In episode 31, Veronica and Jillian talk about aligning marketing goals with broader business objectives, emphasizing the need for clarity and measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). They share personal examples, such as launching a marketing accelerator and planning a podcast, to illustrate this alignment and announce collaborative opportunities for listeners to engage in interactive growth initiatives.
Veronica and Jillian discussed aligning marketing goals with business goals, emphasizing the clarity needed in defining these objectives. They explored examples from their businesses, such as launching a marketing accelerator and re-entering public speaking, to illustrate this alignment.
Veronica stressed the importance of setting measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to effectively track progress. Jillian shared plans for a new podcast focused on certified B Corps to achieve specific business objectives and audience needs, emphasizing balancing marketing efforts with broader business strategies.
Both speakers announced collaborative opportunities for listeners, highlighting the value of interactive engagement in supporting individual growth and overall business success.
*Special Offer: Veronica & Jillian are teaming up to offer live brainstorming sessions for listeners of this podcast. Listen until the end of this episode for more details. Here is the link you'd like to apply: https://bit.ly/CCP-brainstorm
People & Resources Mentioned in This Episode
About Veronica Guguian
- Website: https://spinideas.nl/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/veronica-guguian
About Jillian Vorce (she/hers)
- Website: https://thejilliangroup.com/better
- Website: https://jillianvorce.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillianvorce
Credits
- Music Composed by BeeLa Music
- Voiceover by Amanda Balagur
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Hello and welcome back. Or welcome if it's your first time listening to us. This is episode 31. Today we're going to talk about marketing goals to serve business goals. So, Veronica, hello. How to approach these marketing goals to serve business goals. What say you?
Veronica Guguian: Well, it's a topic that I'm always bringing it up because people are confusing those two.
Veronica Guguian: Marketing goals need to serve the business goals. Maybe we can start by defining what they stand for. And before we start recording, actually, we had a chat about it and we realized we do the same, but we do use different languages for it. So I'm pretty sure we'll not be the only ones. But why do I love it? So I'm realizing I'm all over the place here. And I'm trying to start from somewhere. As you all know, I have my own methodology when it comes to marketing strategy. And one of the steps of the marketing strategy is actually setting up goals. And I always give this as an example. If you don't know where you're going, you don't know how to prepare for it. Let's say you go to the seaside, you go on holiday, but it's different how you prepare.
Veronica Guguian: If you go to the mountains or if you go to the seaside, right, you're going to get your flip flops or you get your hiking boots, right? You're going to put the sunscreens in both of them and some essentials. But there are a couple of things that are different, and it's the same in terms of marketing because of course you have some things that are consistent, doesn't matter what you're doing, but some tactics, some actions that you need to take differently depending on what you want to achieve. And every single time when I'm asking my clients, or anyone for that matter, especially at the beginning of the business, what do you want in terms of marketing? Guess what they will say.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Yeah, they all say new business or new clients or customers.
Veronica Guguian: And then you ask them like, what does that mean? Because that is so relative, right? More clients can be one more or can be 100 more.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Mission accomplished. Yeah, exactly.
Veronica Guguian: And then you need to sit down and see and look basically at your entire business and see what's your capacity. How many new clients can you serve and still provide a good service? How does that fit with everything? Do you need to create different processes to implement it? Are you a one-man show with several people or it becomes much more complex? Once you do that, you can reverse engineer and identify. What do you need to do in order to actually get those new clients, identify the actions, the tactics, partners, so on and so forth.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): So can you give an example either from your business or any client that you've worked with? Just an example of how you would approach this. So maybe it's starting with a business goal and how you worked backwards to create the marketing goal or something like that. Just to give, for example, I understand the analogy about going to the beach or the mountain but trying to think also, I'm just curious if you approach it the way I do or not or different. So I'm just interested.
Veronica Guguian: I'm going to show a concrete example of what is happening at this point with our business. And I'm very curious how you do it, how you see it. And I have a feeling we are kind of doing similar things, but we name them differently. For example, we are in the process of launching a marketing accelerator. That is actually a business goal. So for that, we do need to create a product. Basically that will go under the marketing product because we create that one. But we also have, for marketing, we need to promote that one and we need to get a new database of people interested in it and get new clients there. Right. So you split it. The big goal, the business goal, is actually to launch a new service. However, the marketing goal will be to get enough interest.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Okay. And then building the actual framework or the tool or whatever it is. So that is also included in it. Or does that come after?
