Have you thought of your marketing goals? Perhaps, you already have them in mind. It may include growing your business’ overall sales, driving up more traffic on your site, increasing your brand awareness through various social media platforms, or employing digital marketing in your business? You are on the right track. Determining digital marketing goals is a priority before you can strategize. Without a defined plan, you will get nowhere.
So, how do you set goals the SMART way?
In this blog post, find out how to set SMART digital marketing goals to grow your business.
SMART Goals in Digital Marketing
In the 1981 article, “There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management goals and objectives,” George T. Doran coined SMART, which became the basis for establishing transparent, realistic, and actionable goals for companies. It is a mnemonic acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. It gives every business direction that is meaningful and achievable.
Reasons for Planning SMART Goals
Setting up strategic goals is setting up your business for success. It is the core of every marketing strategy, even digital marketing. And if you fail to plan it, you are planning to fail in the long run.
For example, John owns a pizza delivery service. His business has a website, but its ranking in Google search is on page three. Without search engine optimization or SEO objectives, prospective customers will not know what types of pizza the business offers, what other customers say about the pizza, or where the company is. There is limited traffic on his website.
However, if he has established a goal to drive 5% passive organic traffic to his website to come up in the top rankings, he needs to boost site traffic through various ways such as SEO. This way, he can convert this traffic into paying customers.
Steps in Setting SMART Goals
It is creating SMART goals that work best because it is devoid of generalities and covers every significant characteristic of a successful digital marketing goal.
- Be specific
Before your business can achieve your desired result through digital marketing, you need to understand what you are trying to accomplish in the first place. Being specific with goal setting defines a clear, specific goal to be completed.
It answers questions such as:
- What do you want to achieve?
- Is your goal clear, precise, and unambiguous?
- Who will be responsible for it?
Let us take John’s situation as an example.
| Increase the website’s organic traffic. The company’s digital marketing agency partner will accomplish this by optimizing the website’s content for search engines, building links, and creating more content. |
- Use tools to analyze progress.
After laying the groundwork through defining a solid goal, you need to quantify its progress. Key Performance Indicators or KPIs are essential in evaluating whether your goals are working or not.
A measurable goal answers questions like:
- What is the outcome?
- Can your goal be measured and tracked?
- How do you know when you achieve it?
| Increase the website’s organic traffic by 10%. The company’s digital marketing agency partner will accomplish this by optimizing its content for search engines, showing up on the first page, building internal and external links, and creating four blogs per week. |
- Think and expect realistically.
The attainability of the digital marketing goals considers your business’s ability to achieve them. It will be better to use your analytics as benchmarks to be realistic and attainable and avoid creating high pedestals out of it.
An attainable goal fulfills the following questions:
- Is the goal realistic?
- Can this be achieved?
- What are the steps to reach the goal?
| Increase the website’s organic traffic by 10%. The company’s digital marketing agency partner will accomplish this by optimizing its content for search engines, showing up on the first page, building internal links, and creating two blogs per week. |
- Be relevant.
A relevant goal builds the foundation of your online success and even drives you and your team to achieve better results to help grow your business.
It responds to questions like:
- Is the goal fit and right for your business?
- Is this relevant to your company?
- Is it worthwhile?
| Increase the website’s organic traffic by 10%. The company’s digital marketing agency partner will accomplish this by optimizing its content for search engines, showing up on the first page, building internal and external links, and creating four blogs per week. Customers love pizza, which is the product of the company. The aim of optimizing the website is to convert traffic into profit. |
- Specify the time to finish.
A clear deadline is a time frame that helps any company measure the results and tailor ways to optimize strategies for a working goal or not.
A time-bound goal satisfies the following questions:
- How much time do you need to achieve the results?
- What is your end date in achieving the goal?
- When do you need to complete it?
| Increase the website’s organic traffic by 10%. The company’s digital marketing agency partner will accomplish this by optimizing its content for search engines, showing up on the first page, building internal and external links, and creating four blogs per week. Increase the website’s organic traffic by 10%. Customers love pizza, which is the product of the company. The aim of optimizing the website is to convert traffic into profit. |
SMART goals are not only smart; they are vital to your business’ success, especially in the digital world. Creating your plans with the five components will help you set them up realistic and track the results within a particular time.
Headed for Success?
Revinnt is your one-stop shop to help you achieve your SMART goals. Our professional digital marketing agency comprises experienced SEO, digital marketing, and content creation professionals.
