Setting smart marketing objectives or goals gives you something to aim for in the long and short-term. If these goals are placed, using the SMART mnemonic, achievements become clear, established, and achievable.
SMART Objectives
Bad example: Increase revenue from the online shoe or apparel store.
Good example: Increase sales of Adidas shoes 20% year-on-year in November on the online store.
Specific – Guarantee that your objectives are specific in what they set out to accomplish.
Measurable – Assure that your progress in reaching this objective can be aligned against a specific metric.
Achievable – Objectives should be realistic and something you can truly do. Some things are worse than hitting yourself about not beating the numbers you set out to accomplish.
Relevant – Is what you’re measuring actually significant and related to the goal? If not, then reevaluate your priorities and see what will make a larger impact on your business.
Time-driven – When do you want to achieve your objective? Setting a deadline on your objectives can help sharpen your mind and efforts.
Digital Marketing Objectives
Now that we’ve seen what SMART objectives are, how do we accurately apply this principle to digital marketing? If we separate digital marketing into 3 core sections – Attract, Engage & Convert – we can set SMART objectives for each part:
Overall objective – Increase sales of Adidas shoes 20% year-on-year in November on the online store.
Attract – Generate 3,000 new visitors in November at an average CPA (cost per acquisition) of $3. Using social media marketing, SEO, PPC, etc.
Engage – Decrease the bounce rate of an Adidas category page by 20% year-on-year for the designated month.
Convert – Increase the conversion rate of the Adidas shoes by 15% year-on-year for the designated month.
These objectives are Specific (each is detailed), Measurable (each has a metric), Achievable (the numbers aren’t obscene), Relevant (each helps the other to achieve the overall objective), and Time-driven (each needs to be achieved by the end of November).
We’ve taken a SMART objective and divided it into the 3 key focuses in digital marketing, giving us something clear and defined to focus our efforts on. You’ll be astonished how motivating it is to have SMART objectives to strive for, and the insight of achievement and progress you’ll make is well worth taking the time to set these objectives.