Veronica Guguian: It will be more under the business goals.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Okay, so are you approaching it like you have this idea to build the accelerator, period? Or you had the idea to build it and now promote it? Or is it like we have this idea, let's see if there's an appetite for it? And let's start.
Veronica Guguian: We already saw that actually in the previous years.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): So we've done that. So now you know that this is what we're going to do. So now we have to build the thing and also create interest for the thing. Like marketing the thing. So you've got the two kinds of actions, parallel.
Veronica Guguian: Yes.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Okay, cool. All right, so I see how you think of that as like the marketing goals to then achieve the business goal. That's a good one. And that's exciting for the accelerator too. It is if you have a date or know when that'll be coming out. But we need episodes and then we're.
Veronica Guguian: Going to launch it.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Or even a link for people to sign up for a waitlist if they're interested in getting details when it does come out.
Veronica Guguian: We are in the process of creating one that will be launched in the next few weeks. So actually, by the time this episode will be out, we'll have to have it.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Why I said it.
Veronica Guguian: Thank you. This is real life.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Yes. So if you're interested, check the link in the show notes so you can be on the list when the marketing accelerator opens. Okay, so what else? Marketing goals and business goals.
Veronica Guguian: Actually, I'm curious, before we move forward, how do you approach it? Do you have the same or do you?
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): An example I have is. Let me think. I've got a few. So one that I have also mentioned, I think I've mentioned it a couple of times on previous episodes, is after a basically ten-year hiatus from public speaking, I would like to put my feet back on the stage. And kind of reactivate that hopeful muscle memory to start speaking again. So that's, I would say the business goal is to begin speaking again. So in order to do that, then the way I'm thinking of it. So I would say what the framework, you're saying the marketing goal.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): So I need to produce and promote and present and practice and present and promote and just repeat these things so that I get really comfortable presenting the type of content that I want to present in that interaction with the audience so I can hone in on the areas that are working and improve. So that's one of the specific examples of something else, I guess maybe an offshoot, I don't know if it's exactly a parallel, but definitely related to that or a specific example of how I'm doing that. So of course podcasting helps, right? It's one of the reasons that I wanted to do this podcast. Another thing I'm doing is facilitating workshops presently only online, but looking at some potential situations to present them offline as well. So I can have that kind of face-to-face interaction.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): But presenting workshops, so I've got those going in and around stakeholders. So I've got the, let's see, March and April workshops on building strategic partnerships. So many will start off doing community and community on and offline to increase your brand visibility, et cetera. So doing these workshops will help. So that's an example from me and my specific business and how I'm approaching this.
Veronica Guguian: I like that. And actually, the marketeer in me, if you will be my client, will be okay. I would add thought leadership to that. That's more like branding to place you. So that makes sense for you to be invited as a speaker to different events. And what I didn't give in my example, you need to start putting numbers. How many workshops online, how many workshops offline, how many presentations, how many posts? So to start translating it into, I think you're going to call them KPIs.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): I call them, yeah, it's either a KPI or OKR, depending on whoever you're.
Veronica Guguian: Talking with, talking with smaller businesses. I learned this better. Just let's put a number to it so we know what we need to achieve. And what I do, how that works for me is actually start splitting it in smaller pieces. So for you, in order to do that, workshops, for example, that you do online, to do them offline, what do you need to do? Probably you need to approach different organizations, introduce your workshop, and ask them, are you interested in my workshop? Can I provide it either free or paid, depending on what you want? So you need to see how many organizations do I need to approach that will be willing to have a chat with me and that will actually open the doors for me to host that one. So this is how it works, and then we start translating.
Veronica Guguian: So this will be the tactics and actions, and you need to see how many you start identifying the organizations and then you start coming up with a plan. How do I approach them? Do I write them first? Do I call them? Who do I know in that particular organization? Or who do I know that knows someone there so we can enter? So for me, goals are very important in identifying the work that needs to be done, because otherwise we are so distracted by every single shiny technology or activity or whatever is happening. And we do want to do everything and it's impossible, like we had last episode about productivity, right? It's so easy to go into that rapid hole and to want to do everything, but we have just a limited amount of time for us to do it.
