Outperforming Competitors With SMART Goals
We’re going to let you in on a little secret. There is a method of improving your digital marketing campaign performance without beating your head against a wall. This strategy consistently leads to higher lead quality, higher conversion rates, increased engagement, and lower lead acquisition costs. What’s this strategy called? It’s called SMART goals, also known as SMART objectives.
Why should you use SMART goals or SMART objectives when building digital marketing campaigns? SMART goals allow you to develop a clear plan that pairs with the appropriate KPIs to determine whether your marketing campaigns are headed for success or disaster.
Why SMART Goals Are Important
Are you familiar with Benjamin Franklin’s quote, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail?” This simple quote is relevant to literally any industry and highlights the importance of having a game plan before taking action.
For example, anyone working in marketing or who has launched a business is familiar with creating Ideal Customer Personas (ICPs). ICPs are so vital that they form a significant part of a marketing plan inside a business plan.
The primary purpose of ICPs is to help identify the people who are an ideal match for your product or service. When done correctly, Ideal Customer Personas help determine which advertising platform you should use, what demographics targeting you should consider, and what your ads should say to attract these customers and justify starting the business in the first place.
SMART goals function the same way as Ideal Customer Personas because they help you create an overview of what your campaigns should achieve.
What Are SMART Goals and How Do They Impact Marketing Campaigns?
Now that we’ve given you a little background on the importance of SMART Goals, it’s time to focus on what they are.
SMART goals, aka SMART objectives, were created by George T. Doran in 1981. Mr. Doran created the framework after noticing businesses didn’t clearly defining business objectives.
The lack of specificity prevented businesses from achieving further growth because there wasn’t a clear strategy for allocating resources and workforce to growing companies.
The framework helped businesses define and measure their goals, improving company and employee performance.
What Does SMART Stand For?
When broken down individually, SMART stands for the following:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-Based
How Do You Write SMART Goals?
I know what you’re thinking at this point. You’ve been reading along, completely blown away by our historical knowledge of famous figures tied to creating goals, and you suddenly feel overwhelmed.
It’s natural, and that’s where mistakes happen. Launching marketing campaigns with 0 planning is the one reason most digital marketing campaigns fail.
Let’s explore how to write SMART goals to prevent your next marketing campaign from failing. It’s easier than you think.
Specific
It’s no surprise that SMART objectives begin with a specific target. The more you specify what you want to accomplish, the more likely you will achieve the desired outcome.
When formulating your SMART goal, be as detailed as possible. If the goal is not specific enough, you risk measuring the wrong KPIs.
Let’s explore a few specific examples (see what we did there?).
Initial Goal: We want to generate more revenue. We will use Google Ads to accomplish this goal.
Specific Goal: We want to generate more qualified leads for our marketing software, leading to more sales and thus increase revenue. We will use Google Ads for our lead-generation efforts.
Measurable
Now that you have created a specific goal, we must measure it. Measuring the goal with specific metrics and KPIs allows us to create benchmarks that can be used as baselines for comparing and measuring future goals.
The above examples give you a sense of what we want to accomplish: increasing revenue. There is one problem, though. Is the goal measurable? No, it’s not. We only indicated we needed more revenue but didn’t specify how much. Let’s explore a specific, quantifiable goal.
Initial Goal: We want to generate more qualified leads for our marketing software, leading to more sales and thus increase revenue. We will use Google Ads for our lead-generation efforts.
Measurable Goal: We want to increase revenue by 25% with Google Ads by onboarding more paying customers to our marketing software.
As you can see, our goal is now specific and measurable. We want to achieve a specific revenue increase and identified which platform to use to accomplish the goal.
Attainable
The next letter in our business objective is A, which brings us to attainable. In other words, is our goal realistic? So far, we’ve created a specific goal and developed a measurable metric to help identify adding more revenue to our business, but is the goal realistic?
It sure is. A 25% increase in revenue is very realistic. The goal becomes even more realistic when broken down by a specific time frame, which we will address in a bit. Creating an attainable goal is where we see a lot of businesses get tripped up.
Businesses often create unrealistic metrics that prevent their goals and campaigns from achieving a realistic outcome.
An unrealistic goal would be to increase revenue from 25% to 75% over a month or a quarter. To be honest, a 75% increase in revenue might not even be achievable over the course of the year.
As you move through the SMART goal methodology, set a realistic goal.
Initial Goal: We want to increase revenue by 25% with Google Ads by onboarding more paying customers to our marketing software.
