In order to achieve your marketing goals, you must have clear, measurable objectives. Setting your sights too high will often lead to discouragement and failure to hit your goals. On the other hand setting your goals too low will lead to limited return on your time and investment. This is why it’s best to learn how to set realistic marketing goals to help you get the most out of your strategy and learn where to make improvements to help you grow in your future initiatives.
Align Your Marketing Goals With Your Business Goals
Staying mindful of your business objectives when establishing marketing goals might seem like a no-brainer, yet it’s easy to get sidetracked without noticing. The world of marketing is filled to the brim with eye-catching options; social media, video, search engine marketing and much more. You may be tempted to explore possibilities that are not essential to expanding your business.
It’s also easy to compare yourself to your rivals or fall for intriguing ideas that simply don’t convert into leads or sales. This is why you must remain focused on what your company needs, allowing this guiding principle to provide direction at all stages of goal setting.
Come Up With Specific Goals and Desired Outcomes
Many businesses will launch their marketing strategy with a broad aim such as ‘promoting the business’. For any strategy to be successful, its aims should be unambiguous. It should have a set focus such as expanding email subscribers lists, boosting conversion or selling x amount of widgets in Q1. If you know what you want to achieve, all your efforts can be targeted towards that goal. If plans are too generalized, your marketing will be less impactful and leave you wanting more.
Make Your Goals Measurable
It is highly necessary for your goals to be quantifiable – this way, you can gauge the success of your marketing plan and determine which elements of it are more successful than others. Additionally, make sure to set a reasonable deadline for each goal. For instance, increase email subscribers by the end of the month or increase CTR for a specific search campaign by end of the quarter. Consistently collecting and analyzing data, then contrasting it with your expectations, must be done throughout a campaign to adjust existing methods and help design future ones. With measurable goals you’ll have much more clarity on if your efforts are actually paying off long term.
Come Up With a Solid Plan of Action
With well-defined goals and measurable objectives, you need a marketing plan to make them reality. This should involve the platforms and media used in your overall mix, messaging crafted for success, and carefully timed rollouts. Data plays a huge role here: take into consideration past successes, customers’ responses, emerging trends, industry standards and your own customers. Each element of the marketing plan must be aligned with the objectives set out earlier – what is desired to achieve and how it is defined as successful.
The Takeaway
The key takeaway is that in order to set realistic marketing goals you’ll need to focus on your overall company objectives, what you want to achieve with your marketing, and make sure it’s measurable so you can keep track of your success. By doing these three things well, you can set realistic expectations and desired outcomes for your marketing efforts. Be sure to consistently check against your goals to make sure what you’re doing is working and don’t be afraid to pivot to new strategies if the first one isn’t paying off.