How To Set Smart Marketing Goals And Achieve Them In 2021
Wondering how you can create your marketing goals and attain them? When it comes to goal setting, many people get confused and don’t know how or where to start.
You might have big brilliant decisions to make like product development, increasing brand awareness, product marketing, introducing your product to the market or even attracting more qualified leads but you don’t just wake up and jump into those decisions without preplanning.
Just the way you cannot jump into everything in life without planning, you cannot make decisions on your business and especially marketing decisions without a little thought.
Implementing marketing campaigns without goals is like walking aimlessly not knowing your destination. You want to have solid goals that you can see the direction of your company’s journey by looking at those goals. Take, for example, your boss asks you what your marketing goals are and where the company will be in the next five years and you lack the right answer.
You have to have clear goals that you can be held accountable for as a marketer. Setting marketing goals is not as hard as you think. In this article, we are going to give you a comprehensive guide on how to set marketing goals and achieve them.
Definition of Marketing Goals
You can define marketing goals as
- specific,
- measurable,
- attainable,
- realistic,
- time-bound measures taken in marketing efforts.
How Important Are Marketing Goals To A Business?
Have you realized that it is easier to get something when you put it down on paper? Well, marketers who set their goals have higher chances of hitting those goals than those who have not set their goals.
A marketing goal is a roadmap to your marketing success. Your marketing objectives hold very important data that cannot be left out or ignored. In everything you do, goal setting is one of the first steps to your success.
You might be asking yourself why setting marketing goals is so important? Well, let’s say you just came out of your house strolling down the street without a destination in mind, wouldn’t it be easy for your to escort someone to the mall if they asked you?
Working without goals in mind will make you sway out of the path you’re supposed to take a thousand times. Try to work without objectives and you will find yourself picking one task after the other without thinking of the efficiency of what we are doing.
Another point to note is that it is extremely hard to come up with a marketing strategy if you have not set your marketing goals.
How To Define Marketing Objectives
A good marketing plan includes a strategy and clear marketing objectives. Marketing objectives are well-defined goals. Marketing objectives give directions to the marketing team and also give information for the team leaders to review.
Marketing objectives play an important role in marketing strategy. As we said earlier, your goals must be well defined if you want to achieve your business plans.
As a marketer, you have to construct a straightforward plan, outline what you need to do and how you will go about the plan.
You might have a great plan but if it doesn’t include a concrete list of objectives, you will have a hard time trying to execute your plan. But you do not need to worry, this guide is going to give you tips that you can use to improve your plan.
How To Choose Marketing Goals
The first step you want to take is to make a list of marketing goals and pick the most important goals and focus on them. As a marketer, you have many goals on your list but you cannot concentrate on all those goals.
For you to choose the most important goals, try to measure the position of your company then select two or three goals that you can put all your efforts on.
What are SMART marketing goals?
SMART is a framework that leads to a successful goal plan. SMART stands for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Realistic
- Timely
Using SMART marketing can bring in tremendous results in your business. This framework is highly important because it helps marketers to determine whether their goals can be achieved or not.
Examples Of SMART Marketing Goals
SMART goals increase your chances of attaining success. SMART goals keep your marketing accountable, guide them on what to do daily, and make it easier to measure your progress.
1. Content Marketing
As a content marketer, you’re required to plan and create blog posts, website content, and promote your content on a variety of networks. When creating your content plan, you have to ask yourself why you’ve been given the responsibility to write blogs and other types of content.
Most content marketers are given the task to write blog posts so that they can increase website traffic and attracting qualified leads. As a content marketer, you have to ensure that you write high-quality blog posts that are targeted to the right audience to increase the traffic of the company’s website.
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Goals
Are you focusing on increasing your website’s visibility? Is your focus on SEO? If the answer to those two questions is yes then you have to optimize your pages for search engines. You will also have to check if there are any issues that are slowing down your website and also work on link building.
Remember your business objectives like increasing your website traffic and lead generation when working on your SEO goals. Don’t drift away from the business objectives.
3. Customer Acquisition Goals
If your goal is to acquire more customers, your job might be a little bit easier. With other marketing efforts like converting leads to customers, you can increase your customers.
However, you should not forget that your customer acquisition goals are supposed to go hand in hand with your business objectives.
4. Social Media Marketing Goals
A social media marketer is responsible for publishing content on social media platforms. If you are a social media marketer, you have to ensure that you oversee social media paid campaigns like Facebook Ads and campaigns from other platforms.
