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May 14, 2021
On a mission to draw some really big marketing returns? You’ve probably thought to yourself, “How in the world will I be able to do that?!"
As a digital marketing agency, we know how you feel and we get it – trying to achieve big, undefined goals is harder than it sounds!
But don’t worry because we got you.
According to research conducted by CoSchedule, 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.
But, it doesn’t just apply to marketers! Anyone can set goals as the first step in getting from where they’re at to where they need to be.
However, not all goals are the same.
You see, many people set goals that are too vague and unrealistic. And trying to achieve objectives like these can be daunting.
This is why SMART goals are important!
SMART stands for:
The SMART goal setting framework serves as a guide that allows you to take a vague objective and turn it into small, actionable steps.
Using this framework, you can identify what your goals are, how you’re going to achieve them, measure the effectiveness of your efforts, determine whether your goals are possible, and the time it’ll take for you to achieve this.
For example, you may start by saying, “I want to increase the number of leads on my website each month.”
A SMART goal would look like,
“I want to increase the number of visitors on my website by 20%. An increase of 200 per month, from 1000 to 1200 per month by December 31, 2021.”
To implement a successful marketing campaign, you need to set SMART goals first to help you identify the goal of your campaign, the different strategies involved to realize your objectives, and if it’s realistic.
How to use SMART goals to implement a successful marketing campaign:
When setting a SMART goal, you want to start with a broad objective just to give you and your boss an idea of what you want to achieve.
You don’t have to be specific yet. The goal is to narrow down your focus and your boss’ and make him or her see how your marketing efforts impact the company’s bottom line.
This goal can be anything from driving more sales lead to growing your email list.
Here are examples of common business goals:
Here are examples of common marketing goals:
Once you’ve come up with an objective, The next thing you want to do is to gather data about how other organizations or your company in the previous campaigns was able to achieve this goal.
You want to have numbers as evidence or form of proof on why a certain strategy or action is the best way to realize your goal.
If you don’t have data, then it’s time to test and experiment! Invest in various platforms and see what factors can contribute to helping you achieve your goal.
Leading indicators refer to known inputs, actions, and factors that are necessary to create a predictable outcome.
After gathering data on how previous campaigns were able to generate more sales leads or grow their email list, you can now easily identify your goal’s leading indicators.
Once you’re able to determine the leading indicators and how they can help you achieve your SMART goals, you can start using them to realize your goals.
Leading indicators also provide benchmarks that, if met, serves as a sign that you’ll also likely be meeting your overall key performance indicators and goals.
Here are some examples of leading indicators businesses commonly use to achieve the results they desire:
Potential leading indicators: customer engagement score, adoption, and efficiency of your Customer Success Managers
Potential leading indicators: number of sales appointments and number of marketing campaigns
Potential leading indicators: number of website visitors and conversion rate
For example, your goal is to increase your sales leads. Your boss wants you to get 1 million followers and 1 billion impressions to achieve this goal. However, you just know that this way isn’t the most effective way of achieving the objective.
On top of this, you also read that according to HubSpot, increasing the number of blogs you post per week from 3 to 5 can boost your leads up to 25%
So, the leading indicator here is the frequency of content posted.
You want to show your boss that other factors can effectively increase the number of leads you generate without having to reach a million followers on social media, like content marketing or inbound marketing.
Lead indicators are a great way to show that there are different ways to achieve a goal – some more effective and more SMART than others.
Now that you know what the leading indicators are for your goal, you can use them to give you an idea of how to achieve higher success.
What do we mean by this? Explore other possible indicators!
Let’s use the example above. Since we already know that increasing the number of blogs you post per week can help increase the number of sales lead you generate, you may want to experiment with other factors, like adding videos to your blog post, or using various types of content to provide value to your audience, or personalizing your calls-to-action, to further boost the number of sales lead you get.
Exploring other possible indicators will allow you to further refine your game plan on how you’re going to achieve your end goal and maybe even achieve better results!
Setting SMART goals is the key to implementing successful marketing campaigns that will help your business achieve success.
Follow the tips above so you can gather the information you need to better set your SMART goals and define what your marketing strategies should be to have a successful campaign!
At Digital Resource, we can help you set SMART goals and identify lead indicators you can use to develop successful marketing campaigns.
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