Goal Charter for the fictional company, Tomaties
A project for EXSM 5512: Analytics and Reporting for Digital Media, University of Alberta, November 2023
A marketing strategy cannot begin without a solid measurement plan in place. In this project, our professor gave us a set of fictional (yet accurate and real) goals given to us by a company called Tomaties, who sold tomato plants in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The goals given were as below:
1. Start buying ads on the social channels that are bringing in sales.
2. Grow overall sales by about 20% year over year.
3. Reduce inventory waste by 10% – making sure plants sell before they get too big for their starter pots.
4. Increase sales of accessories (not plants) – not sure by how much though.
5. Increase advance orders so that they aren’t selling out as often, or wasting stock because they grew too many of a certain type of plant.
6. Get more reviews - mostly on Google and Yelp.
We were also given information about how and what the company was already measuring, and the ways people already contacted/purchased/interacted from them. With that information, I created a touchpoint inventory and a goal charter which would presented to the client. Below is the feedback my professor gave on this assignment:
Goal Charter: Great job combining the goals where it makes sense so that the goals that are more like tactics can become part of the actual goals (like sales and social media ads). Your "how we'll track success" sections are perfect -- I actually clapped a little bit at my computer when I started reading them. Well done!
Touchpoint Inventory: Great job! Only suggestion is to break out the social media organic from paid as the analytics are reported in slightly different ways -- but that's minor suggestion and no points deducted for it.
Goal Charter
In order to nail down what’s most important to Tomaties, we need to lay out a clear and agreed upon structure of what we’re measuring, how we’re tracking it and why we want the information in the first place. You want to grow your sales, and we want to show you who to sell to, at what time, through what channels. This goal charter will assess your specific goals, the tactics we’ll employ to get you there, and finally the KPI’s we’ll measure to determine success.
Abstract
Your Goals & Metrics
Through our discussions, we’ve heard that your primary goals are:
20% Increase in Sales, Year Over Year
Increase Google and Yelp reviews by 10 per month
Increase sales of accessories by 10% per month
Reduce inventory waste by 10% per quarter
Now, we’ll break down each goal.
Goal 1; 20% increase in overall sales year over year
Under this goal, I will address Tomaties’ goal to start buying ads on the social channels that are bringing in sales. While this is an excellent goal to have, it is best employed as a tactic for increasing sales. We are excited to bring in paid media for Tomaties, and will ensure the best possible ROI in order to reach the goal of increasing overall sales YOY.
Tactics to Explore
Implementing the e-commerce side of the Tomaties website to include high quality photos, descriptions, and testimonials of each plant or accessory.
Instagram ads - promoted posts and stories are excellent ways to reach audiences and boost engagement.
Facebook ads- carousel ads and promoted posts, also great for boosting brand awareness bringing people to the Tomaties landing page.
Heat maps showing when your followers are most active on Facebook or Instagram can help us advertise at the most optimal time of day.
How We’ll Track Success
To measure the success of this goal, we can do the following:
- Measured through Google Analytics, we can track:
- Click Thru Rate (CTR) (how many people clicked on the ad),
- Session Duration (how much time they spent on each page), and
- Qualified leads (how far in the customer journey they got).
- User attributes by Age, Location and Gender - this in particular is valuable information for understanding your buyer demographic. By driving traffic to your website from social media, we can make these demographics as accurate as possible in order to nail down the best possible location to open a new Tomaties storefront. From these metrics, we can also gain insights such for optimal opening hours (are your buyers retirees who shop at 9am on Mondays? Millennials with 9-5 jobs who shop on evenings and weekends? University students who have a low budget?)
- Referral traffic - we need to know where people are getting to the site from, and measuring which channels bring in the most traffic will help us optimize our paid ads for the channels that give us the most leads.
- Engagement rate- tracking the amount of likes, shares and comments on Instagram or Facebook posts indicates what our audience is interested in, which will then help optimize our content for future ads and products.
- Sales of plants, accessories, and delivery charges. Compared to the sales of each year, we will calculate the percentage increase, hoping to reach 20% overall.
Overall, measuring these metrics will give us insight into what is working and what is not. It also gives us a solid base of data to assess ROI for Instagram, Facebook and Google ads.
Goal 2; Increase Google and Yelp reviews by 10 per month
In order to give this goal a time based aspect, we will start somewhere simple so that we can be monitoring reviews often while also having a clear representation of growth. Reviews are an excellent way to build brand reputation and trust, and since Tomaties already monitors them we will have an excellent base of data to start with. More reviews also come with more sales, so it is important to keep the overall objective of increased profits/sales in mind as well.
Tactics to Explore
Include a link to leave a review in the emailed receipt or the emailed newsletter.
Yelp search ads - Since Tomaties already monitors Yelp reviews, we can start promoting to increase awareness and engagement
Testimonials on the website main page, as well as on each product page.