Veronica Guguian: So for me, goals are important because first of all, they will help us work towards, they will identify what is important for us and work to get that in terms of business, but also actually, yes, in terms of business, but also identify what our approach will be, what do we need to focus and also identify what we need to park or say no to, or maybe add something new that is coming to our planning.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Yeah, absolutely. I was just thinking about whether or not I would share another example that I have. So I decided, well, I guess now that I open my mouth, may as well. You have to spill the beans, as they say. Yeah, so I am also, we chatted a little bit about this. I've been in the process of planning a new podcast that I'll be launching. I'll be launching when? Yeah, TBD on that. Stay tuned. Launching. So that's the objective. That's the business goal, is to launch this podcast. And there are some concrete reasons for doing so that have business connections, but just for the sake of this conversation. So that's the objective.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): So now where we're at is, like I said, with the planning side of it, which relates to the marketing goals, is looking at who the target is, what's the source of kind of leads or guests for this, like who do we want on the podcast, et cetera, and what is the entire process of identifying, picking out who we'd like to interview and then how to reach out to them, what does that look like? What is that process? And managing it from the experience of. It's like really three different lenses. So one lens is the guest and what is their experience and what's the value provided to them. The second would be for a listener. So this podcast is going to be about telling the stories of certified B Corps through the lens of the business owners and why they made the decision to do this.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): So therefore the topic. Thank you. The lens for the audience would be for the content to feel, yeah, I want them to have a good experience and to feel like it was interesting and helpful in giving them some concrete examples and why this might apply to their own business. Right. So I'm thinking about it through the lens. So there's a whole kind of process in place for the listener. And then third, for myself and for my business, what are the things that need to happen, the measurables, and how to just manage the entire process all the way through? So the planning, the pre and post-production, et cetera. So it's a big one. Been working on this for several months and it's finally on the brink of being introduced. Anyways, that's big.
Veronica Guguian: Maybe we'll be marketing the podcast.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Yeah, perhaps it's close. I just have to make a final decision on the name of it, which is sometimes the hardest. It's a hard part. If I could get that done in time, then the link would be there.
Veronica Guguian: If not for the next one. But to our listeners, don't worry, we're going to make sure we have the link and I'm looking forward to listening to that one.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Thank you.
Veronica Guguian: But that's another great example. Actually, if you do that fits. Sorry, we do have a chameleon here, my dog. That will be a great example to fit it with your business. Like how this marketing action, this activity fits with your overall business goal that is actually working, I think. I don't remember the number of episodes. Of course, you're good with that. When we discuss the audit of our businesses, you are switching more to B corps.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): When we talked about the collaboration, the live collaborations, is that what you're referring to?
Veronica Guguian: Exactly.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): So we did yours on episode eleven and mine was episode 13.
Veronica Guguian: Oh my gosh, you're so good at these things.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Just numbers.
Veronica Guguian: My brain can't remember those things, but I can remember a lot of stories. So that's a great example of how you are working towards your business goal and what you're doing in terms of product, but also marketing. This is a great marketing tool to get there, actually. That's a great example. Thank you for sharing.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Yes.
Veronica Guguian: What else can we add here? Because it's quite straightforward for this episode if you do need these marketing goals, and these marketing goals need to be in line with your business goals. So marketing is serving the business, however, it is not replacing the business goals, because business goals involve services, implementation, the management of your people, collaborations, and some of them go under R and D. Some of them are actually going under the marketing umbrella, but not all of them. And this way it's important to make a differentiation because otherwise you'll be lost in different things and you won't understand, especially if you're externalizing. You need to be aware of what to expect and what to ask from the people you are working with. Otherwise, it can be an imbalance in terms of what you're asking and what you're receiving.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Yeah, I think that's true. All right, any last-minute thoughts or anything that we missed or are we good to put a fork in this one?
Veronica Guguian: I think we are good with this one. Of course, we do need to remind our listeners about our offer.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): I know. So after several episodes, we talked about how much we both love collaborating and interacting with people and also how much we'd love to have a chance to get to know some of our listeners. So we decided to offer some collaboration, like brainstorming sessions. So those will be happening in the months of April and May of this year, 2024. So if you're interested in applying for that, check out the link in the show notes. We're going to try to accommodate as many as we can to do a live session with us, similar to episodes eleven and 13, where we did this for each other. So have a look if you're interested.
Veronica Guguian: And pick our brains up.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Pick them up. Hopefully not pick them up. Haha.
Veronica Guguian: No, I'm sorry.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Although sometimes I feel like mine does need to be picked up. But anyhow, thanks for listening.
Veronica Guguian: Yeah, thank you for listening.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Until next time.
Veronica Guguian: Till next time.