SMART goals are an essential part of a content marketing strategy. In this blog post, we show you how to set SMART goals for your business so you can meet your overall goals of winning more customers and increasing revenue.
Content marketing is a great way to drive sales for your contract manufacturing business, by giving your buyers what they’re looking for while they’re actively searching for it. But content marketing is a big investment.
SMART goals will give you a clear structure for measuring how your content marketing efforts are impacting your overall business goals.
SMART goals are concrete targets that you aim to hit over a certain period. “SMART” is an acronym that describes key characteristics of each goal.
SMART stands for:
The SMART framework enables you to write goals that will drive a real impact for your business. You’ll be able to quantify how far you’ve come and how far you have left to go, and once you reach your milestone, you’ll know you have achieved something tangible and impactful.
Let’s break this down.
To make your goal SPECIFIC, you’ll need to focus on one particular metric you want to improve upon, like visitors, leads or customers.
To make it MEASURABLE, your goal should be quantifiable, like achieving an X% increase in visitors, leads or customers.
To make it ATTAINABLE, make sure that what you’re setting out to do is achievable. Your goals should be based on your own analytics, not industry benchmarks. If you made a 3% increase in traffic last month, aiming for a 5% increase next month is a realistic goal.
Your goal should also be RELEVANT, relating to the overall goals of your business.
To make your goal TIME-BOUND, be sure to attach a deadline to it. That way you’ll be more likely to accomplish it, and will prevent you from falling into the trap of procrastinating on items.
Let’s say you want to increase the number of visitors to your blog. Your SMART goal might be to increase your blog traffic from 3-5% by the end of May by publishing two more posts per week.
Here’s how that might breakdown:
Other examples of SMART goals might include:
Setting SMART goals is an essential part of your content marketing strategy. They give you a clear line of sight as to how your content marketing efforts are impacting your overall business goals.
SMART goals are important as they:
Every business has the same vague goals; to attract customers and boost their revenue. But these aren’t quantifiable. Of course you want to bring in more customers, but how many do you need to meet your growth ambitions? Over what time period? And how do you intend to attract these customers?
When you make goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound, you increase your odds for success. If you set vague goals, if you don’t identify the actions needed to achieve success, or you don’t set yourself a deadline, you may lose focus and fall short of what you hoped to achieve.
You can use the following steps to set SMART goals for your content marketing.
Why do you invest in content marketing?
Of course, the true purpose of every marketing effort is to increase revenue for your business. But your content marketing efforts also tie into other important business goals, like improving website traffic, lead generation, brand awareness and customer loyalty.
Take a step back and think about why you blog regularly, and why you write eBooks. It’s so you can provide answers to the questions your prospects and customers are asking at each stage of the buying journey. And in doing so, guide them through the buying journey and towards a solution.
You’ll only succeed in your goal to attract customers and increase revenue if you keep your target buyers needs’ in mind at all times.
Which metrics will you need to track to measure how you’re performing?
Once you have your goals, you will need to assign key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs will help you determine whether or not you’re on track to achieving your objectives and goals.
Here are some examples:
Using the earlier example of wanting to increase your blog traffic from 3-5% by the end of May, the KPI you would need to track is page views.
If your goal is to increase leads by 5% every month, leading to a 30-35% increase in 6 months, you will be most interested in tracking your conversion rates and MQLs.
And if you wanted to reach 20,000 website visitors via organic search monthly by the end of the year, you’d need to track the organic traffic.
How will ensure you stay on track?
It’s vital to regularly monitor your progress toward your goals. Here are some ways to help you do this:
Content marketing is immensely valuable for contract manufacturers looking to grow their business. But with so many strands to think about, from blogging to ebook creation to videos, email and social media, it can be easy to feel weighed down and to lose sight of the impact your efforts are having on your overall goal to grow your business. SMART goals give structure to your content marketing efforts and ensure that everyone in your team is on the same page.