Marketing goals have become a yearly ritual.
Goals at the beginning of the year are awesome – infused with post-holiday cheer and New Year promise. But, as the bitter cold of winter fades into the warmth of spring and the promise of summer, those goals are often forgotten.
Day-to-day work and the emergency-of-the-moment take priority. Goals are easy to put aside – too easy.
Here’s the thing – the right goals and the right processes are critical to business growth.
Marketing Goals Fuel Business Growth
Many marketing teams make a mistake when they set their goals. They see goals as a to-do list, rather than a tool for business growth. Goals become a way to measure work and effort, rather than a roadmap for growing the business.
By changing your mindset when it comes to marketing goals, you can make business success a priority.
Here are 5 strategies to help transform marketing goals into business growth:
1. Start by Looking Back.
Many marketing teams are so focused on handling the next emergency, they never review past campaigns and past strategies. This leads to goals that are remarkably similar year after year. Marketing is always evolving. You can’t implement the same strategy and expect different results.
Look closely at past campaigns. What happened? What bottlenecks prevented progress? What created the bottleneck? What challenges were too great to overcome? What worked? Why did it work? Ask yourself what you should have done differently. The strategies used to get your business where it is today aren’t the strategies necessary to grow the business. Use past results to modify future planning.
2. Link Goals to Business Growth.
Focusing your goals on marketing, and not the overall business, is a mistake. As you plan, consider how your marketing can have a positive impact on the company.
Your goals are business goals, and not just marketing measurements. Set objectives that move the business, and link the objective with a business result. How are the new subscribers going to grow the business? How will the new campaign increase sales? Every marketing goal should be linked to growth.
3. Measure the Impact.
It’s a new age of marketing. We have access to so much data – clicks, impressions, shares, influences and more. Many marketers have become so enamored of these “feel-good” metrics, they’ve forgotten to consider the impact of their effort. An impression isn’t a customer, and a click isn’t a sale.
You need to identify ways to measure business results. Select specific metrics for your goals that have a direct impact on business growth. Look for metrics that are driving business success – leads, revenue generation, and market penetration, for example.
4. Let Your Goals Grow.
A strategy for business growth requires both quick-hit initiatives and long campaigns. That’s where your goal-setting can help.
Long-term goals are typically more difficult. Progress can be slow, even maddening, with results difficult to track. Use short-term goals to work toward your long-term business growth strategies. Quick-hit, short-term marketing goals provide you rapid progress and excitement, with each success making it easier to reach the long-term goals that are necessary for sustainable business growth. They help you make meaningful progress toward long-term goals.
5. Make Sure Your Goals Are SMART.
Once you start setting your goals, you need to ensure the goal is viable. That’s where the SMART goal-setting framework can help. SMART stands for: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Timely. The most effective goals fit the SMART framework.
SMART goals provide clear objectives and measurable criteria. Using SMART will eliminate many of the challenges and problems that teams struggle with when pursuing goals. Your goals become the foundation of your marketing campaigns.
Marketing Goals and Business
As a marketing professional, goal-setting should be the most important task for the year. Strong, SMART goals can mean a successful year with real business growth, revenue and profit.
If you’re ready to take you marketing, and business, to the next level, GO2 Partners offers a free SMART marketing goals template that can help. Built using real data from across the country, many businesses are already benefiting from the template. If you still have questions, then contact GO2 Partners today and let our experts take the mystery out of marketing for you.
