The start of a new year is a great time to evaluate the past year and put plans in place for the year ahead. Setting goals helps to keep you accountable, but it also keeps you focussed. If your marketing strategy starts to go off the rails, you can look back to your goals to decide if you’re on the right track.
We believe that all marketing goals should be SMART, which means they are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. By making your goals SMART, you can check in and evaluate your performance. If you’re falling short of your goals, you know it’s time to shake things up.
Setting goals is one of the hardest tasks. You want to be optimistic, but you don’t want to be a dreamer. In this blog, we’ll share 5 types of marketing goals that will put you on the right track in 2020, no matter what your industry.
1. Focus on quality over quantity of interactions
It’s time to say goodbye to vanity metrics.
Increasing web traffic every month is certainly a good target to have. It means that your wider marketing activities are paying off. But high volumes of web traffic won’t do you any good if none of those visitors are converting. Focus on developing the quality of interactions rather than the quantity in 2020 if you want to achieve your wider business goals.
2. Increase automation
Implementing marketing automation should be a key goal for all businesses in 2020. From social media to email marketing, there are so many different ways to claw back time, increase sales and provide a better user experience through automation. To make this a SMART goal, you could look at the amount of time you currently spend on marketing tasks and explore ways automation could reduce this in 2020.
3. Improve consistency
In everything you do, you should always be consistent. Every company has an area of their marketing where they lack consistency. Perhaps you struggle to share a blog every week, or your email marketing is on a haphazard schedule? Build consistency into your marketing strategy by making it a goal for the year ahead. Start the year with a full marketing calendar and you will find it easier to stick to the plan.
4. Increase attribution
Do you know where your leads come from? Proper attribution is a key requirement for powerful marketing strategies. If you don’t know where your leads and sales are coming from, you can’t focus your attention on what is working. And you certainly can’t fix what isn’t working. Make 2020 the year you fix attribution issues on your website so you can hold your marketing activities to account.
5. Get to know your customers
So many business decisions are based on assumptions rather than fact. If you want your marketing activities to have an impact in 2020, you need to get to know your customers. There are plenty of ways you can learn more about your customers.
- Start with the data you can gather from your website
- Try behaviour analytics tools like Hotjar
- Email your customers a survey
- Add a feedback button to your website
- Make feedback a part of the sales process
- Take a deep dive into your reviews
When you learn more about your customers and what they want, it makes it easier to do your job as you know exactly who you are speaking to and what they want from you.
Want help defining your marketing goals for the year ahead? Get in touch with Auburn to talk strategy and execution…