How To Set Goals For Success In Marketing
Here at Owl SEM, we’re all about helping our clients reach their marketing goals. For some, that means re-positioning themselves in the marketplace as a premium provider. Others wish to maximize their weekly revenues through as much volume as they can get their hands on. Regardless of the goal at hand, it’s most important that the goals actually exist!
While this might sound blatantly obvious, after speaking to hundreds of business owners, the amount of successful ones with well-defined goals present in their business is frighteningly small.
How to Define Marketing Goals – Get S.M.A.R.T.
Most people set big goals geared towards the final result of what they hope to achieve in their life and business. This is the first step, but you’re doing it wrong if you’re stopping there. The key is to get as specific as possible when determining your marketing goals. Here are a few of our favorite starting places:
- ROI (Return on Investment)
- Revenue Generated
- Units Sold
- New Accounts Signed
- Bigger online following
It can honestly be anything, as long as it’s specific. If you can’t assign some kind of number to your goal, then it’s probably not specific enough. When onboarding new customers, our first step is to establish revenue goals, then to break that down into average invoices, then into average conversion rate so we can figure out how many jobs are needed to meet your high-level goals.
Hypothetical situation: You want to make $200,000 a month in the slow season this year.
Now you need to break that goal down into measurable bits:
- How much am I making now?
- How much more do I need to be making to reach $200,000?
- What is the easiest path to making up that difference?
If you’ve made it this far, you’re already doing better than 90% of business owners we’ve talked to.
This is also a major hangup point for many business owners. Sometimes there is not an easily defined path to follow. If you find yourself stuck here, it may be the time to enlist the help of some marketing experts (That’s US by the way… Head over to the contact page and set up a time where we’ll help you get your goals sorted, for free), and consult with your sales + delivery team to make sure whatever path you choose is attainable.
When all the pieces are in place, it’s best to attach time-related deadlines or expectations. That way, it’ll be easy to see if your initiatives are on track to help make your goals a reality in a timely fashion (or not). SUPRISE! You know what S.M.A.R.T. goals are now (also, in case you were wondering why some random words were bolded). S.M.A.R.T. goals were originally conceived by General Electric, and this amazing concept has been credited for much of their success and a global leader. If it worked for them, it can work for you too!
Key Performance Indicators
Hypothetical situation: You want to make $200,000 a month in the slow season this year.
Now you need to break that goal down into measurable bits:
- We’re $140,000 short of 200k/mo
- We want to more re-roofs, since they generate the most revenue and profit
- We close 1 out of 4 re-roof estimates
- We do 8 re-roof estimates monthly
- Each re-roof is approximately $30,000 of Revenue
What are the KPI’s?
- Revenue (200k/mo Specific Goal)
- Re-Roofs (Top Revenue Driver + Measurable Means to Reach Goal)
- Closing Ratio of 25% (1 out of 4 is Attainable)
- With our current marketing efforts, 8 re-roof estimates monthly is Realistic
- 8 Re-roof estimates = approx 60k Revenue a Month (Time)
Lots of numbers there– let’s boil it down really simply:
If 8 re-roof estimates are getting us 60k revenue per month, then logically we’d need to do about 4 times as many re-roof estimates monthly to reach the final goal of 200k/month.
What’s left to do from here? Schedule a call with Owl SEM to find out the cost associated with generating an extra 24 re-roof leads monthly.
Score Cards
If all of that seemed a bit overwhelming, sorry for the bad news, but that’s just the beginning. The more ambitious the goals, the more likely that there will be many unforeseen variables at play once you start to get closer to reaching them. Most simply rely on trial and error to get things figured out. But YOU- the savvy business-person you are, has a leg up on the game. What’s this secret weapon, and what does it do?
Well, scorecards act as a kind of “stethoscope”, but not any ordinary stethoscope. This stethoscope is specialized to keep the pulse of your business.
In all of our marketing programs, we provide you with a “Score Card” at the end of each month, as well as a live-updated score-card so you can see exactly what each dollar you put into the ‘marketing machine’ turns around in your business.
As they say, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, and if you’re trying to double your monthly revenues as a well-established business, getting there can be a process. Having the proper systems in place to track not only how many leads are coming in, but how well your sales team is handling them can provide amazing insights into what’s holding you and your business back.
Got some lofty goals yourself? We’d love the opportunity to assist in helping you realize them. As a full-service digital marketing agency, we’ve got all the tools and tricks to hit it out of the park for your business. Find out why our clients love us TODAY.
