When I was in graduate school, I took a Marketing class that, though I did not realize it at the time, has shaped the way I look at every marketing engagement that I encounter. We had to develop one marketing plan every week for 15 weeks. That’s 15 marketing plans. The framework for these plans was always the same. The first step was to develop objectives. These objectives were specific, measurable and had to have a time frame associated with them. The next step would be to create the strategies and tactics to achieve the objectives. I’m going to focus this post specifically on objectives because you can’t achieve anything without a specific measurable goal.
All objectives must be SMART:
1) Specific
2) Measurable
3) Attainable
4) Relevant
5) Time-bound
When I started my career in the advertising agency business, my boss would always say to our clients, “what’s it going to take to get an A on this assignment?” When I first heard it, I thought it seemed pretty elementary. But as he repeated this over and over with every new client and engagement it began to make sense. What he was trying to get out of the conversation was a SMART objective so at the end of the client’s campaign we knew if we had achieved their objective. If we hit their goal then we would have a happy long-term client. If we went into the engagement without an objective, how could we measure success? A pretty website or an award-winning campaign that doesn’t drive to a business or marketing objective isn’t going to get you repeat business or make your client look like a hero to her boss. However, achieving defined and measurable objectives such as a 10% increase in website conversions within a year after launch, or a decrease in cost per conversion by 15% in three months because of effective campaign strategies, will.
This may seem like ‘Marketing 101′ to some. But all too often, when I ask a client or potential prospect “What are your marketing objectives for the year, or, what are your marketing objectives for this campaign?” they are not able to articulate the correct answer. I get responses like, “Our budget is $xxx,xxx” or “We want to create more engagement, or increase our conversions, or increase our cart size” without any specific number in mind. When I push for specifics, I get a blank stare and a repeat of what they just told me.
Below are some SMART objectives we here at Webtrends are currently working toward and how we are measuring them.
Objective: Increase click through-rate from .5% to 1.75% by April 1
Measurement: Webtrends leverages our Webtrends Ads platform to optimize to multiple KPIS, one being click-through rate. We have achieved our objective for the quarter and are now working toward a 3% click-through-rate for July 1.
Objective: Achieve 15% social share of voice by April surrounding a set of keywords
Measurement: Webtrends leverages our social listening platform to determine the clients’ share of voice around a set of keywords. Our client is in red. As you can see we are almost at our desired objective and we report progress to our client on a monthly basis.
Objective: Search Engine Rankings
Achieve position 5 or better for keywords 1,2,3,4,5,6
Achieve position 10 or better for keywords 7,8,9
Measurement: Webtrends leverages our search engine ranking solution to monitor and report our search engine optimization efforts.
If you’d like us to help you achieve your digital marketing objectives, please contact our Webtrends Performance Marketing team by emailing Jared Roy at Jared.Roy@webtrends.com. The Performance Marketing team starts every engagement with specific, measurable and timeframe-based objectives and reports our progress weekly to our clients. This way we know we’re headed for that A on the assignment.