Defining marketing objectives and goals will help you organize and prioritize activities. Without setting objectives and plans that are clear and meaningful, you’ll only do well accidentally. Dreams and goals provide direction and structure for success, around which you optimize your marketing and business development activities. Being purposeful and heading towards defined plans will keep your company moving forward.

At the beginning of each year, marketing professionals take a more granular look at their firm's annual plan for trade shows and events. Trade show and professional event strategic marketing is a process that takes some planning to ensure the firm generates an increase in business development activity that justifies participation costs. 

Any firm can easily inspire inbound marketing campaigns with mission and vision statements. These statements provide direction and purpose, encourage achievement and ensure inbound marketing campaign activities align with a firm’s business goals and inbound marketing strategy. A firm’s ability to effectively embrace the values of the mission and vision statements will enrich the firm’s entire work environment. 

How is your annual marketing plan coming along?  Our recent post, Do You Need a SWOT to Start Marketing Planning? Covered the situational analysis section of your professional services marketing plan. Another important component of annual marketing planning is setting goals and objectives.  In the spirit of kicking off the New Year with a complete plan, this post covers goals and objectives.

If you are going through the annual marketing planning process and realize that you have not completely analyzed your firm’s position in the marketplace, it may be time to begin situational analysis.  Situational analysis is the process of evaluating the firm’s situation as a whole and by market sector.  The intent is to develop a sharpened marketing strategy which includes: understanding where the firm is today, envisioning where it wants to go, and determining how it will get to where it wants to go. This process requires a keen sense of the firm’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT).

It is the season for taking a closer look at the annual marketing plan. The annual marketing plan is essential to meeting next year's strategic business goals. The plan is a formalized statement detailing the actions needed to meet specific marketing goals and objectives.