Attainable Goal: We want to increase next quarter’s revenue by 25%. Our current quarterly revenue is $20,000, which means we need to onboard 10 more clients, each paying $500/month for our marketing software.
As you can see, our SMART goal is taking shape because it’s specific, measurable, and attainable. Our current goal gives us plenty of room to grow because we will try to reach the goal over the next quarter, not a week or a month, which is likely unrealistic.
The above examples give you a sense of what we want to accomplish: increasing revenue. There is one problem, though. Is the goal measurable? No, it’s not. We only indicated we needed more revenue but didn’t specify how much. Let’s explore a specific, quantifiable goal.
Initial Goal: We want to generate more qualified leads for our marketing software, leading to more sales and thus increase revenue. We will use Google Ads for our lead-generation efforts.
Measurable Goal: We want to increase revenue by 25% with Google Ads by onboarding more paying customers to our marketing software.
As you can see, our goal is now specific and measurable. We want to achieve a specific revenue increase and identified which platform to use to accomplish the goal.
Relevant
Relevance is one of our favorite components of SMART goals because relevance helps brands understand the significance of the marketing objective they are trying to accomplish.
Regardless of the industry, all businesses advertise because they are trying to accomplish an overall company goal.
In our pretend example, a marketing software company is trying to increase its revenue by 25% over the next quarter, but we don’t understand why.
It’s essential to understand why you are trying to accomplish your goal. What relevance or benefit does it provide the company?
Adding more revenue to this pretend marketing software company could allow it to offer its employees health insurance. Perhaps the additional revenue could be used to buy new office equipment or expand a department with limited resources.
As you create your SMART goals, be sure to address the overall objective (relevance) of increasing traffic, sales, revenue, etc. Ask yourself, why are you trying to achieve this goal?
Initial Goal: We want to increase next quarter’s revenue by 25%. Our current quarterly revenue is $20,000, which means we need to onboard 10 more clients, each paying $500/month for our marketing software.
Attainable Goal: We want to increase next quarter’s revenue by 25%. Our current quarterly revenue is $20,000, which means we need to onboard 10 more clients, each paying $500/month for our marketing software. The additional revenue will help us buy new computers for our team since our current computers are five years old.
Time
The final component of creating a SMART goal is measuring how much time you have to accomplish it. Setting a time limit ensures everyone is accountable for completing it by a specified date.
The time limit helps avoid procrastination and allows the team working on the goal to see how much time they have to complete their tasks that contribute to the company’s SMART goal.
Just like when we reviewed the attainable portion of this goal, the time specified to complete it should also be realistic. In our example, we stated that the goal will be achieved by the end of next quarter, which is a reasonable time frame.
One of the benefits of time-based goals is that it quickly allows the parties managing the goal to address bottlenecks or issues preventing the team from achieving their goal.
If the team is falling behind at any time, they can quickly address what is causing the issue so they can get back on track.
We now have all of the elements necessary to build a SMART goal. Let’s explore what the final goal looks like.
Initial Goal: We want to increase next quarter’s revenue by 25%. Our current quarterly revenue is $20,000, which means we need to onboard 10 more clients, each paying $500/month for our marketing software. The additional revenue will help us buy new computers for our team since our current computers are five years old.
SMART Goal: Our current quarterly revenue is $20,000. We want to increase next quarter’s revenue by 25%, so we need to generate $5,000 ($25,000) by the end of next quarter. To accomplish this goal, we will use Google Ads to onboard 10 more clients, each paying $500/month for our marketing software. That means we need to close 3 sales per month over the next quarter. The additional $5,000 generated next quarter will help us buy new computers for our team since our current computers are five years old.
How Will Your Business Start Leveraging SMART Goals?
As you can see, embracing SMART goals is not just a strategic choice; it’s a transformative one. By aligning your marketing efforts with Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound objectives, your business gains clarity, focus, and direction. As highlighted throughout this article, SMART goals provide a roadmap for success, enabling you to make informed decisions, allocate resources effectively, and measure progress accurately. Now that you know and understand SMART goals, it’s time for your business to take action.
Start by identifying your key objectives. Then, craft SMART goals tailored to your unique needs and implement them into your marketing campaigns. With SMART goals as your guiding force, your business can unlock its full potential and outperform competitors in the dynamic digital marketing landscape. How will your business start leveraging SMART goals, and will you start creating SMART goals around other aspects of your life?
The more you practice using SMART goals, the easier it is to create detailed goals across departments or services within your business.
Is your business struggling to define goals that will achieve a specific outcome? Feel free to reach out, and we’ll create a game plan as part of your new marketing strategy.
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