Do you have some amazing ideas lined up for your next set of marketing campaigns?

Can you align your marketing goals with company goals, strategize the campaign with your team, and pull it off on time?

Then, it’s time to get SMART marketing goals to grow your business in 2024!

What are SMART goals?

SMART is a best practice framework for setting goals. The SMART acronym stands for,

• Specific: The goal you set should be specific and possible.
• Measurable: Making the goal measurable can be easy for you to track the progress you made.
• Achievable: Your goal should be realistically attainable.
• Relevant: Make sure your goal is tied to the values and long-term objectives.
• Time-bound: Set a timeframe in which you think you can complete your goal.

So, by setting a SMART marketing goal, you can carefully set a clear strategy within your marketing team aligning with the company’s goals to launch a successful campaign. 

What are the benefits of setting SMART marketing goals?

Setting SMART goals for your marketing team is a thought-out process. Using a SMART framework can help your team in many ways.

1. Strengthen the team goals: Marketing teams can discuss and unify their goals with that of the company. That way everyone stays on the same page as well.

2. Helps in prioritizing tasks: A goal-setting process can help each member of your team understand the relevance of each task and increase productivity.

3. Tracks the progress: SMART goals can help you track your team’s progress and help them stay organized.

4. Boosts motivation: Having a clear idea of what you’re doing helps team members increase their confidence level and push them to do better.

‍5. Establishes protocols for data collection: Gather as many data points as you need and the SMART method can help you use them effectively.

‍6. Better results: When you set SMART goals for your marketing team, you can save a lot of time since you’re well-planned which provides quality and faster results.

How do you set realistic SMART goals for campaigns?

One important factor while setting SMART goals for your marketing team is whether they are realistic. Road mapping the way to attain your team goal requires a lot of careful planning and consideration. 

Here are a few steps to keep your team focus driven from the beginning to the end.

1. Define your objectives: Start by defining what you want to achieve with your campaign. This could range from increasing sales to building brand awareness. Making a list of tasks helps you prioritize as well. 

‍2. Determine your metrics: Once you have defined your objectives, determine the metrics that will help you measure your progress. For example, if your aim is to increase sales, your metric might be revenue generated from the campaign.

3. Set specific goals: Use the SMART framework to set specific goals that are tied to your objectives and metrics. For example, if your aim is to increase sales, a specific goal might be to generate $50,000 in revenue from the campaign.

Ask yourself these questions while defining specific goals:

• Who needs to be involved to achieve the goal?
• What is the individual trying to accomplish?
• Where is the goal located?
• Why is the goal important?
• Which resources or obstacles are involved in achieving the goal?
• When should the goal be achieved?

4. Make your goals measurable: Your goals should be measurable so that you can monitor your progress and determine whether you are on track to meet your objectives. For example, you might measure the number of leads generated or the conversion rate of your landing pages.

Before creating a measurable goal, note the following:

• Can you simplify your tasks?
• How many hours are required to do the task?
• What are the indicators of progress?
• How will you know when the goal is reached?

5. Ensure your goals are achievable: Your goals should be challenging but achievable based on your resources, budget, and past performance. Consider any limitations you may have and set goals that are realistic.

When setting an achievable goal, the following points should be considered:

• How does the individual reach the goal?
• How realistic is the goal?
• What would it take to attain the goal?
• Are the tools and skills available in your team?
• Which tools and skills will be required to achieve the goal?

6. Ensure your goals are relevant: Your goals should apply to your overall business objectives and tie into your larger marketing strategy. Talk to your team members to check if you’re doing the right thing — it’s always best for everyone to stay on the same page.

A relevant goal should answer the following questions in the affirmative:

• Does the goal seem worthy enough?
• Does it reflect other efforts and needs?
• Is it the right time to carry out the goal?
• Is the assigned person the right one to carry out this goal?
• Is this an appropriate goal for the current social and economic environment?

7. Make your goals time-bound: Set a specific timeframe for achieving your goals. For example, your goal might be to generate $50,000 in revenue from the campaign within the next 90 days.

When setting up a time frame for a goal, the following questions should be answered:

• When will the goal be achieved?
• What can be achieved six weeks from now?
• What can be accomplished today?

By following these steps, you can set realistic SMART goals for your campaigns that are tied to your objectives, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This will help ensure that you are making progress towards achieving your marketing goals.

What metrics are used for marketing goals?

There are several key metrics that are commonly used to measure the success of marketing efforts, depending on the specific objectives of your business or campaign. Here are some examples:

• Sales: This is one of the most important metrics for measuring marketing success. It tracks how much revenue is generated from marketing efforts.

• Conversion rate: This measures the percentage of people who take a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form, after seeing a marketing message you’ve created.

• Customer acquisition cost (CAC): This metric measures the cost of acquiring a new customer, including all marketing and sales expenses.

• Return on investment (ROI): This metric measures the financial return on a marketing investment, taking into account the cost of the investment and the revenue generated.

• Website traffic: This measures the number of visitors to your website, which can be an indicator of the effective efforts.

• Engagement: This measures how people interact with your marketing content, such as likes, comments, and shares on social media.

• Brand awareness: This measures how well people recognize and remember your brand, which can be essential for future sales.

Overall, the metrics used to measure marketing success will depend on the specific goals of the campaign you set and the stage of the marketing funnel being targeted.

How do I align my marketing goals and business goals?

Aligning your marketing goals and business goals is an essential step towards achieving success in your marketing efforts. Here are some steps you can take to ensure your marketing goals are aligned with your overall business objectives:

1. Identify your business goals: Start by identifying your overall business objectives. These could include increasing revenue, expanding your customer base, or improving customer retention.

