How to set marketing goals that don't suck
It’s the start of the year and you’ve got your brand new fancy notebook out. You open the first page, pick up one of your favourite pens, and the marketing goals just flow from you. Amazing!
You’re feeling full of ideas, you’re making inspired plans and setting goals while buzzing with energy after your festive break.
You feel fantastic, invincible! This will be your marketing year!
You’ve been here before, haven’t you? It’s not just you, either. There’s something so wonderful about feeling well rested and motivated after being removed from your business for a bit.
But this is the easy part. And ticking off only the easy bit won’t make the difference you need.
Good intentions
It’s a bit like joining a gym. You can make buy need trainers, book your classes and make good eating plans, but unless you turn up to the classes, sweat, ache, and deny yourself chocolate most of the time, you won’t see a change in your body.
If you only make marketing plans, and don’t turn up week after week and get the work done, then it’s like buying a fitness DVD and watching it while lying on the sofa with a glass of wine.
I’m not saying you need to do marketing that takes blood, sweat and tears, but I am saying that you need to take action. Consistent action. Which means doing marketing even if you:
don’t feel like it,
have lost your mojo,
can’t see how it is helping, or
have a million and one other urgent priorities.
So how can you set non-sucky marketing goals for your business? Here’s what works for me.
Strong foundations
It can be tempting to set goals like “sell more on Instagram” without stopping to consider foundational questions like:
Who am I selling to?
Which problems can I solve for them?
Which social media channels do they love?
How do they buy what I sell?
In short: it’s easy to jump into tactics without considering your strategy.
I see it all the time, when business owners come to me with very specific questions like: “What should my lead magnet be?” or “How often should I send out my newsletter?” without having considered who they want to connect with and what those people want from them (or how often).
Strategy first, tactics second.
Be specific
Consider the difference between these goals:
Grow newsletter list.
Grow newsletter list to 500.
Grow newsletter list to 500 by June.
Grow newsletter list by 50 subscribers a month to reach 500 by June.
When you get specific about what you want to achieve in the long-term, and then break it down into what that means for shorter time periods, you start to formulate a plan.
You also build in checkpoints where you can assess your progress. If your aim is to reach 500 subscribers by June and you need 50 new ones every month, but at the end of January you’ve only had 5 new subscribers, you know that something needs to change.
Rather than being a stick with which to beat yourself if you don’t achieve it, these micro goals give you clarity about whether or not you’re on the right trajectory (and much better to know earlier on you’re not on the right track than ending up somewhere far away from your goal after months of hard work).
Build in action
What will actually make a real difference to your small business in the coming year is much harder than dreaming and writing in your nice new notebook. It's about doing the work, week in and week out, even when your mojo is missing or you don't see immediate results.
We just can’t sit around and wait for marketing inspiration to hit.
Inspiration is fickle. It may hit you like a lightning bolt when you least expect it, and hardly ever shows up when you're desperate for an idea.
To build your marketing on such a fickle foundation is only going to cause you unnecessary stress and hassle.
So the alternative is to action on a consistent basis, so that you’re always a step ahead. Because it’s no fun for anyone wasting time staring at a blank screen, hoping you can think of something to create.
Consistent action is built on creating a habit of doing good marketing. It doesn’t matter if it's something small. The key is that you do it repeatedly.
You can't turn up at the gym one time and expect to be fit afterwards. The same with marketing, you need to turn up, do the work, and trust that the compound effect of your efforts will yield results.