Setting SMART Marketing Objectives

An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
A penny saved is a penny earned.
Setting SMART objectives makes good business sense.

But let’s be honest how many of us make the time to sit down and really map out our marketing objectives? Sales, growth, or profit objectives are very common but marketing objectives are often cast aside or forgotten.

So how do we go about setting marketing objectives versus other types of objectives?

The method that I found to be the most effective is the tried-and-true SMART approach. If you have never heard of SMART objectives, they are an acronym for:

Specific:     Determine the specific objectives you will need to accomplish to achieve your goal. Increasing sales is not specific. Increasing sales of product X by Y dollars is.

Measurable: How will you know that you have arrived? What will you measure? Remember that measuring the action that lead to a result is often the most useful approach since it gives you the flexibility to adapt your course of action if required.

Achievable:  Do you have a benchmark? The idea here is to balance being ambitious and being able to do it. Anyone can climb Mount Everest but perhaps not in the next quarter or year…

Relevant:    Just because you can do it, should you do it? When you set your marketing goal you should have a clear answer to the question: “Why are we doing this?” When the tasks required achieving your marketing goals gets buried under a pile of urgent to-dos, referring back your marketing “why” will keep you focussed and motivated.

Timely:        Establish the deadline for achieving the goal along with some of the milestones required along the way. This will also help you with the “measure” step.

Here are a few idea go get you going towards setting your own marketing objectives based on your overall business objectives:

Business objective 1: Grow sales and/or get a better return on investment

Marketing objective: Marketing will generate “X” leads a week for the “Y” product for the time of the “Z” campaign.

Business objective 2: Increase brand awareness and overall visibility:

Marketing objective: Map our client’s buying process for product “X” and define an appropriate marketing mix by April 30^th. Create and launch 1 campaign for product “X”, using our new marketing mix (social media, online advertising and an event).  For the next two months we will track our progress across each marketing channel weekly.