‍2. Tie it all together: Make certain every aspect of your marketing ties into and supports at least one business objective in the overall strategy of the company. 

For example, if your business goal is to increase revenue, your marketing goal might be to generate more leads or improve your conversion rate. This will ensure you’re spending time and money in the right places.

‍3. Set meaningful campaign metrics: You not only need to decide on goals that generate a certain number of opportunities, but they should also be measurable and provide quantifiable results relevant to your business objectives. For example, if your marketing goal is to generate more leads, you might tie this goal to a specific lead generation campaign.

4. Monitor and adjust your goals as needed: Monitor your progress towards your marketing goals and adjust them as needed to ensure they remain aligned with your business objectives.

By implementing the above steps, you can ensure your marketing efforts are more effective if the marketing goals are aligned with your overall business objectives.

How to measure and monitor SMART Goals?

To measure and monitor SMART goals, you need to have a plan in place for tracking progress towards your goals.

1. Define the metrics: Determine the metrics you will use to measure progress towards your SMART goals. These might include website traffic, conversion rates, revenue, customer retention rates, or any other relevant metrics.

2. Take regular updates: Set regular meetings with your team to check the progress of the campaign. This will help every member stay on the same page and save last-minute haste. Depending on the complexity of your goals, you might meet weekly, monthly, or quarterly.

3. Breakdown your goals: If your goal is big, it’s always best to breakdown into smaller goals. It will be easier to manage your goals and easily achieve them. For example, if you’re looking to generate 2000 leads within 4 months, try to get 500 leads by the end of every month. 

‍4. Use of tools: If you want to monitor the progress of your goal, it’s easy with the right tool. To effectively monitor project performance and progress, choose a project management platform that provides insights. 

You can monitor and measure your progress effectively using the steps above.

SMART marketing goals examples

Now we’ll learn how to make use of SMART acronyms for your marketing goals through a few examples.

1. Increase website engagement

Your SMART goal: Increase website traffic by 30% in the next six months through a combination of content marketing and SEO.

What you can do?

Specific: Through specific tactics such as content marketing and SEO, you aim to attract new users and increase time spent on our site and page views per visit by 30%.

Measurable: The goal is measurable through website analytics tools that track website traffic.

Achievable: A 30% increase in website traffic is achievable with the right strategies in place that suits your business. 

Relevant: The goal is relevant to the business objective of increasing brand awareness and generating more leads.

Time-bound: The goal is time-bound, with a specific timeframe of six months.

2. Find new leads

Your SMART goal: Generate 100 new leads per month by the end of the year through a targeted email marketing campaign.

What you can do?

Specific: The goal is to generate 100 new leads per month through a targeted email marketing campaign.

Measurable: The goal is measurable through tracking the number of leads generated through the email campaign.

Achievable: Generating 100 leads per month is achievable with an effective email marketing campaign and a constant analysis of engagement metrics.

Relevant: The goal is relevant to the business objective of increasing lead generation and click-through rate.

Time-bound: The goal is time-bound, with a specific deadline of the end of the year.

3. Increase brand awareness

Your SMART goal: In three months, you will boost your social media following, reach, and engagement by up to 25%. You can do this by creating and sharing more how-to blog posts and video content.

What you can do?

Specific: You want to grow brand awareness for your travel company by creating a new content series (video and blog posts). You start a series on unique dos and donts in different countries and share the post across all your social media pages. 

Measurable: Your goal is a 25% increase in post reach, views, subscriber count, and social shares.

Achievable: You can raise brand awareness through a planned, strong content and social media marketing.

Relevant: You have travel enthusiasts, content writers, editors, and video creators who can flexibly travel, write, produce, direct, and edit the content for the series.

Time-bound: Three months from now.

‍4. Reduce customer churn

Your SMART goal: To bring down customer churn by 7% over the next 5 months by improving the quality of the customer service.

What you can do?

Specific: You want to cut down the churn rate for your brand by providing an excellent customer experience. Take a survey of the existing and potential customers to discover their challenges with your product and service.

Measurable: Your target churn reduction rate is 7%.

Achievable: Reducing customer churn is achievable with proactive communication and taking regular feedback from customers.

Relevant: Your support team can take up the responsibility of keeping your customers happy and satisfied.

Timely: Five months from now.

5. Expand to new audience or demographics

Your SMART goal: In the next eight months, you will raise brand awareness and engagement for Gen Z audience by 60%. Say, you can achieve this by building customer personas, running targeted ads on social media, and collaborating with two or three influencers on TikTok and Instagram, where the target audience is likely to spend their leisure time.

What you can do?

Specific: Reach and connect with potential buyers belonging to the Gen Z demographic using personas, influencer marketing, and social media ads on Instagram and TikTok.

Measurable: Your goal is to increase brand awareness amongst Gen Z audiences by 60%.

Achievable: To reach new customer segments, you can remarket your ads and try automated personalization tools to send messages.  

Relevant: Work with social media influencers who have a significant Gen Z following to promote the brand and increase visibility among this target audience.

Time-bound: The goal is time-bound within eight months.

Final views

Overall, setting SMART goals for your marketing team is crucial for achieving success and business objectives. By creating specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals, marketing teams can develop a clear roadmap for success and align their efforts with overall business objectives. Introducing online proofing tools to this process adds a collaborative touch, streamlining feedback and ensuring that marketing content resonates effectively with the set goals.

Defining the right business goal and aligning your marketing goals with it can produce an effective marketing campaign. In order to support your team to reach these goals quicker, you need the right project management tool. 

Artwork Flow is a team collaboration platform that allows users to review and approve creative work and collaborate with others. The software helps managers proof creatives and share feedback easily, and helps with executing cross-media marketing campaigns. You can try out the platform’s 7-day free trial.