In business there are always goals, and for a business to be successful everyone in the business must have a clear view of what they do impacts those goals; And I really mean everyone.

If you cannot understand how the work you do correlates to the goals of the business, then you cannot say your job has value. If your job doesn’t have value, then you cannot be committed to doing it well, and the people who pay you will at some point realize that you are a cost saving waiting to happen.

Marketing teams are no different. Don’t just assume that what you are doing has value, make sure it does!

Marketing can often have goals that seem detached from the corporate goals. If (for example) one of the goals of marketing is to increase the number of visitors to a website, the question must be asked; Why?

If the answer is that people visiting the website can learn about what we do, and they can enter into relationship that will potentially lead to a sale, then consider how you are going to make that happen. It is not enough to have visitors to a website, if those visitors are not progressing through your defined buyers’ journey.

So the goal becomes getting the right kind of visitor to the website and have them enter into your buyer’s journey campaigns.

But those campaigns must be designed effectively so that you can recognize when a visitor has become a lead for sales. And that lead must be detailed enough that sales can agree that it has value.

So the goal becomes getting the right kind of people to the website and to have them enter the buyers journey, progress through that buyer’s journey and provide valuable sales data that leads to sales accepting the lead as an opportunity.

And of course it’s important that the qualified lead that sales have accepted as an opportunity (that sales will invest sales effort in closing) actually closes and generates revenue for your company.

And it’s then important that that new customer becomes a long term customer and buys more.

So that goal of getting visitors to a website, is in effect a series of goals for marketing that directly align with sales and the corporate goals.

Any gaps that exist in the linkage between your goal and the corporate goal will make what you do ineffective for the business. And it is everyone’s job to make sure that there are no gaps.

Know how what you do directly impacts the goals of your whole corporation, and make sure you can explain it to everyone in your corporation. Also be prepared to learn that you are wrong, and be ready to change and improve