Ted Turner once said, “You should set goals beyond your reach, so you always have something to live for.” Goals serve as motivation to achieve things we wish for, and without them, it’s like chasing blind spots. The same goes for marketing; your strategy is bound to fail without setting up SMART marketing goals. Goals serve as a challenge and push marketing teams beyond their skill sets to achieve great milestones.
The following research backs this claim:
✨ According to a recent study, “Marketers who set goals are 376% more likely to report success than those who don’t. And 70% of those successful goal-setting marketers achieve them.”
In this piece, we will share what SMART marketing goals are, how you set realistic SMART goals for campaigns, and what benefits you can achieve out of them.
What Are SMART Marketing Goals?
SMART is an acronym for “Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.”
When you’re in the middle of crafting the new year’s marketing goals for your company, SMART goals will give you the direction you need to achieve them in a way that benefits your company the most.
Let’s take a closer look at how each SMART element helps provide a clear path forward:
- Specific: The goal should be crystal clear; no ambiguities.
(Example: We as a company will drive 3X More Social Engagements)
- Measurable: Goals should be quantifiable to track progress over time.
(Example: Increasing the click-through-rate by 30%)
- Attainable: Goals should be realistic.
(Example: Increasing your blogs’ traffic by 20% by the year-end)
- Relevant: Goals should be connected with your company’s core mission statement.
(Example: Becoming the world’s leading media agency focused on technology, startups, and VC funding)
- Time-Bound: Goals must be attached to a timeline.
(Example: Increasing your website’s domain ranking by 20% by the end of June 2022)
Goals can be more than one, and for each to be in line with your marketing objectives, they should be SMART so that you know what you have to do to achieve each of them.
What Are The Benefits Of Setting SMART Marketing Goals?
By now, you know what SMART marketing goals are and how each element serves a specific purpose.
Nevertheless, you might ask yourself how they’re different from simple marketing goals and what benefits you can derive by setting them.
We’re going to tell you below why SMART goals are different from other marketing objectives.
1. SMART Goals Make You Confident In What You Do
With SMART marketing goals, you will be able to track the performance of each marketing campaign. When you are more aware of where you are and where you want to be, you’ll get more clarity and feel more confident in mapping out your goals.
This enables you to tweak and adjust your marketing strategy to achieve better results.
They also help your marketing team determine what is working and whether you’re on the right path to achieving your marketing goals.
2. SMART Goals Serve as a Motivation Booster
When working in a team setting, each member dons a specific role based on their strengths.
SMART goals allow you to efficiently utilize those strengths by setting clear and concise objectives and expectations.
When goals are achieved consistently, they provide your team with progressive and positive momentum, which motivates employees to do well.
Additionally, studies have found that teams who write down their goals are always more likely to achieve them.
3. SMART Goals Help You Set Priorities
Since the concept of setting SMART goals is to achieve results that matter, they help you attach priorities regarding each goal.
When teams know what they are trying to achieve and what’s on top of the list, they can laser focus on it to get it done.
For instance, if your top goal is to achieve top ranking on Google against 5 targeted keywords, you can prioritize it by keeping it at the top of your SMART goals.
4. SMART Goals Always Provide Room for Tweaking
Writing SMART marketing goals is not a one-time thing; they can and should be tweaked periodically to meet a specific goal better.
They give you the freedom to choose your own sprint, whether quarterly, biannually, or annually.
Let’s say your goal is to increase social media engagement by 30% by the first half of this year.
To your delight, you may drive results that meet your goals within the first 3 months!
You can then immediately reduce your sprint cycle to three months and set a new goal to achieve in the next three.
Do SMART Goals Actually Work?
The one-word answer; yes. But there are a few things that need to be taken care of for SMART goals to work.
Setting unrealistic marketing goals, not tracking your campaigns, and poor teamwork are some of the reasons why your marketing strategy might fail despite developing SMARTgoals.
Moreover, SMART goals only work if the team working on them has access to the right marketing tools. Otherwise, goals will remain unachievable, and your efforts will be in vain.
Let’s discuss maximizing the chances of achieving your SMART goals by not committing the following mistakes companies usually make while crafting marketing strategies.
How Do You Set Up SMART Marketing Goals For Your Business?
One of the challenges marketing teams face in setting SMART goals is they often confuse ambition with reality. A SMART goal is only achievable if it keeps the current marketing efforts in view.
For this, you need to rely on the ongoing integrated marketing efforts of the team to have a broader view of the closest achievable goals and how the current strategy will aid in achieving new ones.
Nothing stays for a very long time in the marketing world. However, historical data can still help you create new and improved strategies.
Here are a few practices that help you keep your feet on the ground while you set up realistic SMART campaigns:
1. Take Help from Previous Marketing Campaigns
You have tons of information in the form of past marketing campaigns, historical data, and audience information saved in the Analytical tools you use.
This information can help you take notes of what went your way and what didn’t to tweak and improve your future marketing campaigns.
