Creating SMART Goals for Your Digital Marketing Efforts

How you set up your marketing plan and its execution will heavily influence the outcome, leading to success or lack of results for your marketing efforts. One way to set it up is using SMART goals, which are simple but impactful. SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Specific.

SMART goals create a framework wherein it becomes easier to reach marketing goals like boosting blog traffic. It helps set clear goals that you can track, allowing you to make adjustments along the way that ensure your brand is getting the desired visibility and traffic.

Specific

Setting specific goals is essential for any marketing plan. Simply aiming for more traffic is too abstract.

Set more specific goals like ‘Increasing organic traffic by 10%’ or ‘Increase number of visitors from social media ads to the website by 20%’.

With specific goals your team has a well-defined target and can focus on reaching it instead of spreading their efforts. You will also get clear signs when the strategies aren’t working if you aren’t able to progress towards your goal.

Measurable

Specific goals also need to be measurable to track the progress. Make sure you have the right tools that tell you whether you are moving towards your goal or not.

Add analytics to your site to keep track of certain goals. You can use analytics to track the incoming visitor traffic, how long they stay and how they landed on your blog. By looking at specific metrics like bounce rates, you can spot how you can improve your landing page for better results.

Achievable

Every business wants to aim as high as possible, but being overly ambitious can be a pitfall. Setting goals that are achievable, you won’t be wasting resources on efforts that may be out of reach at the moment. It’s helpful to understand your current position in order to know whether a goal is attainable.

You have to be realistic about whether you can double your site’s membership or if you can get a million visitors to your blog.

Relevant

Chasing after the wrong goals is another trap easy to fall into. It’s important that your goals are relevant to your overall progression. They need to result in a positive outcome that will help your business grow. Analyze your market and industry to get a clear picture of what matters and what is of lesser importance for your target market.

For instance, when you create content, make sure you are doing it for the right topics and optimize your website for the right keywords. Relevant goals will keep you on track for more visitors that will find your business relevant.

Time-Specific

As with any project or process, having a deadline or a specific time frame improves how quickly it gets completed. Time-specific goals have an end date to get a result and will often help you break up a large goal into smaller ones.

Getting 100 sign-ups from a social media campaign for an event you are doing in four weeks is a time-specific goal that compels you to action. At the same time, you need to have a realistic time horizon for achieving a goal.

For example, boosting organic traffic may need an extended period of time until it brings in results. Set up a time limit to understand what went right or wrong. You’ll then be able to adjust and create specific time limits for goals in the future.