How shared goals and incentives improve marketing results

What if all teams were truly working toward the same goal? Often, it feels like everyone is on separate paths, not fully aligned to reach the same destination.

For example, the social media team focuses on engagement. The email team aims for high click-through rates. The website team works to improve site performance. However, none of this contributes to a unified improvement of the company’s overall goals.

This happens when teams are given goals relevant to their work, which don’t align with organization’s strategic goals. As a result, opportunities to grow the company and create loyal customers are missed.

Let’s explore how shared goals and incentives can lead to measurable outcomes, with three key reasons why alignment is essential.

Reason 1: Unified vision and team dynamics

Let’s face it: disconnected goals lead to fragmented marketing efforts. While a team may succeed in a specific task, the ultimate goal should go beyond individual metrics. Everyone, even if it’s not part of their role, contributes to the bigger picture of growing the business.

However, focusing solely on one metric can distract from this broader goal. For example, suppose the aim is just to get people to open emails. In that case, you might use tactics that get attention but not with the right audience. This can lead to a “successful” campaign that doesn’t help your business grow.

Make sure all teams share a unified vision with common key performance indicators (KPIs). For example, the email team’s goal should be to target the best customers likely to purchase. This may lower open rates but will improve the campaign’s return on investment (ROI).

Achieving this requires communication and shared reporting on metrics. Your email team should still focus on their email-only metrics. However, sharing insights into the bigger picture helps them align with the rest of the organization.

The added benefit? Happier customers who see real value in opening your emails and interacting with your brand.

Dig deeper: 5 secrets to cross-functional collaboration in marketing

Reason 2: Breaking down data silos

Sometimes, teams know that seeing the full picture — both inputs and outcomes — would be helpful, but they lack access to the necessary data. Isolated data sources prevent these teams from having a holistic understanding. Without a complete view, they try to do their best with accessible information.

This creates two main problems: 

• First, teams may rely on outdated or anecdotal evidence, like “this didn’t work last year.” The dynamic nature of consumers and their preferences makes these anecdotes less than helpful. 
• Second, teams may focus too much on their own part of the process, neglecting how it fits into the overall customer journey. Because they can see and influence those numbers, they treat them as overly important, potentially at the expense of getting the right customers.

The solution to this is to implement centralized data management for cross-functional access. This shifts organizations from a “need to know” basis to a democratized view of data. With a greater understanding of how individual pieces influence the overall journey, each team can contribute more effectively.

Shared data fosters transparency and enhances decision-making on individual tactics within the customer journey and bigger strategic initiatives. From a technical standpoint, this can be solved by ensuring that teams have a centralized view of meaningful data for their work. 

Teams should understand the impact of their work on the overall process and be able to share insights with other teams.

Dig deeper: Breaking down data silos: A practical guide to integrated marketing data

Reason 3: Streamlined accountability and incentives

Teams that work in isolation often focus too much on their own goals. Everyone may understand the company’s mission, but teams focused on their own objectives can go off course. Being incentivized to make their channel as successful as possible distorts their ability to contribute to the end goal.

A social media team may partner with an influencer who gets a lot of followers, likes, and attention on a campaign. But if this translates to few conversions and sales, other stakeholders will see it as a waste of time and resources.

To fix this, leaders should create incentive structures that reward collective success. Teams can still celebrate their individual achievements. However, success happens when each part of the process contributes to the overall goal. One strong element in an otherwise failed campaign doesn’t count as success. It’s only when everything works together does the campaign succeed, fostering a stronger team culture.

Aligned incentives promote teamwork and shared accountability, helping everyone understand how to improve and contribute to future wins.

Dig deeper: 5 steps to ensure business goals lead your martech strategy

Getting started

All of this sounds great, right? While greater alignment can bring amazing results, a few things to remember may make a transition a bumpier ride. Watch out for potential resistance to changing team KPIs and goal structures. After all, people don’t generally love change, yet providing the “why” behind your actions can help give context and win them over.

Also, be careful not to discard your existing success measurements to focus solely on the big picture. Teams need to examine both to continuously improve their efforts. Success lies in effectively balancing individual and team contributions in shared incentives.

Regardless of your organization’s size and the resources you have to encourage leaders to start with small pilot programs focused on goal alignment and share results to gain buy-in for broader initiatives. These quick wins can more easily demonstrate why moving to a larger scale can be even more impactful.

Aligning goals and incentives to help teams see the bigger picture and their role is crucial for achieving cohesive growth and collaboration.