Once you realize inbound marketing is the best way to grow your business and you have identified your target buyer persona, it is time to determine what your goals are for your campaign. All businesses share a common goal – to make money. In order to accomplish that, you have to establish goals that are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound.) Making money is not a SMART goal and will not be successful. To be successful with inbound, you need to know how to define marketing goals.
Review your Current Marketing Position
Before you can embark on a successful inbound marketing campaign, you need to look at what you have done with your marketing to date and what results you have generated. Three areas of note include:
- How traffic is currently coming to your website. Is it via organic search, referrals, paid search?
- The number of actual leads you procure monthly for your marketing efforts.
- How many sales are a direct result of your marketing spend?
Review this information carefully and take note of any areas that are weak, efforts that are not paying off and start thinking about what you want to see. Although it is in the middle of SMART, this information will become your benchmark and tie iintowhether or not your goals are attainable.
You Must be Specific when you Define Marketing Goals
When reviewing your current marketing position, you may have found your traffic is not as high as it should be. Perhaps you have put a lot of effort into your marketing strategy and are not getting enough qualified leads. Write down a few specific goals you want to accomplish with your inbound strategy. If there are many, choose the most important first and run a second campaign later. For each goal, be specific about:
- Who will be involved in meeting or exceeding the goal?
- What is the desired result?
- Where in your business will this goal be fulfilled?
- When is the deadline for your goal?
- Which resources are required to accomplish the goal?
- Why is the goal important to your business?
Measurement and Attainability
Since you have made your goals very specific, you will be able to measure your progress throughout your campaign, as well as the final result. To do this, you will refer back to analytics you reviewed before defining your goals: traffic, page views, amount of time spent on your site, etc.
As you review your progress, if you find your goals are not attainable as is, determine if you were not realistic enough or if there are things you can modify to get closer to your goals. The more realistic you were when setting your goals, the more attainable they will be. Do make sure to challenge yourself, however.
Ensuring your Goals are Relevant and Time-Bound
The relevance of your goals and the time you allot to attain them are closely tied together. For example, you would not set a goal to increase Christmas sales by 25-percent from May 1st to June 30th. The goal is specific, but Christmas is not relevant just before summer and you will not reach your goal during that time period. Be sure your goals are relevant to your business when you are setting them and create a timeline that is challenging, but attainable.
Applying the principles of SMART when you define marketing goals will result creating an inbound marketing strategy destined for success. Need help kick-starting your business growth or have questions about how to define your marketing goals? Your Sumner Digital inbound partners are available to talk!