when I started my agency, I was 23 years old. I had graduated high school, gone to a private film school for 15 months, worked in television as a freelancer for a year, spent a year in a sales role in a hotel doing AV, and then worked at an internet marketing franchise. I was just again petrified that a client would give me their budget, trust me with their products, brand, and marketing assets, and then I'd come back to them, and they'd look at me like a complete idiot, thinking I had potentially wasted their time, money, and budget, and made a huge mistake.

That fear helped me in some ways and hurt me in others. It held me back but also helped me because it forced me to get really good at pulling a brief out of a senior leader, even though I was young and they knew far more about their business, needs, and requirements than I did. This fear of making a mistake ensured that I never left that first initial discovery meeting without a super clear idea of exactly what we were doing. I would put together scoping documents, and briefs, or even create pitches to give back to them, to ensure that in their language, we were both on the same page. This is something I think every single person in a consultative sales role, everyone in a sales role, needs to spend more time doing. It takes a lot of time.

But what it helped me realize is that there are actually five key areas, and I wrote a white paper on it called "The Big Five." If you're listening along and thinking, "Oh man, I wish I could see this, get this on paper," you can. At the end of the podcast, I'll share how you can get a copy of this for free. But there are five areas that every project requires. The first is objectives. Often, I don't know about you, but the goals and objectives are not very clear. So, we're going to break those down now.

I developed this framework where the first area is objectives. The second is the target audience. The third is motivation. The fourth is the platform, market, or communication channel we're speaking to, and the fifth is the message. These are the big five things we need to focus on.

But even within the very first step – objectives – there are nuanced elements. There are three levels of objectives and three levels of goals that we need to get clear before we spend a single moment or a single dollar on a campaign. Now, with me trying to work off the Christmas indulgence and thinking ahead to 2024, we're often thinking about our goal-setting. And this is wildly powerful.

Okay, so there are three levels of objectives that we need to get clear with anything we do. The first, the highest level, is the corporate objectives. What are our quarterly or annual goals? What are our corporate objectives? Why are we choosing to invest in this product, this campaign, this R&D, this development, this hire, etc.? How will this investment of time, money, and resources tie back to help the business achieve its goals?

If you go way back to an earlier episode of "How to Sell More," we had Mr. Lee Benson on the podcast. Lee Benson is the creator of the MIND methodology. MIND stands for your Most Important Number and the drivers. It's a fantastic episode. If you haven't listened to it, I recommend listening right after this one, because it provides so much clarity on why many departments in most organizations are doing busy work but not actually driving the business forward. His methodology of MIND – the Most Important Number and the Drivers – fits very well into this top-level corporate objective. We're about to do something new, invest dollars into this new initiative. How will it help the business drive forward and reach its goals? That's objective level number one.

It's important that every single person on the project or tied to this investment or activity understands it because we all need to ensure that the work we are doing ties back up to that top-level objective.

Now, the next level down – the campaign, the product launch, the R&D, the investment of staff, whatever it might be – it has its own objectives. Top-level corporate objectives might be annual targets or making plans, but the next level down will have its own objectives. The easiest way to think about this is, for example, if we're doing a marketing or advertising campaign, we're going to spend a certain number of dollars or placements, and we want to generate leads. Or, if it's a recruitment campaign, we want to generate candidates. Or, if it's a win-back campaign, we want to win back past clients. The campaign or activity itself will have its own objectives. What are those objectives, and how can we tie them to a KPI that can be measured to ensure we're hitting our goals?

This level of objectives is often where most people spend their time. In my experience, it is rare for me to meet with someone or get a brief from a senior leader and not have a crystal clear idea of this second level, this level of objectives. We are spending X because we want to achieve Y. This is where we spend all our time. But again, many people do not have that top-level objective. So, they don't understand how the campaign is going to feed back into the top-level corporate objectives.

Now, if you're still following me, at the top, we have the corporate objectives. The next level down, if we're thinking about a funnel or a pyramid, is the campaign objective. Now, the third level, which is rarely addressed, is the objective of every single asset within that campaign. For instance, in a lead generation campaign, this could include a landing page, an ad, a lead magnet, a follow-up call, a form for pre-qualifying, etc. Each asset, activity, or step of the sequence requires its own objective, defining its purpose in the overall sequence.

I've been doing this for 17 years now, and today, as I'm recording this, is our 17th anniversary, a major milestone for any entrepreneur. In that time, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've been given a brief with this level of specificity. Why is this needed? For instance, if I'm creating a Facebook ad, its purpose is to stop the scroll, capture attention, build curiosity and interest, and get them to the landing page. Each part of the campaign needs its objective defined to understand how it fits in the bigger picture. 

Speaking of the big five, objectives, target audience, motivation, the platform or media, and the message – how do you craft these if you have no sense of where an asset sits within the campaign? Looking at these three levels of objectives when pulling a brief out of stakeholders or putting together a project plan will drive massive results. It brings clarity, better guidance on what and how to build, and allows for greater accountability.

I want to thank you for catching this episode of "How to Sell More." I wish you Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas if you celebrate it, a joyful New Year, and hope that 2024 is a year filled with excitement and massive gains for you and your organization. I'm Mark Drager, and I will catch you next year.

‍

Resources & Go Deeper

‍

This article emphasizes the importance of setting clear and well-defined sales and marketing goals, highlighting their role as a roadmap towards business growth and profitability​​.

Sales And Marketing Goals And Objectives - Imarkguru.com

‍

The article outlines seven key principles of consultative selling, including balancing questions with insights, building knowledge-based trust, keeping interactions conversational and genuine, and researching customer needs to offer relevant findings​

Consultative Selling: 7 Ways to Win Deals With Consultative Sales (hubspot.com)

‍

This guide stresses the importance of defining clear objectives, setting measurable goals, and tracking KPIs to understand marketing effectiveness and enable data-driven optimization​

How to Measure Marketing Effectiveness: Objectives, Goals, and KPIs (npws.net)