If you want the best results for your business and want to hit all your short- and medium-term goals, you need a plan — built with your marketing department. Every business wants to grow, but without a solid strategy you'll spend a lot of time going round in circles.
This matters even more if one of your goals is to launch a new product or enter the market for the first time and you've never developed a marketing strategy before. Here are the steps to follow:
Define your goals
The first thing you need to know is where you stand in the market and why someone would choose to buy from you rather than a competitor. It's important to map out the journey a customer will take through the sales funnel. The goal here is to get a clear picture of where the product sits in the market and define an exit strategy for your objectives.
To move your strategy forward, you need to be precise about what you want to do and when — whether that's increasing company revenue, acquiring new users, or growing brand awareness. All goals must be clear, feasible and achievable.
The key is to focus on short-term milestones in order to reach higher-level ones. For example, if your goal is to become a leader in your sector, break it down: increase revenue by 20% in 3 months. If you have several goals to hit, more isn't better — quality beats quantity here.
If you create a very long list of goals, you risk completing none of them. It's better to identify the ones that genuinely matter most and focus on those few.
Track your goals
Once the company's goals have been set, they're usually shared with the team in meetings or by email. At first, everyone is fully engaged — but then the demands of day-to-day work push them into the background.
The ideal approach is to track goals somewhere visible to everyone, so each team member can see whether they're being hit and what impact their work is having.
Break each goal down
Breaking goals down is essential to achieving them. You need to execute your action plan with clear milestones and a defined timeline. For example, to increase brand awareness, one of your goals might be to grow web traffic by 10% in one month.
Good goals are always measurable — the more precise you are with numbers or expected outcomes, the better. Equally, you need a deadline: a time limit helps you and your team stay on track.
Connect projects to goals
Now it's time to work out how each of the goals above will actually be reached. This step is fundamental to keeping employees engaged — they need to know what matters and how to contribute.
Motivated employees are more committed to the business, more productive, deliver better experiences to customers and act as brand ambassadors, which drives up company productivity and sales.
Following the same example: if you want to grow web traffic by 10%, how will you do it? One proposal might be to publish three stories a day on Instagram. It's important to assign each person a specific project, a deadline and a clear scope of work.
Share progress
As goals are reached, share that with the team — everyone should see the progress and stay committed to their projects. Of course, there will be times when things don't go to plan: projects that slip or get dropped. That needs to be shared too, so you can course-correct before it's too late.
Use the outcomes from past projects to inform your next planning cycle. Once goals are reached, record everything and use it as a reference.
Your company's goals are its destination — you need to keep them in sight and check your progress regularly. These steps will help you stay on course. Find out how Gecko Studio can help you reach your SEO goals.
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