This lesson introduces students to marketing objectives and marketing planning. Students begin by considering what a business actually wants its marketing to achieve before exploring key objectives including sales growth, market share, brand awareness and customer retention, alongside digital objectives such as lead generation, engagement and conversion.

The lesson then examines the factors that influence the objectives a business chooses, including its overall business objectives, available finance and market conditions. Students apply their understanding to familiar businesses including Netflix, Xiaomi and ASOS before investigating the importance of the marketing budget and the factors that determine its size, such as finance, business size, competition and the product life cycle.

Students also explore the important interrelationships between marketing, finance, operations and HR, considering how a successful marketing campaign can create opportunities and challenges across the wider business. Exam technique is developed through an AQA-style 6-mark analyse question on the ‘Nothing phone’, with a structured Knowledge, Application and Analysis (K–Ap–An) model answer. Students finish by creating and prioritising marketing objectives for different businesses before consolidating their learning through an interactive plenary.

Includes:

• Engaging starter & retrieval activities
• Marketing objectives and their purpose
• Sales growth, market share, brand awareness & customer retention
• Digital objectives including leads, engagement & conversion
• Real-world business examples throughout
• Factors influencing marketing objectives
• Marketing budgets and factors affecting spending
• Product life cycle links to marketing expenditure
• Interrelationships between marketing, finance, operations & HR
• Contextual business decision-making activities
• AQA-style 6-mark analyse exam practice
• K–Ap–An structured model answer
• Marketing objectives ranking/application task
• Interactive retrieval & plenary activities

Low-prep, engaging and application-focused, with real-world business contexts and structured exam practice throughout. Fully aligned with AQA A-Level Business (First teaching in 2026, first exams in 2028).