So, you are interested in defining a marketing strategy for your business. Clear Goal Marketing explains how the best strategies require goal setting, research, thorough planning and structure.
To build a successful strategy, it is essential to know what you want to achieve (and when) by setting goals and developing a solid plan of how you intend to get there. Without these things in place it is unlikely you will achieve you goal, it is more likely, however, that you will waste precious time and resources.
Identify Business Goals
How can you identify your goals? Think about where you want your business to be in 1, 3 or 5-years’ time.
How will you get there? The answer lies in goal setting and planning, breaking down big goals into smaller, more manageable, tasks.
The Definition of Goal Setting
Goals should be SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. You’ve probably heard about SMART so any times before, it’s an easy one to remember, but how can you relate SMART goals to your business? SMART is a great way to check that your goals are a feasible in a business context.
SPECIFIC. What want you like to achieve? i.e: “I want to build a business supplying marketing services to the product manufacturers in construction and engineering sectors.”
MEASURABLE. How will you measure your success? No. of clients / products / services.
ACHIEVEABLE. Is your goal achievable considering your current situation, time and resources? Yes or no? Will you need to make investments in order to meet your goal?
REALISTIC. Is your goal realistic taking into account the available time and budget? Will you need to modify your goal accordingly and be more realistic about what you can achieve? Will you need to call in extra resources to help achieve it?
TIMEBOUND. Every goal should be time-bound. I will achieve my goal of X (sales, no. of clients) by [date] by implementing strategies X, Y and Z. This is the motivational element of the goal setting that is one of the most important, as it gets you to think about how long it will take.
Breaking-up big projects into easy to follow mini-goals is the best way to achieve your goals by assigning precise timescales.
Once you have defined your goals, the next stage of marketing strategy development is finding your purpose, strengths, USPs and Target Audience – read more here.
Clear Goal Marketing offers marketing management services to small to medium-sized businesses, read more about the services we offer here – Clear Goal Marketing’s services page.
