Numerical Targets Aren’t as SMART as They Look!

Numerical targets are always popular because they seem specific and measurable. Find out why detailed, hands-on, action-oriented B2B marketing plans are more effective.

I’ve been hearing and reading about SMART goal-setting for the past forty years. It’s a solid, practical concept on the whole, even if the acronym, like most acronyms, means different things to different people.

We’re still in the first month of the calendar year. As a result, most B2B marketers are either setting goals for the year ahead or looking over the file with the objectives they’ve already set to make sure they’re still relevant. So it seems timely to talk about the SMART principles.

Depending on who you ask, SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. (At least that’s what Meta tells me.) The most helpful principle I’ve managed to figure out after decades of goal-setting is that numerical targets aren’t real goals.

How Can We Measure Anything Without Using Numerical Values?

Many readers will object to this idea, especially since the “M” in SMART stands for measurable. How can we measure anything without using numerical values?

As I’ve mentioned in past editions, one of my B2B marketing mentors drilled it into my colleagues and me that “If it’s not being measured, it’s not being managed.” So, how can I claim that numerical targets aren’t SMART goals?

One example from our personal lives may help make my point. When someone needs to lose weight, they tend to take a numerical approach based solely on their relationship with the bathroom scale.

Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Bound

Consulting a table, they’ll look up their body mass index (BMI) and then deduce their ideal weight. Then, they’ll set a goal to lose, let’s say, twenty pounds this year. That’s a specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound goal.

It’s also doomed to fail, because it’s merely a numerical target. This goal says absolutely nothing about the activity needed to achieve the required health benefits.

When I finally tackled my own weight issues, I didn’t have a specific body weight in mind at all. In fact, my coaches actively discouraged me from setting any goals along those lines.

Numbers Took Care of Themselves Without Being Goals

We focused on the dietary and exercise activities that lead to positive results. My numbers in terms of my body weight, waist circumference, blood pressure and blood sugar all took care of themselves, but nobody ever discussed them as goals.

In my view, the same principle holds for marketers. The senior management team applies a lot of pressure to B2B marketers to deliver a particular sales volume, or number of leads, among other numerical targets.

Obviously, to keep our jobs, the top line on the company’s income statement has to be a bigger number than the bottom line.?Also, senior managers expect to see value for the money they spend on B2B marketing activities.

B2B Marketing Department Can’t Promise a Revenue Number

My point is that a B2B marketing department can no more promise a specific revenue number or lead volume than a dieter can promise a specific body weight. These numerical targets aren’t results that we control directly, so they’re not SMART goals.

A marketing plan should emphasize specific activities rather than pulling numerical targets out of the air. So, the line items in the plan should cover topics like specific blogs the department will manage and how often staff will update them.

Yes, you could argue that the frequency is a numerical target. If we set a goal to post a new blog entry every week, it follows that we’ll have 52 blog posts out there by the end of the year.

We Can Measure a Meaningful Goal With a Check-Mark

Even so, the meaningful goal is that the website will contain a new post by the end of each week.?

We can measure that with a check-mark or even a gold star.

It either happened or it didn’t. It’s a set of tasks and not a numerical value. The team needs to focus on those tasks daily and weekly, not annually. They need to do them, not count them.

The same principle applies to social media. We can select a series of networks on which to promote our brand like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for example.

Representing Brand on Networks Customers Frequent

Yes, we can express that numerically by counting to four. However, what matters is that we’re choosing to represent our brand on networks our customers prefer to use.

We can set a goal to audit and refresh the website. We can plan to run paid advertising and issue white papers, eBooks and press releases. Again, these activities either take place or they don’t, and we can measure them with a check-mark instead of arithmetic.

Some readers will probably challenge this approach, asking how we determine if the quality of all this content is good or bad. Won’t we measure the response each content item generates?

Experiment, Identify Mistakes and Make Course Corrections

We certainly will! I still step on the scale every morning, and marketers should definitely be monitoring the daily analytics their content generates. The purpose of those numbers is to experiment, identify mistakes and make course corrections on editorial decisions.

The difference is we’re not going to set goals based on numerical targets from those analytics because we can’t directly control them. We can ensure we’re doing the right things, and doing them to the best of our ability, but we can’t control the outcome in the precise detail needed to set SMART goals based on them. We also don’t want to be distracted by the squirrel of vanity metrics.

In the end, setting broad, abstract, numerical targets like sales volume, number of leads generated or engagement numbers isn’t going to deliver the results senior management needs. Goal setting needs to be far more specific, hands-on and action-oriented than that.

Building the B2B Brand Trust that Generates Sales

That kind of marketing plan is harder to do and it involves a lot more thought. We need to understand our customers and think through the best tactics to engage them, building the B2B brand trust that drives sales.

Of course, that’s kind of the point of creating a marketing plan to begin with.