Define Your Goals - The SMART Way to Transform Your Marketing

What's all this about 'SMART' and setting goals? I'm sure you really want to get right into the heart of the matter and start planning specific marketing tasks that'll really make your business grow.

Just a little more patience required though. I promise it will be worth the time we take.

Let's recap on what we have done:

• We have clearly defined where we are going.
• We know where we are starting from.
• We know who is going to try to disrupt our journey.
• And we have a pretty good idea of how we can better our competitors.

Now we are going to put some markers down that will make sure we know when we have reached our destination - and how we are doing along the way.

So what do we mean by a SMART Goal?

Well, SMART is an acronym you can use in almost any situation when you want to define outcomes that are:

Specific -- Define precisely the objective or outcome you want.

Measurable -- Define objectively how you will know when you've attained it.

Achievable -- There is little more demotivating than a patently unachievable target.

Relevant -- Does achievement of this outcome contribute to your ultimate aim?

Timely -- Set a clear deadline.

Seem simple?

It is.

SMART transforms vague wishes and statements into concrete, focused actions.

Top Tip - Use SMART everywhere in your business and you will boost efficiency and profitability as though by magic.

For the purposes of our marketing plan we need 2 sets of goals:

• Vision - these will be satisfied when we achieve our marketing vision;
• Progress - meeting these show us that we going in the right direction to satisfy our vision.

For a detailed analysis on goal setting have a look at Gene Donohue's article - Goal Setting - Powerful Written Goals In 7 Easy Steps. For more tangible help on goal setting follow this link.

Vision statements are, by their very nature, aspirational. We want to make them more tangible.

For instance, supposing your vision has a statement something like, "...a multichannel marketing system operating on autopilot without day-to-day senior management involvement."

How would you know when you have met this vision? By defining SMART outcomes.

For example: "Within 3 years we will have at least 6 channels to our market. Each channel will have fully documented processes allowing full, automatic operation".

Is this SMART?

It is certainly specific, "6 channels" and "fully documented processes".

Is it measurable? I would think so. You can certainly measure if you have at least 6 channels to your market. Deciding if these are "fully documented" needs some defined standards for documentation. This could well be an enabling or mapping goal.

Achievable? Only you can tell. Doesn't seem unreasonable though.

Realistic? 6 channels seems realistic for almost any business.

Time Bound? Within 3 years.

Vision goals sit at the top of the tree. They are certainly meant to be achievable but probably depend on a number of intermediates steps being achieved. Progress goals define those steps.

In reality, you will build a hierarchy of goals for your marketing plan. Short term outcomes covering the next 3 to 6 months. Medium term covering 6 to 18 months. Steps to achieving your vision probably focused on 2 to 3 years.

Taking our previous example a short term goal might be, "Define standard process documentation procedures by the end of next month". Not perfect - the word 'define' is not that specific - but you get the idea.

A medium term objective might be, "to implement telemarketing within 6 months". A number of shorter term intermediary outcomes probably suggest themselves.

Do take care not to make your goals too detailed. You are not trying to produce your marketing plan here - merely produce a structure by which you can measure your progress to your ultimate aims.