How to Set Objectives and Get the Most Out of Them

Objectives are deceptively difficult to set if you want them to add real value to your campaign, as Account Executive Tom Horn explains.

On our podcast Turning Up the Volume, we’ve discussed the foundations of building a good strategy: vision, mission and objectives.  

I’ve written about vision before, so today I’m focussing on objectives. It might seem obvious what an objective is and how to set one, but doing so in a way which adds value to your campaign and aligns with your wider vision and mission is deceptively tricky.  

If used well though objectives can be a vital evaluative tool for optimising the success of future campaigns, so the art of the objective is well worth mastering.  

What is an Objective and What’s its Purpose?  

An objective is a specific, targeted and measurable goal relating to the operational implementation of a campaign or strategy. 

The purpose of an objective is to assess the performance of a specific aspect of a campaign or strategy. This information can then be used to measure success and optimise future campaigns.   

Make them Specific, Targeted and Measurable  

Just as your strategic vision should be extremely broad, your objectives should be very specific.  

They should cover a range of operational elements of a campaign or strategy and be measurable, so that it’s clear whether the objective has been met or not. Without this, it’s difficult to be definitive about whether a campaign has been a success.  

You should have different objectives at different levels of your organisation, from companywide ones down to the level of individuals.  

Be Ambitious but Realistic 

There’s no point creating tokenistic objectives which will easily be met. While they may please more senior stakeholders, they have no strategic value as they don’t provide any valuable insights on if anything underperformed and what needs to change in future campaigns.  

Overly ambitious objectives are equally unhelpful. If there’s no realistic chance you’re going to meet your goal, then it’s impossible to assess what you could have done differently to meet it, as you were never going to reach it in the first place.  

The key is to find a middle ground, an objective at the upper end of what you believe is possible, but which is still attainable.  

Objectives aren’t about Blame 

Many people are put off from setting realistic objectives by the ‘blame game’: the idea that they’ll be criticised if they set an ambitious objective then fail to meet it. 

While one role of objectives is to make sure that individuals are fulfilling their role, it’s much more constructive to use them as a tool to measure and evaluate what’s gone well or not overall. Individuals are only one small part of a campaign and should be treated as such. 

Objectives are also just as useful when a campaign has gone well, as when it’s gone badly: If a campaign has massively overperformed on one metric, this may be masking the underperformance of other elements of the campaign which require improvement. This is why it’s important to set a wide range of objectives covering all elements of a campaign or strategy.  

If used in this way, objectives can not only assess past campaigns, but provide valuable lessons for future ones, making them an essential part of the strategic process.    

If you want to learn more about how to set objectives, listen to our podcast Turning Up the Volume here.