2. Draw a Line Between Achievable and Stretched Goals
There’s a fine line between attainable and stretched goals, and to be a pro-marketer, you need to have an excellent understanding of it.
Attainable goals are those you and your team know they can achieve if everyone performs according to the plan.
In contrast, stretched goals serve as motivation boosters that drive your team to work beyond what they can realistically accomplish.
Whether you achieve stretched goals or not, it’s a win-win situation since you’ve already gone past the realistic goals.
3. Take Suggestions from Your Teammates
It’s essential to bring your team members on the same page while writing SMART goals for maximum results since they know the optimum input required to achieve each goal.
How to Measure And Monitor SMART Goals?
At this very point, you probably have set up and launched your SMART marketing campaigns. However, to measure the success, you need to measure and monitor the progress of each.
Here are a few best practices to measure and monitor your marketing campaigns:
1. Create Mini Milestones
If you’re planning to attain a big goal, it’s good to break it down into smaller parts to make it look more achievable and manageable.
For example, if you’re eyeing to close 40 clients in a year, it will help break it down into 10 clients each quarter.
2. Get Access to The Right Tools
How does it sound to go into a war without any warhead? Pretty dumb, right? The same goes for planning and writing SMART marketing goals without having access to the right tools and analytics.
For example, suppose your SMART goal is to achieve more followers, engagements, and shares on your Instagram, and you’re doing it without a social media managing tool like Hootsuite.
In that case, it’s completely useless to put in any effort.
3. Set Up Regular Checkups
Once you’re done creating mini-milestones and setting up the right tools, the next step is to schedule regular checkups for each marketing campaign. The frequency of schedules can vary for each goal, but the point is you shouldn’t launch a campaign without scheduling regular checkups.
Common SMART Goal Mistakes
When creating the right marketing strategy, it’s important to craft a well-versed plan that covers every aspect of how you’ll attain each goal.
Here is a list of 5 common SMART goal mistakes companies make when building their digital marketing strategy.
1. Setting Vague Goals
Most businesses make a widespread mistake while creating SMART marketing objectives by setting vague goals.
Vague goals are hard to track because there’s no set benchmark to measure them against.
Even if a team falls short by the end of a quarter, they’re not likely to take their missed targets seriously as they didn’t specify their goal.
Keep this up, and you will likely not notice any improvement in your goal achievements.
For example, if you’re planning to drive 500 signups on your webinar page, you should write precisely that rather than stating “increase the number of webinar signups.”
This small mistake can turn into tremendous missed opportunities in the long term.
2. Setting Unattainable Goals
This discussion around SMART goals is useless if you set unobtainable goals at the start.
It’s the responsibility of the marketing manager and concerned employees to set up achievable marketing goals in the decided timeline.
Let’s say, if you’re planning to increase blog traffic by 70% in the first month or increase sales by 50%, you’ll set yourself up for disappointment at the end of each timeline.
✨ SMART Tip: Never set goals you think are unreal or can’t be achieved in the given timeframe.
3. Not Setting KPIs
Imagine Tesla launching a new car model without testing its performance; what would be the impact? They’ll lose their customers, sales will drastically drop, and in the worst-case scenario, they’ll face legal consequences.
When you don’t set KPIs for your marketing efforts, it’s the same as a shot in the dark. You’ll never get to know what actually worked for you and what didn’t; consequently, you’ll miss out on your key potential customers and might face financial crises.
Therefore, setting up measurable KPIs for your marketing campaigns can improve your chances of success.
4. Losing Sight of the Company
It’s normal for businesses to scale when they meet early success in their journey. But, what isn’t normal is losing grip on your company’s core functions.
If your business operates in the B2B market and it has done considerably well over the years, and now you want to take a dig at the B2C market, don’t direct your marketing team to focus on the new front entirely.
Instead, ask them to stay focused on the core business function while spreading awareness about the company’s new brand.
5. Goals Without a Time-Frame
Why are timelines so important? Well, let us ask you this: Would you rather have a taxi ticket to go to the market right now or one that is good for any time today? Of course, you would likely choose the first option.
The same goes for crafting SMART marketing goals; setting deadlines would make you more serious and dedicated to achieving them.
How Does TechNerds Help Marketers Achieve Marketing Objectives?
Any successful marketing campaign aims to earn more ROI for a company or its clients. It’s a simple equation that’s made infinitely more complex by the advent of digital marketing.
To help you get out of this complexity, you need a reliable partner to take some stress out of the process.
If you want to make a bigger and more significant marketing impact with your website and customer acquisition, TechNerds is the platform for you. How?
Here are some key benefits of working with us:
- Our LinkedIn outreach program helps you grow your business.
- We provide SEO services that always keep your business visible on Google SERPs
- Our dedicated collaboration platform helps you create tasks and monitor the progress of your project in real-time.
- Our social media marketing services increase your brand’s online visibility and drive traffic to your website.
Get in touch with us today to make your SMART goals effective and meet them efficiently.
