A digital marketing plan that brings results is a necessity for any business, whether it’s based purely online or has a physical presence. After all, consumers don’t purchase products or services they don’t know about, which is a gap that digital marketing efforts aim to bridge. However, consumer preferences, search algorithms and economic environments change, necessitating flexibility in digital marketing goals as well.
Being able to adjust is something entrepreneurs and small business owners must consider if they are to achieve returns on their digital marketing investment. As part of running several successful projects, Razi Salih has gained extensive knowledge of strategic marketing tactics that have helped his business, including how to navigate marketing goals.
Why Are These Goals Important?
For a business engaged in digital marketing, these goals outline the overall intentions of the marketing team and help to provide direction on where they should focus their efforts. Goals such as improving conversion rates or increasing engagement numbers help digital marketers understand where to channel their energy when implementing the marketing plan. Others, such as improving brand recognition or strengthening inbound leads, set expectations for what to accomplish.
Setting marketing goals helps entrepreneurs to envision the tactics and strategies that will be necessary to accomplish them. By aligning these goals with a basic marketing funnel they will know how to move customers from one level to the next, giving them an understanding of how their efforts make a difference.
While some goals are specific to the individual business, there are a handful that resonate the world over with most digital marketers, including:
- Increasing Brand Awareness
- Increasing Revenue
- Improving Search Engine Rankings
- Growing Website Traffic
These, and many others, should adhere to certain criteria that will ensure they are the right fit for the business.
Setting Worthy Goals
There are many goal-setting frameworks available, and among the most commonly used ones in digital marketing is the SMART (Specific-Measurable-Achievable-Relevant-Timely) method, which requires the entrepreneur to deeply think through what they want to accomplish. The SMART method ensures that digital marketing goals have clear metrics, are realistic and have a timeframe for accomplishment.
In the digital age, many consumers want to feel a personalized element to their experience with a business. For the digital marketing team, this means personalizing to meet the expectations of consumers, which can mean anything from customizing email content to creating unique messaging to suit different customer types.
Setting the right goals also means being flexible to re-evaluate and possibly reset them based on internal and external factors. A lot of businesses do this annually, but depending on the context, this can be done more often.