Setting S.M.A.R.T. Business Goals

The best way to get started with your marketing is to write business goals. This is a really important first step. You need to know which business goals your marketing efforts will help you attain. Otherwise, you'll have no way to track your success. So you have to be SMART about it.

Let me explain what I mean by that. SMART goals stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Let's review how to write SMART goals and then how to use them to predict sales and grow your business. I'll break it down so you can see exactly what I mean.

Specific

A specific goal is precise, well-defined, clear, and therefore, more likely to be achieved. A goal like increase leads, is vague and it lacks clear direction. A more specific goal would be increase leads by 20% by year end.

Measurable

A measurable goal indicates progress, keeps you on track, it helps you meet deadlines, and it's motivational as you get closer to achieving that goal. It provides information like how much, how many, or key dates. A measurable goal identifies what's working well that you should keep doing and what's not working well that you need to improve.

Attainable

An attainable goal keeps you realistic. It accounts for your past performance, current resources, and capabilities, and what your competitors are doing so you know what you're up against. An attainable goal motivates people to succeed because they feel like it's within their reach.

Relevant

A relevant goal aligns what you want to accomplish with what your lead gen program realistically can deliver. So let's say your company wants to grow revenue by 10%. Sure, a lead gen program can achieve that goal. But let's say you have a product or service problem, lead gen can't solve that type of issue. So talk with your sales force, customers, marketing team, and other stakeholders to make sure you have relevant goals that lead gen can solve. And here's the last one.

Time-Bound

A time-bound goal establishes deadlines, what needs to be done by when. Set your business goals for the year and then break them down to monthly or quarterly goals. This will keep you on track and enable you to optimize your program consistently, without having to wait until the end of the year.

Now, there are a lot of ways to develop SMART goals. Here are two ways to write SMART business goals. The first, how do you determine how many leads you need to meet a sales goal? Let's say your goal is 50,000 more in sales this year. The average sales price of your product or service is $2,000 and your average lead close rate, which means when you make a sale from a lead, is 10%.

Multiply your average sales price times your average close rate to calculate the value of each lead you need to generate, which in this example, is $200. Then take your sales goal and divide it by the value of your average lead. So $50,000 divided by $200 equals an additional 250 leads you need to generate this year. The second, how do you estimate future sales you can get through lead generation? Well, you multiply the average number of leads that marketing can generate times your sales team's average lead to customer conversion rate.

This will equal your estimated future sales. So let's say that marketing generates an average of 40 leads per month and the sales team's average conversion rate is 5% per month. Then, your estimated future sales is two new customers per month. Use SMART business goals for your lead gen to set the right expectations and set your program up for success.

So remember that setting SMART Business Goals is the first step to developing a successful online marketing plan. If you have any questions or need any help implementing these principles you can always contact us for support.