I’ve seen more often than not clients and project work come to me with their marketing strategy all planned without actually having any real/meaningful goals. Having clearly defined goals is critical to measuring success (or failure) BOTH hugely important pieces of the business growth puzzle. Knowing how/why something worked means you have increased chances of repeating the process, knowing what doesn’t work means you can put it down to learning, reiterate the strategy and tactics and go again.
If you, like most of my clients, find it hard to define clear goals you’ll be pleased to know it needn’t be. One of the easiest to understand, and therefore implement, goal setting frameworks I know of is SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-based.
A goal for you might be to ‘increase traffic to my website’ or maybe ‘get more followers on Twitter’. Although both might be great for your business generally speaking they are not specific enough, they are not SMART goals.
A SMART goal for ‘increase traffic to my website’ could be broken down like:
Specific: I will increase unique visitors to my website from Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin
Measurable: Progress will be measured in Google Analytics by how many daily visitors I get, and I will use Bit.ly link tracking
Attainable: I can reach out to current clients and ask for them to retweet me and I will write & publish 1 blog post per week as part of my inbound marketing & then distribute on to these channels
Relevant: Increasing traffic to my site will allow me to apply Facebook re-targeting on all new visitors, I generate new leads from lead magnets on my website and I can build brand awareness within my professional network, which will grow my business & increase revenue
Time-Based: I will have increased unique visitors to my website by 5% month on month
SMART Goal: I will increase unique visitors to my website by 5% each month from Facebook, Twitter & Linkedin so I can re-target visitors on Facebook, generate new leads and build brand awareness by publishing 1 blog post per week. This aligns with my overall business goal of business growth and increasing my monthly revenue.
As you can see by working through the SMART framework, a simple goal of ‘i want to increase traffic to my website’ becomes much more specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-based.
Taking the time to think through your goals and converting them to SMART goals will help you focus your marketing. I would love to have your input on this, and if you use SMART goal setting in your marketing feel free to share your examples.