3-1 Blog: Marketing Campaigns and SMART Goals

 

I first learned about SMART goals through a professional setting. In my workplace, our employer offers a training program that specifically goes over SMART goals, what they are, how they work, and everything in between. You may be asking, “okay so what is a SMART goal?” SMART is an acronym that stands for the following and their definitions

• Specific – State exactly what you want to accomplish for effective planning
• Measurable – Using mini milestones to track progress and should be quantifiable.
• Achievable – ensuring the goal can actually be accomplished or attainable.
• Realistic – Making sure your goal is not outside of normal values and long-term objectives and is relevant.
• Time-bound – Set an end date for your goal.

 

We will expand on these further.

First, we need to understand the differences between goals, strategies, and tactics, then we can dive deeper into the SMART goals. A goal itself by Dictionary.com’s definition is “the result or achievement toward which effort is directed” In other words it is as if you are asking yourself “what do I want?” The answer to that question is simply a goal. We can expand on the answer, or goal, of that question, by using strategies and tactics to make the goal into a SMART goal.

Strategy – These are the visions that you will need to fulfill in order to meet your goal. These are the plans that ensure your daily tasks help you meet your goal.

Tactics – There are the tasks you will need to do each day/week depending on your timeline, in order to help ensure your strategies are working.

 

Both strategies and tactics work hand in hand to achieve a SMART goal (Southwell, 2019). You can also look at it as strategy is the action plan, and the tactics are the steps you will take to get you to your SMART goal.

In order to successfully complete a SMART goal when creating a marketing campaign, it is important to go back to each acronym and dive in and build on your original goal.

Let’s build on a goal using each part of SMART – let’s say the goal is “I want more sales” This is too vague and we can build upon it like so:

S = Specific – I will learn how to market on Facebook and invest 25% of my investments into Facebook Ads

M = Measurable – I will double my sales within the 1^st quarter of the year.

A = Achievable – My business is successful and able to handle the growth in sales

R = Relevant – I want to work from home making double my income right now.

T = Time-bound – I will buy a Facebook Ad course online and start running campaigns by the end of this month and evaluate my earnings at the end of the 1^st quarter.

We then take all of these answers and combine them into a SMART goal summary:

I will begin a Facebook Ad course this week and invest 25% of profits into paid campaigns by the end of this month. I will utilize this information to increase by sales by 50% in the first quarter of this year.

In order to ensure your marketing tactics, align to business strategies in order to set goals you must be intentional and ensure everyone involved has clarity on goals and KPI’s, which are Key Performance Indicators. Identify skills of anyone involved, for instance within your team if you have someone you know is really creative, they should work with the design team to ensure your vision is created for a Facebook Ad. Or if you have someone talented in researching target market folks, then you should assign more of that type of work to that individual (Expert Panel, 2020).

 

You can also utilize key performance indicators (KPI’s) that were mentioned above in order to ensure your SMART goal is met. KPI’s ensure that marketing channels are tracked towards your company’s goal. You need to know what to track and what to do with all of that information received through the various channel (Jackson, 2021). For instance, using the SMART goal we came up with above, we can utilize the skills learned in the Facebook Ads course to track daily likes of engaged users and track it over a period of time, such as 30, 60, and 90 days in order to check progress of growth and adjust accordingly

 

 

 

References

Dictionary.com. (n.d.). Goal definition & meaning. Dictionary.com. Retrieved March 19, 2022, from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/goal

Expert Panel. (2020, December 5). Council post: 12 effective strategies for aligning talent and business goals. Forbes. Retrieved March 19, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2020/12/07/12-effective-strategies-for-aligning-talent-and-business-goals/?sh=55017a883a66

 

Indeed Editorial Team. (2021, November 2). Smart goals: Definition and examples. Indeed Career Guide. Retrieved March 19, 2022, from https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/smart-goals

Jackson, T. (2021, December 2). 18 kpis to measure performance (& how to choose & track them). ClearPoint Strategy. Retrieved March 19, 2022, from https://www.clearpointstrategy.com/18-key-performance-indicators/

 

Southwell, C. (2019, July 15). The difference between marketing strategy vs Tactics - an example. charliesaidthat. Retrieved March 19, 2022, from http://charliesaidthat.com/digital/digital/difference-between-marketing-strategy-vs-tactics-an-example/