How We’ll Track Success
CTR (email) - by tracking how many people click on the link in the email to leave a review, we can optimize the email campaign design.
CTR (yelp ad) - since Yelp is a review based
Scroll Depth- if the reviews are near the bottom of the page, we can track how many people scroll 75%. This will indicate people are reading the reviews/testimonials.
Number of Reviews - of course, by recording the number of reviews and their rating, we can directly measure the success of this goal.
Goal 3; Increase sales of accessories by 10% per month
In order to start somewhere, we can start with a goal of 10% increase per month. The three products we want to boost sales on are the bucket hat, sweater and crocs.
Tactics to Explore
Since we are going to employ paid social media ads, we can use carousel ads and promoted posts on both Instagram and Facebook for the accessories.
Testimonials on the website for accessories.
Social media posts- ex. a video of one of our staff in the Tomaties truck (wearing the Tomaties bucket hat or sweater) delivering the plant to your door. The video will include a clear Call To Action (CTA) with a link to the shop section of our website.
How We’ll Track Success
Referral traffic - we need to know where people are getting to the site from, and measuring which channels bring in the most traffic will help us optimize our paid ads for the channels that give us the most leads.
Click Thru Rate (CTR) - measured by how many people clicked the social media ad, over how many people saw it. Indicates we have successfully engaged the right user at the right time, and that we understand what our customer base wants to see.
Qualified leads - assessed as a user who clicks on our ad, spends time on our instagram page, is a return visitor, adds something to their cart on our e-commerce site, or signs up for our newsletter (ie. a form response). It’s important for us to understand this user’s location and demographic as well, which can be tracked through Google Analytics.
Purchases of each product, compared to purchases from last month.
Goal 4: Reduce inventory waste by 10% per quarter
Under this goal I will address two of the goals that are important to Tomaties:
a) Increase advance orders by 20% per quarter so that they aren’t selling out as often, or wasting stock because they grew too many of a certain type of plant.
b) Ensure plants sell before they get too big for their starter pots.
The two of these goals work hand in hand with reducing waste, as well as increasing overall profits which is of course the main objective of our measurement model. I will use many of the same tactics and measurements for these two goals, which is why I have combined them under one heading.
I added 10% per quarter and 20% per quarter in order to give us a time-based aspect for more accurate measurement of success. Assuming starter plants need to be repotted after 1-2 months, this gives us about a 6-7 week window to get the plants out the door. Every 13 weeks we can then assess how we are doing with the below metrics.
Tactics to Explore
Tactics would include efforts to push stock that is getting close to the “expiry” date, or to encourage advance buying.
1) A form to the main page offering a discount (something small, 5-10% depending on margins) if they order in advance. This would give us the advantage of gaining their email, which we can offer a box to tick for the already existing email campaigns Tomaties does. This page would also be the landing page for any ads or links from social media.
2) Social media posts encouraging users to order in advance, which would feature a tomato plant with someone’s name on it emulating an airport taxi sign.
3) CallRail will help manage phone systems and text messaging. Since the website asks to call for delivery, this is essential for increasing advance orders.
How We’ll Track Success
By tracking the amount of pots that need to be written off under waste, we can provide ourselves with an accurate measurement of waste numbers.
- We can track this by recording each cycle of starter plants with their start dates and “expiry” dates- when we reach each expiry date we can count how many are left, and measure it against the last batch. Each assessment will help us gain insights into what is selling better or worse. If there are lots left over of one type of plant, the next batch will include less of that plant. Assuming the client already tracks waste, we will start with those numbers and compare from there. If not, after the first batch of data we will be able to compare from there.
Tracking CTR and leads generated for the social media posts, as well as form responses to the discount offer form on the website main page, will indicate whether they are contributing to the increase in advance orders.
Call Rail can provide metrics for inbound calls and texts such as time of day, location of caller and overall buyer path. We can improve user experience with CallRail, which will boost retention and brand loyalty. Tomaties will be able to avoid text-bouncing to their number, and allow customers to leave voicemails during closing hours (lots of voicemails? We should extend opening hours!). Tracking the number of orders over the phone will also help us measure the increase in advance orders, and assess the ROI.
Conclusion
Now that I have laid out our goals, tactics and metrics, we can aim for the success of Tomaties’ digital marketing efforts. I have hopefully addressed all of your questions and concerns, and we can move forward in confidence that we have a clear, precise plan. Overall, I hope to help you gain insights on who your customers are; where they live, how they find out about your business, why they purchase your products and finally, how to get them to keep coming back for more. I look forward to helping grow Tomaties’ online presence with ads as well, which is an exciting step towards executing a successful e-commerce business. Finally, with clear and accurate data to stand on I am confident Tomaties will be able to identify the best possible spot for a new location.