Reviewing your marketing against your set targets

Analysing marketing reports and techniques for the past 12 months against company set targets is highly recommended. Reviewing historical data not only lets you project targets for the year to come, but also enables managers to set more realistic targets.

Reviewing your marketing against your set targets enables you to know if you met or missed your expected targets with the current marketing techniques in place and by how much. Reviewing this data allows you to analyse which marketing techniques work best and which may be an expense. Too many times companies spend a lot on advertising and are unable to see a valid return on investment. Particularly because they fail to analyse and assess their marketing and sales reports which have the most vital information on their current marketing strategies. For instance, a company may be focusing their marketing in the wrong demographic area and audience, resulting in a loss in sales, loss in return on investment and missing their set targets. Concerns such as these are identified once a substantial review of marketing techniques against set targets are conducted. It is important to note that even a simple shift in target marketing could have a significant impact on sales revenue. It is even more beneficial to use historical data to understand how previous marketing techniques have performed and verify if they are worth using again.

Alternatively, a company could potentially exceed their sales targets or meet them. In these instances, marketing techniques and processes used illustrate a good return on investment, which in turn could result in an increase in the marketing budget, giving a company more leeway for experimentation.

Once analysed efficiently, current marketing reports can help managers to understand whether the targets set are realistic to achieve or overly estimated. Current marketing techniques may be working but because the targets are over estimated, companies may not be meeting their goals. Therefore, a review of marketing reports against set goals helps companies to set targets that are achievable for the future, whether it involves reducing or increasing targets.

Furthermore, in some companies, employees receive a commission based on individual sales. Commission from sales has been linked to increase in employee morale (Ogedegbe and Bashiru, 2014) resulting in a cycle fostering organisational development. Therefore, reviewing your marketing techniques against set goals also allows room for well performing employees to be rewarded and employee satisfaction affecting company performance.