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How to Make SMART Goals for Marketing

Goal setting is an important aspect of marketing, and really in all aspects of your life.  At Cloud9 Marketing, we set our bars pretty high. We are goal setters not only for ourselves but for our clients. But we aren’t just spontaneously and carelessly going about making wishes and hoping they come true. No, there is a method to our madness!

In order to help guide our goal setting, we use the SMART method. The SMART method of goal setting is a method used by many businesses and people in order to help them stay focused and increase the chances of success in obtaining their goals. 

Although this method will not guarantee success in achieving your goals, it will definitely make the process of goal setting more efficient and give you a sense of direction.

S – Specific

Avoid making generalized goals and keep them specific to you and your brand. Answering the 5 W’s (Who, What, Where, When and Why) will tailor your goal to match the needs of your business. 

M – Measurable

How do you know if you’ve been successful if you haven’t predetermined what success is? Setting tangible indicators of success will allow you to track your progress and let you know whether or not you have achieved your goal. 

Lucky for us in the digital marketing world, there are many useful tools and platforms which provide us with detailed analytics and metrics of our webpages, advertising efforts, social media profiles and more. Read more on tracking website metrics here.

A – Achievable

Of course, it’s great to set the bar high, but avoid setting it TOO high. If your goal isn’t achievable, then you’ve ultimately set yourself up for failure. It’s important to look at where your business stands currently and understand where to set realistic benchmarks. An Important question to ask would be: do you have the resources and abilities to achieve these goals? 

R – Relevant

When setting goals, it’s important to ensure that they are relevant to your ultimate business objectives. If your ultimate goal is to increase in-store sales, perhaps it’s not the best idea to spend your annual marketing budget on a campaign to increase traffic to an e-commerce store. It’s essential to look at the big picture and create a plan and goals that are relevant.

T – Timely

Setting timelines is essential when setting goals because it creates a sense of urgency and pushes you to start working towards achieving success. If you don’t set a start and finish date, your goal is just going to sit in limbo like those tasks that have been on your personal to-do list for the last two years…(obviously not speaking from personal experience).

The next time you are setting marketing goals for your business, try the SMART goals method. If you need even further guidance with your marketing initiatives and strategies, connect with us for a free consultation. 

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social-media-goals
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Setting (and measuring) Social Media Goals like a Pro!

You are probably tired of hearing how important social media is for your business. If you are like many you may be wondering how the effort spent on social media actually translates to a return on investment (ROI). It is not uncommon for business owners to delegate social media efforts to front-line staff, or take a stab in the dark themselves, with no notable results. Like any business venture, setting measurable goals is essential for ensuring the hours spent posting and tweeting is time well spent. Setting SMART goals on the most important social media metrics is essential for achieving results. Don’t recall SMART goals from Business101? They are goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely. Below are 5 social media metrics with an example SMART goal for each.

Followers/ Likers

Think of Followers and Likers as your audience. These are potential customers who are interested enough in your brand to tune in to what you say and do. There are two ways to generate followers and likers, organically and through paid advertising. Organic followers are the cream of the crop as these people are genuinely interested in your brand and took their own initiative to follow what you do. Paid advertising is a great way to boost your followers/likers and social media advertising is targeted so you can ensure you are recruiting your target market through these ads.

GOAL: To increase followers/likers organically by 10% between September and December 2015.

If you currently have a following of 500 people a 10% increase would equate to an additional 50 followers. This is easy to measure and a 10% increase should be achievable for most businesses.

Reach

Reach is an important metric when posting on a Facebook Page. Reach is the number of people who saw your post. Don’t confuse reach for impressions. Impressions are the times your post was viewed keeping in mind your post could be viewed multiple times by the same person. Facebook algorithms have changed significantly over the last few years and organic reach is harder to achieve. To get the furthest reach on Facebook you need to pay for advertising. Measuring your paid reach is a good way of assessing how effective your Facebook ad campaign is.

GOAL: To reach 1500 people with Facebook ad XYZ between Sept 1st and Sept 15th 2015

As your ad runs you will be able

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