Successful marketing is based on setting business goals. According to CoSchedule research, marketers who set goals are 376% more likely to report success than those who don’t. And 70% of those successful, goal-setting marketers achieve them. Think of it like planning a road trip. To create a map, you need to know the destination. Now, you may have heard the term SMART goals tossed around and may even know that is stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound metric. But how do you go about creating achievable SMART goals that will help your business’s marketing team or the agency you hired? Let’s take a look:

SPECIFIC: Your goal must focus on 1 clearly defined metric.

MEASURABLE: Have a way to measure the content you publish against the metric.

ATTAINABLE: Be able to realistically achieve your goal within a set timeframe with the resources that are (or will be) available. 

RELEVANT: Your goal must align with your desired goals and objectives that you set.

TIME-BOUND: Your goal must have a due date upon which you will achieve that metric.

Common Business Goals 

• Drive more sales
• Grow brand awareness
• Expand market share
• Develop stronger relationships with stakeholders
• Enter new markets or territories
• Reach new audiences or demographics
• Raise more revenue
• Secure funding
• Increase profits

Common Marketing Goals 

• Increase website traffic
• Gain more social media followers
• Grow an email list
• Improve conversion rates
• Get more website or social media engagement
• Drive more click-throughs on paid ads

Understand Your Business Goals

The value of marketing services is connected to the results it provides. You want the service you picked to help reach a key business objective. Tie your marketing goal to this business objective. For example, you want your business profile to gain more social media followers. What does it mean to want more social media followers? 

• Increased brand awareness
• Establish your business as an authority
• Reach new customers

These are objectives that will have significant impact on your business. When you set your goals, select certain goals that will drive business results, not just produce impressive sounding numbers or arbitrary measurements. 

Connect Marketing Goals to Business Goals

Sometimes businesses make too broad a statement as a goal without consulting their marketing team. Make sure to narrow down to a specific goal that is clear to understand. If it is unclear, have a discussion with your chief marketing officer or CEO or anyone who is the head of your marketing/sales department. Everyone working on a marketing project must know what the business’s main purpose and goal is. Another example might be that your company needs more customers. To achieve this, you have to generate 10 leads per weak. Your sales team has to get help from marketing to drive leads. The business objective would be to increase revenue by increasing customers, while a marketing objective would be any creative material that helps generate more leads.   

How to Set Marketing Goals 

Here is a word formula you can use to set objectives:

By {day, month, year}, the {your business’s name} marketing team will reach {number} {metric} every {time frame}.

Here is a marketing goal example using the formula: 

By June 30, 2023, the Miller Media marketing team will reach 3,000 marketing-qualified leads every month. 

This example goal is to influence marketing-qualified leads. The point of your marketing strategy is to choose, prioritize, plan, and execute projects that will influence profitable customer action. Therefore, marketing metrics closer to the final purchase are often the best goals to set. 

Here are several other marketing goals examples listed based on our marketing goal sample above:

• Increased page views
• More email subscribers
• New trial signups
• Increased completed purchases

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