How to Establish Your Hierarchy of Marketing Goals

Most marketers will admit it can be tough—but not impossible—to prove their success. Demonstrating ROI requires marketers to set realistic, integrated goals that fully align their strategy, plan, and campaigns. That’s not always easy.

Ask a marketer why it’s so challenging to agree on achievable marketing goals, and the answers tend to fall in three categories:

1. Data gaps: This happens when your team lacks relevant historical data to draw on, forcing you to make a “best guess.” This approach fails to take available human or financial resources into account due to poor planning data.
2. Strategic misalignment: Teams aren’t guided by a clear strategy or campaigns, and end up executing on campaigns that don’t drive towards broader business objectives.
3. Team misalignment: Teams fail to delegate sub-goals that roll up to achieve topline objectives, resulting in wasted resources.

Marketers haven’t always had the tools to measure their true impact. But now, with smarter software and better data, marketing has become as much of a science as an art. Platforms like Planful give marketers the ability to plan collaboratively, allocate the right budgets, and continuously measure their results. Marketing can move with as much precision as Finance, and even partner with them to drive performance together.

But measurement alone isn’t enough. To move the needle, marketing teams need to establish clear goals that align with business objectives, clarify strategic priorities, and connect every campaign to outcomes.

How do I get started creating marketing goals?

In a word: early. You can set your goals for the following year six months in advance while building in some flexibility to account for major market, competitor, or company changes that might impact your objectives.

Start defining your goals before you allocate your marketing budget.

Run a scenario planning exercise to determine a best vs. worst-case view of your performance against the marketing goals. You can use that same scenario-based philosophy when you start building your plan and creating campaigns. Take the following elements into account when setting marketing goals.

Company goals

Always start by reviewing overall business objectives to make sure you’re aligned with where the company is heading. Determine where marketing can have the biggest impact and set your metrics accordingly.

Historical data

Review your historical numbers and look for patterns and trends that could give you an indication of future results. If the trends do not align with your stated goals, then you will need to either set different expectations or increase resource investments.

Team structure and resources

Having the right team is the number one success factor in achieving your marketing goals. Ask the following questions to evaluate your team:

• Does your team structure have any functional gaps?
• Are there team members with limited skill sets?
• Do team members have enough bandwidth?
• Does your team structure give members the right autonomy and leadership support?

Make it a priority to fix any gaps. Otherwise, you’ll risk missing your goals.

Marketing budget

Be proactive in determining your budget. Once you’ve built your marketing plan and set your goals, you can now collaborate with Finance to get the resources you need based on your requirements.

Market competition

You can expect competitive reactions to any new positioning or strategy your company makes. Savvy marketers know to anticipate these reactions and factor them into their planning. A fast-moving competitor could make the difference between your team knocking it out of the park and coming up short.

Market conditions

If you’re heading into a period of economic unrest without a recession-proof product or service, take these economic factors into account. Scenario planning can help you be ready for any situation so you can course-correct.

Sales functions

Marketers need to take a critical look at the sales team and ask the tough questions before setting goals.

• Is the sales team set up to support your marketing goals (i.e., is there sufficient business development representative support, geographical distribution, sales training, etc.)?
• Can the sales team grow fast enough to handle the demand generated by marketing? Is finding talent a problem?
• How long does it take for sales reps to get up to speed?

Since sales and marketing go hand-in-hand, these questions will help you gauge how aggressively to set your goals.

Product timelines

Products and services don’t always launch at the expected date, leaving marketing waiting at the altar. When tuning your goals, consider two essential questions:

• Does your product or services team have a solid track record of on-time delivery?
• Do they have a history of great quality at the time of launch?

If the answer is yes to both, then you can set your goals accordingly.

Creating a hierarchy of marketing goals

High-level objectives need to be broken into actionable supporting goals to yield meaningful results. For this reason, you need to make sure your whole team understands what their roles are in achieving the goals.

One of the best ways to create structure, visibility, and accountability in your process is to build a goals pyramid.

Building a goals pyramid

A goals pyramid is a hierarchy of marketing goals and objectives that pulls all your strategic marketing together to provide clear direction to the team.

The pyramid starts with your topline marketing objectives, which are matched with more specific qualitative goals, metrics, and strategies to achieve the objective. A goals pyramid contains:

• Topline objectives: Almost all marketing goals fall into one of the topline objectives of sales, awareness, and perception, placing them at the top of the goals chain. These objectives help structure the rest of your thinking as you start the first steps of the marketing planning process.
• Qualitative goals: These are more descriptive and customized to your unique business needs. For example, a qualitative goal to “generate more opportunities” provides additional color to the topline goal of “sales.”
• Metrics of achievement: These are quantifiable goals that provide specific measurements to the qualitative goals. An example of a metric of achievement might include something like, “generate 400 sales opportunities.”
• Team/individual sub-goals: This metric describes the sub-goals the team or an individual needs to achieve. For example, a digital marketing team may have a team sub-goal of creating 250 of the 400 sales opportunities next year.
• Marketing strategy: This level of the pyramid details the strategy used in achieving the goal. A digital marketing team might run a digital ads program to target prospects to generate 250 opportunities.
• Campaigns: The campaign level considers how a specific, thematic campaign delivers results. A campaign designed to drive sales as a topline objective might start by promoting a free trial to attract new users, for example.

Why use a goals pyramid?

A goals pyramid helps you translate high-level business objectives into campaigns that deliver measurable results—while giving your team the visibility to stay focused and the agility to adjust when priorities shift.

When your marketing goals are clear, aligned, and structured in a way your team can rally behind, you can stop wasting energy on low-impact work.

Planful’s marketing planning capabilities make it easy to put your hierarchy of goals into practice. From collaborative budget planning to real-time performance visibility, we help marketers turn strategy into execution—and execution into outcomes.

Before you go, remember these 3 things…

• Start with a hierarchy of marketing goals, not just a list. Aligning your marketing strategy, team, and campaigns around a structured goal framework ensures everyone is working toward measurable outcomes.
• Use a goals pyramid to connect high-level objectives to individual actions. From awareness and sales to campaign execution, layering your marketing goals creates focus, accountability, and visibility across the organization.
• Strategic alignment drives ROI. Realistic, integrated marketing goals—backed by historical data, team capacity, and market conditions—are more likely to succeed and easier to track using performance-driven tools like Planful.

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Turn ambitious marketing goals into actionable plans

Try our interactive demo to see how Planful helps marketing teams build a clear hierarchy of marketing goals, align strategy and spend, and drive measurable business impact.

 

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FAQs

What is the hierarchy of marketing goals in a business?

The hierarchy of marketing goals is a structured framework that aligns high-level business objectives with specific marketing actions. It typically starts with topline goals (like revenue or brand awareness), then breaks down into qualitative goals, measurable KPIs, and team-level sub-goals.

How can I align marketing goals across my team?

To align marketing goals across your team, use a goal-setting framework like the goals pyramid. This approach connects company-wide marketing objectives to individual team or channel targets, ensuring everyone contributes to the same strategic outcomes. Platforms like Planful make this alignment easier by centralizing goal tracking, budgets, and performance data.

Why is it important to set sub-goals in a marketing plan?

Sub-goals break down big-picture marketing goals into manageable, trackable targets for individuals or teams. This structure improves accountability and makes it easier to optimize campaign performance at every level.