Digital marketing can 100% transform your business from the ground-up. With the right strategy and the right execution, you can create and smash everything from revenue growth goals to audience growth numbers. However, the key to making sure your digital marketing works is making sure that your digital marketing objectives have goals.
See, without defined (and measurable!) goals, marketing can get pretty expensive and relatively pointless. We’re all about strategic marketing that actually works over here, and we’d bet you are, too. Here are our favorite tips for defining digital marketing goals.
First up: SMART goals.
While it sounds like something out of your highschool leadership class (because, well, it kind of is), SMART goals are our favorite, go-to method for setting digital marketing goals. SMART is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. When you use that SMART acronym when setting goals for your business, it’s a lot easier to keep track of them and decide what’s working and what isn’t.
Plus, keeping the SMART acronym in mind is a great way to construct goals that can actually move the needle in your business. Without focusing on making your goals specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based, it can be tricky to land on goals that will really resonate with a marketing audience as well.
How to define your digital marketing goals
1. Start the old-fashioned way: with pen and paper.
A good old brain dump can be remarkably helpful when it comes to defining digital marketing goals — and spending an hour or so simply jotting down goal ideas can be a great way to get started. Sit down with your team and start with anything that comes to mind, tailoring down as you go. Plus, remember: not every idea has to be used at once. There’s never anything wrong with having a great idea and saving it for a later marketing campaign!
2. Decide on your main marketing avenues.
Once you’ve decided on a few goals for your campaign itself, you can hone in on the marketing campaign details:
- Who are these goals reaching out to? (i.e., who is the audience? Why?)
- What is the marketing campaign? (i.e., is it an advertising email drip? Is it a social placement?)
- When is the marketing campaign? (i.e., are there dates to underline in the campaign? When is it live? When will you reassess the campaign?)
- Where does the goal fit into the marketing campaign? (i.e., on what platforms and in what audience area target is the campaign? How will you measure the goal performance?)
- Why is this goal effective for this campaign? (i.e., what is this goal doing to define this campaign’s success?)
3. Put your goals into action!
Once you’ve defined them, it’s time to go! Launch your campaign, test it, and get the show on the road — we know you can do it. If you need strategic marketing help from the best team around, give us a shout. At Social Xccess, we’re all about dream-big marketing campaigns, and we’d love to help you make your campaign a success.