The fifth eBook in the Paid Growth and Campaigns category. It pulls together everything from the channel-specific eBooks into a single way of running a campaign - from setting the objective on a Monday morning to reviewing the results six weeks later and deciding what to repeat.
Members ebook·7 chapters· 35 minute read
Chapter 2
Setting the Objective
How to pick one specific objective per campaign instead of three overlapping ones, and how to express that objective as a real number you can hit or miss.
Almost every weak campaign we audit has the same problem. The objective was vague. 'Raise awareness, drive traffic and grow sales.' 'Build the brand and get more enquiries.' 'Promote the new offer and reactivate old customers.' Each of those is three campaigns wearing one coat, and the campaign that runs ends up doing none of them well. The team can't decide what to put first, the messaging gets watered down to cover everything, and at the end of six weeks nobody can say honestly whether it worked.
A campaign that performs has one objective. One specific outcome that, if you hit it, makes the whole thing worth having done. Everything else - the brand-building, the traffic, the warm leads, the engagement - might happen along the way. They're side benefits. The objective is what the campaign is for, what its budget is sized against, what its assets are written for and what its review is measured on.
This chapter is about choosing that one objective and writing it down as a real number with a real deadline. By the end you'll have a single sentence for the next campaign on your calendar that anyone in your business could read and understand.
The full chapter walks through the four kinds of objective worth setting, how to pick one based on the campaign moment, how to translate it into a real number and the test that makes sure it's specific enough to run a campaign against.
The four objectives worth setting
Most small business campaigns serve one of four objectives. Pick one, not two.
The four real campaign objectives
New customers - sell something to people who haven't bought from you before
Repeat purchase - sell something more to existing customers
Lead generation - get qualified enquiries that you'll convert later
Retention - reactivate lapsed customers or save customers about to leave
Awareness, traffic, engagement and reach are not objectives in this list. They're inputs that might serve one of the four. A campaign optimised for awareness alone will deliver awareness and almost nothing else, because that's what you asked for. A campaign optimised for new customers will usually deliver some awareness as a side benefit and customers as the main one.
Picking the right objective for the moment
Match the objective to the campaign moment, not to what feels exciting. A January self-assessment campaign for a bookkeeping firm is almost always lead generation - the buying decision takes weeks and the campaign job is to start the conversation. A florist's Mother's Day campaign is new customers and repeat purchase, with one of the two as the main and the other as the side benefit, depending on whether the existing customer list is big enough to lean on. A studio's New Year intake is new customers. An autumn boiler-service push is repeat purchase from existing customers and reactivation of lapsed ones - and the campaign should be planned with one of those as the main.
If you can't decide between two objectives, pick the one with the bigger immediate revenue impact and let the other one happen quietly as a side benefit. You can run a different campaign for the second objective in the next slot if it matters.
Translating the objective into a number
Once the objective is chosen, write it as a number with a deadline. 'Forty new customers by 31 March, at a maximum cost per customer of fifty pounds.' 'A hundred and twenty self-assessment leads by 28 February, at a maximum cost per lead of fifteen pounds.' 'Twelve reactivated lapsed customers by 15 December.' The number doesn't have to be exactly right - your forecasting will get better with every campaign you review - but it has to be specific enough to know whether you hit or missed it.
Use last year's same-period numbers as the baseline if you have them. Use a sober estimate based on your normal hum if you don't. Don't pick the number you wish you'd hit, pick the number that would feel like a real result. Aspirational numbers lead to artificial pressure during the campaign and dishonest reviews afterwards.
The specificity test
An objective is specific enough to run a campaign against if four things are true. There's one main audience it's aimed at. There's one main offer being sold or asked for. There's a number you're trying to hit. There's a date you're trying to hit it by. If any of the four is missing, go back and finish the objective before you start planning channels and assets. The temptation to skip ahead and start designing the email or shooting the creative is very strong, and almost always wastes work that has to be redone once the objective gets clarified later.
Budget against the objective
The objective sets the budget, not the other way round. If the objective is forty new customers at a maximum fifty pounds each, the campaign budget for paid media tops out around two thousand pounds, plus a sensible amount for the assets and your time. If your real budget is three hundred pounds, the objective has to be smaller. Pretending you'll hit a forty-customer objective on three hundred pounds of paid media is how campaigns disappoint. Either find more budget or scope the objective down.
What to do this week
Pick the next campaign on your calendar. Choose one of the four objectives. Write it as a single sentence with the audience, the offer, the number and the date. Show it to one trusted person - a partner, a peer, a coach, an honest colleague - and ask them to read it back and tell you what they understood. If they get the same sentence as you wrote, the objective is specific enough. If they get a softer or vaguer version, sharpen it.
Recurring principle: make the offer clear. The objective is the campaign-level version of the same idea. The earlier eBook Marketing Budgets and ROI is the broader version of how to size objectives against the maths of the business.
The rest of this chapter walks through the practical steps, the templates and the checklists you need to put it into action. It includes worked examples, copy frameworks and the small decisions that make the difference between a plan that sits in a drive and one that gets used.
Inside you'll find a step-by-step playbook, a downloadable template, a checklist you can run this week and a short list of common mistakes to avoid before you start.
The full action plan, broken into weekly steps.
Ready-to-use scripts, templates and checklists.
Worked examples for different sized businesses.
Common mistakes and how to avoid them.
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