4 Tips for Setting Marketing Goals That Get Results
The objective of marketing is to reach your target market in order to communicate the benefits of owning your products or using your services. The ultimate goal is to effectively acquire and maintain your customer. That being stated, your marketing objectives should be associated with the specific company goals that your organization is looking to reach. Once these goals have been set up, the next step is to create deliverables in order to meet them. The following suggestions can assist you with staying the course while working through your marketing strategy.
Know What Your Key Performance Metrics Are
If your goals can’t be measured, then they definitely can’t be managed. It’s extremely important that stakeholders agree on what the target is and, just as important, to begin tracking progress as soon as possible. If the target isn’t met by the end of the quarter (or year), but you came close to it, having comprehensive measures in place can go a long way. On the opposite end, if you blow past your goal early (that’s great!), don’t lose momentum; check if you continue to see gains in either sales numbers, traffic, and/or other metrics by staying the course until project completion. This is a great way to forecast for future projects.
Take A Step Back To Re-evaluate
Don’t hesitate to reassess, modify, or change goals and deliverables. It’s also a good idea to set up some time, at least on a weekly or monthly basis, to do a check-in on all of your objectives to see where you stand. Is anything falling behind? Are there any unexpected problems creating bottlenecks within processes? If something needs to change, be willing to have a sit-down with your team and adjust your objectives as necessary.
Use The Extra Hands On Deck
Being the person ultimately responsible for the goal does not mean that you need to do all of the work yourself. At the end of the year, success of the goal will be measured by whether or not the target has been met, not by who performed what tasks. By harnessing the skill sets and abilities of your team, you can increase your chances of having a far better end result for your objectives all around.
Approach your marketing goals in small chunks as opposed to large tasks.
Break your goals down into monthly or quarterly (and even weekly) sections and it will help them to become way more manageable. As a matter of fact, when you receive a goal with an end-of-year or “later on in the year” due date, agree to what the quarterly actions will be for successful completion of this goal. This way you can see if you are staying on target.
By concentrating on what you need to accomplish your targets, and making sure that you are tracking the completion of your deliverables, you can set yourself on the right path to meet your quarterly or yearly sales targets.
