How to set up marketing goals like a pro
Any business leader faces the challenge of setting goals.
If you set unrealistic goals, your entire team sees you as unreliable. It can appear as if you lack vision or direction when you set goals that are too small. Even a perfect goal without the right plan will leave your team feeling frustrated and confused.
It’s the same consideration when it comes to setting up marketing goals.
Similarly, follow this approach: identify your goals, then plan the steps to get you there.
First step: pick a goals
Examples of common marketing goals
- Increase website traffic
- Gain more social media followers
- Grow an email list
- Improve conversion rates
- Get more website or social media engagement
- Drive more click-throughs on paid ads
Second step: Make them SMART
SMART stands for:
Specific: Have a clearly defined metric.
Measurable: Be able to measure the metric.
Attainable: Set a realistic completion timeframe, considering the resources that are (or will be) available to you.
Relevant: It is aligned with your business goals and objectives.
Timely: When do you want to achieve this goal by?
Poorly defined goal: I want more website visitors, leads and sales.
Well-defined goal: By next year, we want to have achieved 10 000 website visits, 250 leads generated, 10 new customers by using inbound marketing with a budget of $15 000.
Third step: Set quarterly benchmarks
Don’t do what we like to call: Set it and forget it. Every quarter, take a good look at how your campaign is doing. Just bear in mind that you might see a lot more traction in the fourth quarter compared to the first quarter. Sometimes the opposite is true; go-live websites seem to do very well within their first month. But your campaign helps bring people to your website throughout the year.
Important note
Understandably, gaining leads and new customers is a primary objective of any business. Without this, your business won’t grow beyond its current state.
But it’s critical for you to remember that these goals are not supposed to be an exhaustive list. Your marketing goals only represent one aspect of your business. Don’t forget to set up similar formulas for other goals you may be tracking. These goals could be:
- Sales for a particular product line
- Revenue from existing customers
- Retention rates from current customers
- Number of job applicants (which may be important if your business is growing)
- Downloads of a high lead-to-customer converting offer
We can work with you on setting your marketing goals and objectives and get right down to the nitty-gritty of it to formulate SMART goals that get results.
Take a look at some of our case studies.
