Aligning Your Marketing Strategy with Your Business Goals + Framework

Want to accelerate your revenue growth by 24% and boost profits by 27%?

As we approach Q4, it’s time to start planning for next year’s marketing strategy and organizational goals. Many businesses use this period to develop their annual plans, and growth is often a key focus—and for good reason. As Hendrik Jordaan wisely stated, “The fastest way to go backward is to stand still.” In other words, if you’re not moving forward, you’re falling behind.

Growth isn’t just a goal—it’s a necessity. The key to achieving it is to align your marketing strategy with your broader business objectives.

The Doomed Disconnect

At OTM, we work with many small and medium businesses in the B2B space. One thing we frequently see is a disconnect between leadership and marketing. CEOs and COOs often feel overwhelmed by marketing, while marketers struggle to get buy-in and resources for their initiatives.

It’s not uncommon for us to hear prospects say they want to “boost SEO” or “redo their website,” but few can explain how those tactics fit into a larger plan. It’s like treating symptoms without addressing the underlying disease.

Two people are sitting at a table with laptops, engaging in a meeting. One person is smiling and holding a pen while the other person is looking at the laptop screen. A third laptop in the foreground displays a digital marketing strategy diagram. A plant is on the table.

Why Alignment Matters

When marketing strategies aren’t aligned with business goals, it’s like a ship sailing without a compass – a lot of activity, but little progress towards the desired destination. Misalignment leads to:

Money and time spent on campaigns that don’t move the needle
Failing to capitalize on key market trends or customer needs
A lack of measurable impact can lead to disillusionment with marketing efforts

On the flip side, when marketing and business objectives are in sync, the results are transformative. You gain clarity and focus and see a measurable return on your marketing investments.

A Framework for Alignment

Achieving alignment starts with a strategic approach that connects your marketing efforts to your business goals. Here’s a simplified framework:

Define Your Business Goals:

What do you want to accomplish as a business? Are you aiming to increase revenue, expand market share, launch a new product, or boost customer retention? Clearly outline your top-level objectives. There are several frameworks you can use, such as SMART Goals,OKRs,EOS/Traction,4DX, orStratOp. The key is to choose one that helps you drill down into what truly matters and identify both leading and lagging indicators of success.

Translate Goals into Marketing Objectives:

Once your business goals are clear, convert them into specific, measurable marketing objectives. For example, if your goal is to increase revenue by 15%, your marketing objectives might include generating a certain number of qualified leads, increasing website traffic, or driving growth within your existing customer base.

Develop Marketing Strategies & Tactics:

Based on your marketing objectives, craft strategies and select tactics to achieve them. These might include content marketing, social media advertising, email campaigns, or SEO. When choosing tactics, start with a hypothesis about how each one supports the broader strategy and what it needs to deliver to be considered successful.

Implement and Track:

Execute your strategies, but remember: content creation may be creative, but marketing ROI is objective. Track your progress rigorously. Focus on leading indicators that align with your hypotheses, and streamline or automate reporting whenever possible. Manual reporting is a time-sink that doesn’t add value.

Evaluate and Refine:

Regularly review your marketing performance against your business goals. Remember that business goals can shift throughout the year, so stay flexible! We recommend managing your annual plan in quarterly (13-week) cycles, allowing for minor adjustments as you learn and adapt.

Applying the Alignment Framework to the Real World

Let’s say a B2B Professional Services firm specializing in mid-market employee benefits has the following business goal:

“Increase annual recurring revenue (ARR) by 20% in the next fiscal year”.

Here’s how the framework could be applied:

Define Your Business Goals:

The primary goal is clear: a 20% increase in ARR.

Translate Goals into Marketing Objectives:

Increase the number of qualified leads by 30% to fuel the sales pipeline.
Improve website conversion rate by 5% to capture more leads from existing traffic.
Increase customer retention rate by 10% through targeted nurturing campaigns.

Develop Marketing Strategies:

Content Marketing: Create in-depth blog posts and ebooks targeting pain points of project managers and decision-makers.
SEO: Optimize website and content for relevant keywords to attract organic traffic.
Paid Advertising: Run targeted LinkedIn ads to reach decision-makers in specific industries.
Email Marketing: Develop lead nurturing campaigns and customer retention programs.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM): Identify and target high-value accounts with personalized campaigns.

Implement and Track:

Launch the content marketing, SEO, paid advertising, and email campaigns.
Monitor website traffic, lead generation, conversion rates, customer churn, and revenue growth using analytics tools.
Regularly analyze campaign performance and identify areas for improvement.

Evaluate and Refine:

Compare marketing results against the 20% ARR increase goal.
Determine which campaigns are performing well and which need adjustment.
Reallocate budget, refine messaging, or explore new tactics based on insights.
Be prepared to adapt your marketing strategy as market conditions or business goals change.

