For a modern business, there’s nothing more important than having an effective digital marketing strategy. Without it, you’re as good as non-existent in the business world.
Now, every good strategy starts with clearly defined goals and careful planning. It’s the most crucial phase of organizing a marketing campaign – if you fail to do a good job there, all your future efforts might go to waste.
So, in this article, we’ve decided to provide you with some of our favorite tips for defining your digital marketing goals to help you grow your business in no time whatsoever.
Here they are.
1. Your goals should be specific.
There’s simply no space for vagueness in digital marketing strategizing. Your goals shouldn’t be something in the lines of „we want our social media following to grow“ – this doesn’t tell you too much about the goal itself. Instead, you should go for something like „ We want our social media page (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok – be specific!) to reach 10k followers in the next few months“. You want to be as specific as possible, or otherwise, there will be no way to measure the success of your campaign later on.
We’re not saying you should put every single detail of your digital marketing plan into your goals – that would be too impractical. Your goals are about what you want to achieve, your plan is how you’ll go about it. To put it simply, in order to achieve your goals, you’ll need to know what they are down to the specific details, but not how you’ll do it – that part comes later!
2. Keep them consistent with your business goals.
What are your current business goals? Is it to save on costs? Increase your revenues? Expand your brand to a new market? Reach a new target group?
Whatever your business goals are, they need to be in line with your digital marketing plans and vice versa. There shouldn’t be any „clashing“ between these two categories, otherwise, there would be no point in creating a digital marketing campaign in the first place.
Overall, if you want your digital marketing goals to be effective and meaningful, you’ll need to start with your business goals first. As long as these are in line with each other, you’ll certainly find the success you need.
All of this also means you’ll need to keep your goals flexible – if your business plans change, so should your digital marketing strategy.
3. Deadlines, deadlines, and more deadlines!
If you fail to set a reasonable timeline in which you’ll achieve all of your goals, your marketing campaign probably won’t be as successful as you’d hoped for. As we’ve already mentioned before, your goals should be time-bound in order to be effective.
Saying that you’d like to see your business grow in the future is not the same as saying you want your ads to reach a specific new audience during the next month. One is a wish, the other is a goal.
Make sure to set a „schedule“ for your goals – it will make everything much easier to follow later on. You’ll want to record your progress, and you won’t be able to do that without having set some deadlines first.
If you’d like to learn more about the importance of proper planning and scheduling in the world of digital marketing, you can do so here.
4. Define who’s accountable.
Assign someone for each and every objective you set to ensure everything is kept running smoothly throughout your campaign. If you don’t assign tasks and objectives early on in the process, it will all quickly become quite messy.
In case you don’t have enough team members ready to invest their time and efforts into your new digital marketing adventure, perhaps you’re better off hiring an agency to do it for you. Digital marketing is not as simple as posting a couple of cute pics on Instagram and hoping your target audience sees them – it takes much more than that.
Overall, make sure there’s a person behind every objective you set to ensure every aspect of your plan is moving forward. It can be a great motivation booster for your team – those who show results should be rewarded appropriately as well.
5. Flexibility is key.
Your digital marketing goals shouldn’t be something that’s strictly set in stone. In a dynamic market environment, things tend to change quite quickly and quite often. Your goals should be adaptable to these changes, especially at the beginning of it all.
Don’t be afraid to change your goals as you go – and with them, your entire marketing strategy as well! Running a modern business is all about embracing changes and keeping your plans as flexible as possible.
6. Be realistic.
Your goals should always be attainable and realistic – otherwise, there’s no point to them. We all have things we wish we could do, but these can’t always become a reality (at least not right now!). Your ambitions for the distant future of your business are NOT acceptable as digital marketing goals – it is as simple as that.
Once you start setting your goals and developing your marketing plan, don’t forget to ask yourself from time to time: how realistic is this? It will help you come up with a more practical digital marketing strategy that will bring you some amazing results later on.
The bottom line
In this article, we’ve talked about digital marketing goals and how to define them properly. It could all be summarized in a four-word sentence: keep your goals SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound). As long as you do that, you’ll certainly get your business where you want it to be in no time whatsoever! Make sure you communicate your goals clearly with your team and don’t hesitate to hire some professional help if you start feeling stuck.
Either way, we hope our short tips helped you define your goals with precision and we wish you the best of luck in all of your future endeavors.
