MAKING YOUR MARKETING GOALS WORK FOR YOU THIS NEW YEAR

Do you treat your marketing goals like your New Year's resolutions? 

They mean a lot to you when you first set them - when you’re motivated and eager to get started. But a few weeks down the line, you lose interest and casually push them to the side, never to be thought about again?

Marketing success is all about making sure that your goals and your plan work for you. 

So, here’s my top 3 tips on how to set yourself goals you’re actually going to stick to this New Year (especially if your original ones have already gone out the window)...

1. Go back to basics and make sure your goals are SMART. ​

Every goal-setting book, article and blog will tell you the importance of setting SMART marketing goals for your business. 

When I first started my own business I was really bad at this and hated setting these for myself. It felt like a total waste of time and I often put off setting them as I knew I’d use them as a stick to beat myself up with if things didn't go to plan. So, more often than not, I just didn't bother setting them so I couldn't fail.

It wasn’t until I started working with a coach that I realised just how important it is to set SMART objectives. 

It's not just about achieving goals, but about giving you something very clear to be working towards.

Before, I’d set myself goals like ‘improve SEO on the website’ or ‘increase my brand awareness on Facebook’. But these weren’t specific enough or time bound so they gave me a LOT of wiggle room to settle for results that were nowhere near what I actually wanted to achieve. 

When you’re setting yourself goals, write down exactly what you want to achieve with this marketing strategy and when you want to achieve it by (staying realistic of course). For example…

• Increase sales of [specific product or service you're planning to focus on this 90-days] by X%
• Increase average order value or number of active customers by X%
• X% increase in new leads or customers

The most important thing about these goals is that they’re measurable, or else you won't be able to see when you’ve achieved them.

2. Build your plan around YOU! ​

Have you ever downloaded one of those ‘done for you’ templates from the internet? Maybe you’ve tried a healthy eating plan from Pinterest to shift a few pounds after the Christmas break or a workout schedule that you stuck to for 3 days then forgot about…

They certainly sounded achievable but for some reason they just didn't seem to work for you.

But, the thing is, these ‘done for you’ plans were never built around you. They didn’t take into account that you only really have time to workout for 15 minutes before the kids wake up in the morning. Or maybe you have an hour free on a Saturday whilst the kids are at football and piano lessons so one bigger workout a week would be better for you. 

Succeeding with our goals is all about how we plan and manage our time… and this will be different for everyone. 

Karen Meager and John McLoughlan talk about this in their book ‘Time Mastery’ and have an interesting quiz available here to find out how you plan your time which you can use to help structure your plan around you.

3. Regularly refer back to your vision…

What do you want to achieve through your business? Maybe it’s financial freedom or personal freedom to have your work fit in around your life (rather than the other way round). Maybe you want to put an end to single use plastics or to end homelessness in your local area.

I have my vision written down on the front page of my marketing machine journal and refer back to it EVERY SINGLE MORNING. 

Why? Because this vision is what my marketing goals ar getting me one step closer toward. It’s my driving force on those days where I'm struggling for motivation. 
It’s important to remember that this vision isn’t set in stone. If you find yourself looking at it and wanting to add or tweak things then do! The aim of this is to keep you focused on your end goal so you can make better decisions every day.

Getting started

If setting and sticking to your marketing goals is something you know you struggle with year after year, make sure you book your free Clarity Call with me today. Because, once you have clear goals in place it’s so much easier to see how the rest of the cogs fit together in your marketing machine. ​