How to Set (Crushable) Marketing Goals, According to HubSpot Pros

Hey, marketers. Raise your hand if you’ve been personally victimized by big, lofty marketing goals with little to no resources to execute them.

✋🏽*raises both hands* ✋🏽

In an ideal world, we’d have endless budgets and perfect conditions to work with.

Like stable SERPs and simple social media algorithms. Or consumers who laugh at all of our marketing jokes.

While that’s not (always) the case, it’s still possible to set goals that are both ambitious and attainable.

For inspiration, I’ve compiled a list of the highest-priority goals for marketers this year. And as an added bonus, I asked a few marketing pros here at HubSpot to share some of their top tips for goal setting.

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Earlier this year, we surveyed over 1,400 marketers to better understand the current state of marketing. These five goals bubbled to the surface for marketers who implemented winning strategies in 2023.

P.S. You’ll see some familiar faces like increased revenue and reaching new audiences, but the way marketers are thinking about these goals is changing with the times.

1. Increase revenue and sales.

→ 24% of marketers listed increasing revenue and sales as their top goal for 2024.

Everything we do as marketers ultimately rolls up into the bottom line of the business, so it’s no surprise that this continues to be a top priority.

As Amanda Sellers, manager of EN blog strategy at HubSpot, puts it, “Everything I do as a marketer should ultimately help the organization I work for to grow revenue.”

Here’s how you can make progress toward this goal: 75% of marketers believe personalized experiences drive sales and repeat business. So, building connections and developing relationships across the buyer’s journey is a must.

2. Increase brand awareness and reach new audiences.

→ 19% of marketers listed increasing brand awareness and reaching new audiences as their top goal for 2024.

Sounds pretty standard, but the way we generate awareness and reach today is a lot different than in years past.

It’s wild out here, truly. People are discovering brands from their favorite influencers instead of more traditional methods like paid media. And brands are capitalizing on popular TikTok sounds and trends to appeal to younger audiences.

For example, why is Canva, an online design brand, talking about cucumber salad? Because TikTok user Logan (@logagm) recently went viral for his “sometimes, you need to eat an entire cucumber” recipes.

Here’s how you can make progress toward this goal: Keep a pulse on brand sentiment and visibility in search and on social media. Marketing is becoming more intelligent by the day, so it’s important to understand how people perceive you and learn about your products.

3. Increase engagement.

→ 19% of marketers listed increasing engagement as their top goal for 2024.

What’s that? Oh, nothing.

Just us marketers asking consumers to like/comment/subscribe … again.

In my opinion, the brands that tap into the latest trends in meaningful ways win the engagement olympics every time.

And sometimes that means not participating in every trend — especially if it’s not a good fit for your brand or your audience.

Either way, I know this is all easier said than done. That’s why keeping up with trends is one of the biggest challenges that marketers are facing this year.

Here’s how you can make progress toward this goal: The majority of marketers agree that website/blog/SEO, social media shopping, and short-form video are the channels with highest ROI right now. Consider focusing your efforts there.

4. Improve sales-marketing alignment.

→ 16% of marketers listed improving sales-marketing alignment as their top goal for 2024.

Customers want their buying experiences to be seamless. That’s next to impossible if your marketing and sales teams aren’t on the same page.

Our survey shows that 70% of marketers report having “high quality leads,” but alignment with sales is still one of the biggest challenges they face.

From wasted marketing budgets to lost sales, the consequences of misalignment are huge. I can see why this is a priority for marketing teams this year.

Here’s how you can make progress toward this goal: The key to alignment is centralized data. Establish a single source of truth (read: CRM) that will allow your organization to share data and collaborate more effectively.

5. Drive traffic to their brand’s website.

→ 15% of marketers listed driving traffic to their brand’s website as their top goal for 2024.

This one’s a big yes from me as a blogger. How can we get more views on our content while battling algorithm update (after algorithm update, after … ) in the SERP?

Well, on the HubSpot Blog Team, we knew we had no choice but to evolve.

• Google wants to prioritize experience-based content? Cool, we’ll give you first-person perspectives and emphasize our opinions as marketers in our writing.
• AI-powered search is taking over the Internet? Great, let’s optimize our content and continue building authority for that, too.

You have to shift your strategy in order to continue gaining traffic in 2024 (and beyond). That’s a fact.

Here’s how you can make progress toward this goal: Do a regular analysis of how your brand is performing online. For example, you can use tools like AI Search Grader to understand how search AI models view your brand and to identify new traffic-driving plays to lock in on.

According to Karla Hesterberg, director of content marketing at HubSpot, you never have to fully start from scratch when setting your marketing goals. That’s because your goals should always reflect the overarching business strategy.

“Your organization has broader goals, and it‘s your job to figure out how to meaningfully connect your work to them,” Hesterberg says. “Use your organization’s broader goals as a starting place.”

She continues, “I start by looking at the biggest things the overall business is trying to solve for. Then, I see where my team‘s work fits into that picture and can have the most impact.

That makes it easier to look at the scope of what we’re working on and determine which things connect back to the business and which things are in the ‘nice to have’ category.”

2. Use your biggest opportunities (or headwinds) as a starting point.

“For setting team objectives, I like to use our biggest opportunities or headwinds as a starting point and go from there,” says Hesterberg.

“Ideally, everything we‘re working on — from big initiatives to smaller projects — should be connected back to those central things we’re solving for.”

We take those big opportunities and challenges and contextualize them into what we want to accomplish. At HubSpot, that materializes as our OGPs (objectives, goals, and plays).

Here’s an example from Sellers on how she uses OGPs to help guide the EN blog strategy at HubSpot:

• An objective describes what we’re setting out to achieve. For example, I work on the EN blog, and one of my objectives might be to improve our content quality according to Google’s new Helpful Content guidelines.
• The goal itself defines what success looks like using concrete metrics. For example, we might forecast the outcome to yield an estimated X organic visits and/or Y monetizable leads from those visits.
• A play is what we’ll do to achieve our objective. For example, one play that ladders up to the objective might be to implement a peer feedback program for quality assurance.”

“The ideal outcome is that every action or task clearly ladders up. This helps with prioritization, alignment, and so much more.”

Having a framework like this ensures that our priorities are aligned at every level of the organization.

3. Use data to inform the “why” behind your approach.

“If you don’t know the ‘why’ behind a project you’re working on, you should pump the brakes and find out,” says Sellers.

Honestly, yeah. The biggest waste of marketing resources is doing things for no reason or with little value add. Stepping back to determine the ‘why’ helps you prioritize the actions and projects that will actually move the needle.

Sellers also notes the importance of data during the goal-setting process.

“Historical data is so important when estimating impact to set goals. If you don’t have historical data, seek out a case study. Either of these options are better than an uninformed guess.”

*mic drop*

4. Try not to limit yourself to what feels possible today.

This is one of my favorite tips because it tells me it’s okay to think big even when resources seem limited.

Basha Coleman, principal marketing manager at HubSpot, says, “Don‘t assume that something can’t be done. Challenge yourself to work through the obstacles to achieve as close to the ideal solution as possible.”

She continues, “Think about the problem and the ideal solution. Don‘t limit the solution to what’s possible today — think big, idealistic, and as if nothing is impossible. Then, once the solution is identified, figure out what you’d need to start, stop, or continue doing to get to that solution.

Those start, stop, and continue items are the detailed tactics you need to complete to achieve your goals.”