How to Set Achievable Inbound Marketing Goals and Objectives

What is a SMART Goal?

You should always try to set SMART goals when you’re constructing strategies and plans. Your marketing goals and objectives should always be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely.

• Specific goals will give you a clear direction of what your company is striving to achieve. You want to be as specific as possible for each goal. Specific goals will help your company understand exactly what metrics matter to your goal and how to measure them.

• Setting measurable goals means that you can track the success of all your goals. You should make a timeline that will set up the steps you need to take to meet your goals. Measuring your goals often will tell you what kind of progress you’re making and how it’s affecting your overall marketing strategy.

• Any goal you set should be attainable for your company. Why would you set a goal that you know you can’t reach? That’s unrealistic. You want to create goals that are challenging for your team, but not challenging to the point of being unreachable.

• You want your goals to be relevant to your company’s brand and overall mission. You shouldn’t set a goal that doesn’t pertain to your target audience or you customers because you’re less likely to accomplish that goal. It also pertains to the timing of the goal. Sometimes a goal can’t be achieved at the time, but it could be accomplished later down the road.

• Speaking of time, your goals should be timely. You want to set a timeline for each goal to ensure that you’ll be able to meet each goal by a certain point. Give your team a specific deadline to meet for each goal.

Trying to set SMART goals will help you set goals that you know you can achieve. Use this article as a guideline for setting good marketing goals and objectives for your company. Make sure that your goals are not only just smart, but also SMART.

5 Tips for Setting SMART Marketing Goals and Objectives

1. Start By Defining and Summarizing Your Goal

Be specific about what your goal is and what you want to achieve. Think about why you are setting this as a goal and how it will benefit your company. Writing everything down will give you a clearer idea of what you want to get out of this goal.

Writing down your goals also motivates you to accomplish them. Having a concrete definition and summary of what you want to accomplish will inspire you and your team to see the goal through.

2. Categorize Your Goal and Line it Up With Your Other Goals

To make your goal even more specific, put it into a category that best describes the bigger picture of what you’re trying to accomplish. You also want all of your marketing goals and objectives to align with the overall goals of your business.

You don’t want to set up goals that wouldn’t relate to your business plan. If you can’t categorize your goal under larger business goals, then it might not align with your company’s mission.

For example, let’s say one of your larger business marketing goals and objectives is to attract more leads to your website through social media by 15%. You’re already linking your blog posts within your posts to social media, but it’s not attracting as many leads as you’d like to meet your increase of 15%. On top of linking your blog posts, you could also link to landing pages on your social media and increase the volume of your posts. This will send your social media visitors straight to a place on your website where they can convert into leads. Ultimately aligning your goals by giving your social media visitors more opportunity to engage with and visit your site.

3. Set a Deadline For Your Goal

Setting a deadline for each goal is crucial for moving forward. Without a deadline, there’s no timeline for when you would have to meet your goals. This would probably result in you not taking the necessary steps to achieve your goal in a timely fashion.

You want to see real-time results when you’re moving towards meeting your goals. You want to see change and you want to see some progress. Without setting a deadline, it’ll be more difficult for you to track your progress.

4. Make the Time to Achieve Your Goal

Now that you’ve planned everything out and written your SMART goal down, you have to make time to actually take the steps to achieve your goal. Creating a marketing timeline, a deadline, and a plan all mean nothing if you’re not willing to put the time and effort in to work towards your goal.

You have to figure out how much time per week you can devote to achieving this goal. Scheduling time will help you manage each step of the goal along the way. It’ll also help keep you on track so you can meet your goal by your set deadline.

5. Be Prepared For Obstacles and Challenges Along the Way

The road to your goal might not always be as easy as you’d like. You’re most likely going to face some challenges along the way, and you should prepare yourself for when that happens. Make a list of any potential problems, obstacles, or challenges that you think could hinder your progress. Then, make a list of possible solutions for each problem.

Having a strategy in place will help you manage any problems that you will come across, and it will help keep you on track. If you do get a little off track, that’s totally okay. Try to have a back up plan in place just in case something goes wrong.

Setting SMART goals will help your company move forward. Always keep in mind that your marketing goals and objectives should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Create a plan for all of your SMART goals to help keep you on the track to success!