Create SMART goals for your overarching digital marketing plan as well as each marketing campaign.
When it comes to digital marketing, there’s not a sure-fire, one-size-fits-all plan that will skyrocket sales. However, there are some common denominators among successful brands who experience sales growth year over year. Some of those shared elements include Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and SMART goals.
An effective marketing strategy for growing your business STARTS with goal setting. Marketers need to generate SMART marketing goals for not only their overarching marketing plan but also for each marketing campaign.
SMART goals are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Results-oriented
- Time-bound
Specific Success Metrics
The only way to know if you have met your goals is to be specific in what you want to achieve. During the onset of a marketing plan, this can be difficult to ascertain. Once you get rolling, things get clearer. You will find it much easier to assign a specific goal to each piece of a marketing plan, too.
For example, if your marketing plan includes banner ads, social media advertising, as well as video content, you’ll want to measure the success of each piece. A SMART goal for social media advertising could be: increase Facebook fans by 50 people by placing a targeted ad in June.
Measurable Marketing Channels
Marketing effectively will increase sales, but you need to be sure that every marketing piece you produce has one more two measurable results. Choosing digital marketing techniques and channels that deliver results may require some adjustments, but started with an educated hypothesis, collecting data to analyze, and setting measurable goals will help you find an effective mix. If you analyze data correctly, you will continue to adjust your marketing plan accordingly as well. In fact, depending upon your measurable results, you can almost guarantee that your marketing plan will change each quarter.
Attainable and Incremental Improvements
Every business wants to increase revenue. The key is making sure that you create an achievable marketing plan. Wanting to increase your social media base by 500% will not happen with one banner ad placement.There is always room for continuous improvement in digital marketing.
Realistic Expectations for Success
Take an objective look at your success goal. Is it realistic? If not, dial things back a bit in terms of expectations. Unrealistic marketing goals are likely to lead to failure. It’s not fair to your company, executive management, or marketing team to place unrealistic goals as a success measurement. If everyone can agree on realistic goals, achieving them will set you up for the next big win.
Timely Measurement and Reporting
As with achieving any goal, it takes dedication and time to make it happen. Success doesn't happen overnight. Put a timeline wrapper around each piece of your plan, as well as your overarching objective for the year. You might have a great plan — and it may work — but if your timeline is off by six months to a year, you'll miss key deadlines, milestones, or other related success measurements. With SMART marketing, give your plan enough time to work but don't overextend. Place critical dates for a checkup in your timeline. This way, if a portion of your plan is lagging, you can tweak it as needed.
Start 2020 by Setting SMART Marketing Goals
Download How to Establish Digital Marketing Goals to work through the process of creating your own marketing SMART goals or consider working with a digital agency that can help get you started.
Remember, as with achieving any goal, it takes dedication and time to make it happen. Success doesn't happen overnight — but starting with SMART goals, even within an ever-changing marketplace, can make a HUGE difference.
