New year new me? We prefer New Year, Improved Me! 2023 is set to be a year of business opportunity, so get yourself off to the best start by implementing clear, measurable goals to keep you and your business on track.
Goals are an essential part of your marketing strategy. They give you the driving force behind any campaign. Without a clear goal, your marketing can become improvised and unplanned rather than calculated and definite.
Goals are also needed to measure the success of your marketing; knowing what you want to achieve is necessary to quantify the success. If the goal is to get more people onto the website, specific content will be created to drive your customers onto the site. From that content, you can then use analytics to see how that content performed and ultimately prove that your marketing did do what was intended.
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The starting point is deciding what you want to achieve! Then from there it is communicating that goal with your team so it easy to understand. There are a couple of methods to construct marketing goals (or just goals within your business in general) that can then be easily communicated to your business and team.
SMART Goals
The most common are SMART goals. SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Bound. SMART is a globally utilised method for approaching goals.
| Specific |
Define goals that are clear and concise. They must be easy to understand so your team knows what they are trying to achieve and why |
|
Measurable |
Outline the quantifiable outcome to understand what needs to be measured. |
|
Attainable |
Consider the resources available, time scale and potential issues to set goals that can be achieved. |
|
Relevant |
Make sure the goal coincides with the business's overall vision |
|
Time-Bound |
Decide the timeline for the goal, decide a start and end date, as well as dates to review progress. |
For example, the specific goal is to increase followers on Twitter. To measure the goal, we want to increase followers by 10%. The goal is attainable as we have time to focus on quality content on Twitter and dedicate more time to the platform; however, there could be an issue as we have no control over who does or doesn't follow the account. The goal is relevant as the business's mission is to grow. Finally, the time scale is 6 months, and the progress will need to be reviewed monthly to ensure we are on track and make any changes required to achieve the target.
Have a look at our worksheet for designing your SMART goals as well as a great range of other resources to help grow your business.
CLEAR Goals
Another method for setting goals is CLEAR goals. CLEAR is an acronym for Collaborative, Limited, Emotional, Appreciable and Refinable. CLEAR goals work for a team working towards a goal and combine logic and emotions into the goal-setting process.
| Collaborative |
Goals must engage your team and be established together to encourage collective momentum |
| Limited |
Define a precise time scale and duration for the goal |
| Emotional |
The outcome should be desired from the team, so they are emotionally invested |
| Appreciable |
Goals can be broken down into more minor, tactical actions |
| Refinable |
Make sure goals can be refined or modified as situations develop through the process |
Adam Kreek designed the CLEAR goals method when he felt there were shortfalls in the SMART goal concept. Setting goals that include human emotions and motivations and having the flexibility to amend as needed will help push goals to success.
No matter what goal method you decide, defining your goals is the best way to start achieving your goals.
Having defined metrics is the best way to track the progress of your marketing and monitor if it is performing as desired. These decided metrics are known as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Without set KPIs and regular reviews, it is difficult to understand how well your marketing is working. If you want to increase visitors to your website, the obvious metric to track is website views. Still, by regularly reviewing this figure, you can track whether you are progressing and heading towards your goal or whether the strategy may need changing. Different goals will lend themselves to other kinds of metrics. Some common KPIs include Return on Investment (ROI), Clickthrough Rate (CTR), Engagement, Customer Retention and Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)/Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs).
When measuring your metrics, some are easier than others, social media engagement is simple to do on each platform or via a social media management system such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social. If you use a CRM like HubSpot or Salesforce, you will have a wide range of analytic reports ready to customise for your need. You could also use a platform like Databox, Google Data Studio or Datapad to compile your data in one place and produce the relevant graphs and metrics.
HOW DO I ALIGN MY MARKETING GOALS AND BUSINESS GOALS?
Your marketing goals need to be working towards your overall business goals. If the business goal is to become the world leader in your field, then marketing can help you increase those sales to get there! The link for some of your marketing goals may not seem as obvious, such as increasing social media following and engagement, but it all pushes towards goals such as growing the business.
Likewise, your business goals will influence your marketing goals. If the business is launching a new product and the goal is to make it a bestseller on the market, that will impact the marketing strategy. Increasing sales may not have been an outlined goal previously, but marketing will play a significant role in making that happen, so goals need to be amended accordingly.
No matter what you want for your business in 2023, having precise, measurable goals is the best way to start! Pick a method to define your goals, regularly review your process and, most importantly, create quality, engaging content for your audience and you'll be on your way to achieving any marketing or business goal in 2023.
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