We here at anova Digital Marketing Agency know that it takes a lot to get a business off the ground. Not only are we here to help you make the most of your online and social media marketing strategies, but we also want to make sure we have done the research to make your whole marketing strategy effective.
One simple but effective marketing strategy to help you reach your long-term business goals is called SMART. It’s a common business mnemonic used to improve the entirety of business processes through strategic objectives. As Smart Insights puts it, SMART objectives “help marketers succeed through using a more structured approach to planning to give more realistic targets they could be more confident of achieving.”
SMART objectives, we should note, should only be put into place after careful research and data collection. So what exactly are SMART objectives? The mnemonic stands for:
- Specific: Be specific about what you want to achieve.
- Measurable: Quantify your objectives.
- Achievable: Are your goals well-planned?
- Realistic: Do you have the resources to make the objective reachable?
- Timebound: When can you reasonably reach the objective?
We’ll go into each to understand what these terms mean. Starting with:
Specific
This means focusing on one goal per marketing plan to maximise efficiency. Each marketing objective you have needs to be specific, bespoke and aimed at its own target audience, even for products that are expansions from an original product.
Measurable
In order to have a successful marketing plan, you need to have measurable goals and milestones. These milestones can include a number of units sold, total sales revenue or total profit – but they have to be specific in order to be effective. As Small Business puts it, “Stating that you intend to sell more units than last year is not something that you can use to measure success. Setting the objective of selling 30 percent more units than the previous year is something you can use in your marketing plan.” Keep milestones reasonable and specific.
Achievable
Related to having measurable milestones, the next objective is having achievable goals. Having a realistic set of goals backed by data is essential to a good marketing strategy. As Small business once again puts it: “If your historic profit growth from year to year is 20 percent, then setting a marketing goal of 40 percent growth when there is no data to back up the increased growth is not efficient planning.” If your goals aren’t achievable, you need to rethink the parameters.
If you haven’t noticed by now, most of these points are very related to each other – each is based on having realistic goals based on collected data, as well as making sure your milestones are reasonable. So it’s only natural that the next point is:
Realistic
This point is all about resource planning. Once again, Small Business can help us understand: “You may have the product momentum to realize a significant jump in unit sales, but you may not have the manufacturing or distribution in place to make it happen.” Be realistic about the number of resources you have and your ability to distribute them.
Last but not least we have:
Timebound
As with anything business-related, time is a major factor to watch and be mindful of. To quote Small Business again: “A marketing plan has a scheduled beginning and end. This is to allow an analysis of how the methods work in attempting to produce projected results.” To create an effective marketing plan, you need to have a solid timeline to work from, beginning to end. This will not only create regular monitoring dates, but it can also allow you the flexibility to change your strategy if it is not working at any point.
There are also other interpretations of the SMART Marketing Objectives model, such as what Smart Insights thinks about the SMART system or marketingteacher.com. There are a ton of online resources, but none better than a personal agency to help you make the right marketing decisions.
We here at anova want you to know that when you work with us, we can be a solid online and social media marketing branch of your business, as well as marketing strategy consultants you can trust know their stuff. If you want to learn more about what we can do for you, contact us today!