The High-Level Takeaway for CEOs and COOs:

Communicate the Vision: Clearly articulate your business goals and how marketing plays a role. Ensure your marketing team or agency understands the bigger picture.
Foster Collaboration: Break down silos and encourage open communication between marketing and other departments.
Empower Your Team/Partner: Provide your marketing team or agency with the autonomy, resources, and support they need to execute effectively.
Actionable Reporting: Make sure that you have a reporting loop mapped out so that sales and marketing know the goals and the organization and leadership team can track progress.
Stay Informed: Stay current on marketing trends and technologies to ensure your strategies remain relevant and effective.

Ready to align your marketing efforts with your business goals and achieve sustainable growth? Contact OTM today to explore how we can help!

Back to All Insights

Brittany Mathisen

2023-09-27

OTM has been a wonderful marketing partner for the last four years. We have shifted marketing plans over time and they are very open and explained all the details as we moved forward with new plans. They have done everything from help design and update offices, managed social media, planning marketing events, and many more things. The Hear for Holidays Event that we do each year is one of my favorite events that we work on together. Rachel and the whole OTM team have brought my marketing vision to life and I love everything they have done for my business. I look forward to what the future holds as we continue to work together.

Yvonne Myers

2023-07-30

I worked with Old Town Media (OTM) on a quick grant project that had a 6-week timeline. They were very thoughtful about whether they could meet the grant expectations and needs before accepting the work. The team at OTM then completed extensive research and facilitated focus groups to ensure the product they created met the needs of the end-users. They met all of the grant deadlines and far exceeded our expectations of the portal they created for us! I would not hesitate to use their services again and highly recommend them to others looking for a professional, high quality, and FUN team to work with.

Julie Dokoupil

2023-07-18

OTM is a locally owned firm that I have worked with for over 13 years. They are an amazing team of people who know and understand current marketing technology and strategies. My husband and I are starting a new business and they have helped us out even with small details to get our business going.

TunDesign

2023-06-20

I have seen a significant increase in community engagement which has helped bolster our brand presence, exceeding the expectations of the entire team. Carrie and her team provides consistent communication through slack and emails which has led to an effective and trusted partnership. Truly appreciate how hard-working, agile, and driven everyone on the team is. Thanks again for eveything your team has done for our company.

David Haase

2023-06-07

OTM has done a fantastic job bringing the Fort Collins Peach Festival back to the public! OTM is dealing with several volunteers on a committee and keeping everyone informed, best in business advice and a platform that will serve us for years. We didn't know what we needed and were presented with choices and educated about each before implementation. Kerrie and Brianna have done great work for us! Dave Haase Committee Chair Fort Collins Peach Festival

Dana Sednek

2023-03-15

Using their Path to Growth Model, OTM not only gave me a path forward, but they helped me clarify my strategy, direction, and actions for how to set and launch my business. I was able to launch quickly and I see the flywheel ahead that is necessary to accelerate customer intake and revenue building. Thrilled with the outcome!!!

Liza Adams

2023-01-13

As the Head of Marketing at Encompass Technologies, I considered Old Town Media an extension of our marketing team. OTM worked closely with us on rebranding and repositioning, multiple industry-first product launches, key industry events, and integrated demand generation campaigns while we grew our marketing team and acquired new companies. With the help of OTM, we grew our pipeline and bested industry benchmarks for Software as a Service (SaaS) sales and marketing efficiency metrics. We came to rely on OTM for tactical execution to augment our team but where they added the most value was in our rebranding strategy and market positioning efforts. OTM played an integral role in conducting research and deeply understanding our market dynamics, ideal customer profile, customer challenges, competitive landscape, products and innovation, key differentiators, vision, and mission. This was no easy feat with a highly complex ecosystem, multiple segments, wide variety of audiences, and a broad array of products. Armed with market insights, OTM helped us develop a compelling brand, an inspirational story reflecting our vision and strategy, a unique and defensible market position, and messaging that was relevant to our target audiences. I appreciated that the team was respectful and empathetic, intently curious, insightful with their observations and recommendations, and candid with their feedback. OTM set realistic expectations about deliverables/scope, level of effort, roles, timeline, and cost. The team was responsive, highly collaborative, and open to suggestions. OTM plugged our expertise and resource gaps which allowed us to break the compromise between doing good work and doing it quickly. On top of that, they were fun to work with. OTM was truly a partner of the business.

Eric Dengler

2023-01-11

Great team! Small company service. Big firm power and expertise.

zach fulton

2023-01-06

Simply put, OTM is a well oiled machine! Thanks for all you do

Aligning Your Marketing Strategy with Your Business Goals + Framework

The Doomed Disconnect

Why Alignment Matters

A Framework for Alignment

Define Your Business Goals:

Translate Goals into Marketing Objectives:

Develop Marketing Strategies & Tactics:

Implement and Track:

Evaluate and Refine:

Applying the Alignment Framework to the Real World

Define Your Business Goals:

Translate Goals into Marketing Objectives:

Develop Marketing Strategies:

Implement and Track:

Evaluate and Refine:

The High-Level Takeaway for CEOs and COOs:

Growing a business
is hard and finding the
right partner matters.

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