The ultimate goal of your efforts is to increase the brand awareness of your company and attract quality leads that will convert to real customers. For you to achieve your goal, you will have to carry out various tasks like posting high-quality videos and images on Instagram to increase engagement or posting highly educational content on Twitter to gain more followers.
5. Customer Support Goals
You might have acquired customers but making them stay is the most important thing to do. Remaining loyal to your customers can help you achieve your goal of increasing revenue because loyal customers become promoters.
Whenever your customers get satisfied after receiving your services or after purchasing your products, they will come back for more and even recommend your services or products to their friends and family.
6. Lead Generation Goals
As a lead generation marketer, your responsibilities are:
- Run targeted PPC Campaigns
- Create targeted content
- Email outreach
There are many other marketing goals that you can set for your brand apart from the ones we have mentioned above. You might have different objectives for your company, your metrics will determine which goals you will put more focus on.
Tips On How To Set Your Marketing Goals And Achieve Them In 2020
In this section, we are going to give you tips on how you can set, plan, and achieve your marketing goals in 2021. Check the tips below:
1. Be Smart
As we mentioned before, the SMART framework produces successful results when incorporated in a marketing plan. This framework is easy and yet very effective. Below is what takes place in the SMART framework:
- Specific – Be specific on what goal you want to achieve. Create a list of the exact details of your goal because it will be easier to achieve it. Your goals should be focused and well-structured. The more focused your goals are the more energized and motivated you will be.
- Measurable goals are crucial to a company. Your goals should be measured by numbers. They remind you of what actions to take daily and they let you know if you’re on the right track or not.
- Attainable goals are what you should be looking at. Most small brands make the mistake of setting goals that are too high for them to achieve. Ensure that you set goals that you can achieve but you shouldn’t set goals that will be too easy to attain either. Dream big but put reality into consideration.
- Realistic/relevant – For your goals to be achievable, they should align with the current position of your company. You might want to break the record for this year and get the highest sales of your products but it might be hard if your competitors increased.
- Time-Based- Your goals can only become relevant when you set a time frame that you can use to measure your progress. Without time setting, you might not achieve the goals.
2. Analyze Your Last Year’s Performance
Before you set your goals for this year, you have to go back and check the goals you set for the last year and analyze your success and your failures and what steps you can take to avoid the mistakes that you made.
You can take the following actions to improve your marketing goals this year:
- Identify the channels that attract the least and the most traffic
- identify the channels that bring in qualified leads
- Identify channels that attract more customers
- Identify the content with the most and the least engagement
- Identify social media channels that have the least and the most engagement
- Identify the PPC ads that have the least and the most response
All those points are very essential when setting marketing goals because they direct you on where to put your focus this year.
3. Create Goals That You Can Achieve
Why set goals that you cannot manage to achieve? Setting achievable goals motivates you to achieve bigger goals. It is good to dream big but you also need to know that setting extremely high goals will demoralize you.
Take a look at your current position and how long it will take you to reach where you want to be. Don’t set yourself up for any disappointments. Be realistic and you will be amazed how much you will accomplish with time.
4. Consider The Future
Your actions toward your goals should contribute to your long-term strategies. Take actions knowing how they will impact your sales, brand image, and brand awareness now and 5 years to come.
Don’t do anything that will hinder your greater success. Small success should not stand as an obstacle to your big success.
5. Prioritize Important Things
We know you have many goals like increasing leads, increase brand awareness, create engaging content, and stay at the front page of search engines. But you cannot achieve all these goals at once, you need to work on the most important goal first.
Assess your current position and identify the opportunities available. You also need to consider the aspects that are important to your audience.
6. Allocate Required Resources
If you want your goals to remain in check then you have to include your resources in the calculations. Before you allocate your resources, you have to decide what your priorities are.
Whether your priorities lie in digital marketing or blog content you will definitely need a budget to carry you through. If the budget is too tight for multiple goals, then you can pick one goal at a time.
7. Track Your Progress
You need to measure your progress to know if you’re on track. Use the metrics you defined through the SMART framework. Tracking your progress will help you improve and raise your chances to hit your marketing goals.
8. Strategize
It’s great that you have a plan of your marketing goals but you need tactics on how to achieve your goals. Tactics will help you and your team stay motivated. Always reward yourself for the small wins as well as big wins.
Conclusion
With the above tips, you have a clear idea of what you ought to do to become a better marketer and an intreprenuer.
No matter how long or small you might feel your marketing achievements are, never stop trying to do better.
