My very last blog post of last year asked you about your goals for the new year. It was a fun, light, inspirational post, fitting for the end of the year when everyone was still on vacation and not thinking about work yet.
We’re now starting our second month of the new year. Have you thought about your marketing goals yet?
Why Bother Setting Marketing Goals at All?
Honestly, I get it.
I have been through dozens of goal setting exercises in my life. Some were worthwhile, some were a total waste of time.
Here’s the thing.
If you have a specific marketing goal in mind, you’re more likely to take the steps to reach that goal than you are if you’re just flailing around with no particular focus for your marketing.
By specific, I mean the difference between, “I want to grow my email list” and “I want to get 300 more subscribers on my email list by the end of March.”
I’ll get more into that later.
The point here is, goals give you focus. They help you decide what you’re going to do and when you should be doing it. They also let you measure your progress so you know whether your methods are working or not.
Now that we’ve established why you should take the time to set goals, let’s step back for a moment.
What is Your Vision for Your Business?
You probably have a long-term vision for your business. You wouldn’t have started it otherwise. Granted, that long-term vision may come out of daydreams you had when you were pondering this business and how it could change your life. But there is a basis for your vision.
A lot of businesses start as daydreams. There is nothing wrong with that. Remember, Apple started as two guys in a garage playing with electronics.
Let’s daydream a little.
Is this business what you want to focus all of your energy on? Do you want it to become your main source of income?
Is it a side hustle you do for fun on the weekends and you want to keep it small so you can still work at your day job and enjoy time with family and friends?
What will your business look like in 1 year? In 5 years? In 10?
How many customers will you have in each of those time periods?
How many pieces will you produce (if you create product) or how often will you perform your service (if you’re service based)?
Yes, I am asking you to come up with actual numbers, not just “I dunno, as many as customers will buy.” You’re not married to these numbers, they’re a guesstimate.
Now that you’ve answered those questions for yourself, it’s time to crunch those numbers.
(I know, way to kill a daydream, Tanya.)
How much do you want your business to make monthly and annually?
How much does your product or service cost to produce?
Please note, some businesses will have little or no overhead costs while others will be quite high. It all depends on what you’re doing. Think about all the things you use in your business.
For example, my main overhead costs include my computer, internet and electricity. I pay for these anyway, so I just take a percentage of those and put them toward my business. I also pay for a website and several online platforms, like Drip, my ESP, and Leadpages, my landing page builder.
Now that you know how much it costs to run your business you have a better idea of how much you need to make to break even.
Add on how much you want to earn from your business and you’ll know how much your business needs to make every month or every year.
This is a really basic way of calculating how much you want your business to bring in. There are MUCH more exact and truly business-oriented ways of calculating these numbers. However, this will give you a good estimate to base your goals on.
Now that you’ve got some decent estimates, you can figure out what it will take to make them happen.
How Much Effort Do You Need to Put Into Your Marketing to Make These Numbers Work?
You just came up with some really basic estimates, right?
Now, how do you make those happen?
Take a look at where your business is right now.
How much time do you put into your business every month? How many customers do you have right now? How many email subscribers do you have right now?
How many customers do you want to have? And how many hours do you want to put into your business every month?
These are fair questions. You may think you want hundreds of customers, but will having all those orders let you sleep occasionally? Do you have the capacity to have 1,000 customers right now, or will you need to grow your business first to the point where you can hire on some help?
For that matter, do you want to spend all your time working? What does your ideal life look like? (Go ahead, daydream again, then bring it back to your current reality.)
Now that you have some ideas around this, how many customers do you need to bring in over the next month? The next quarter? The next year?
Knowing these numbers will help you figure out how much marketing you’ll need to do to reach the goals you set.
Now, it’s time to actually set those marketing goals.
Set Realistic Marketing Goals
If you’ve made a total of $1,000 in your business over the last 6 months, a goal of making $1 million in the next 6 months may be an unrealistic goal. Yes, it has happened, but the people who have done it made a lot of smaller, much more focused goals and put in a lot of hard work to get there.
Realistic goals feel achievable, which makes you more likely to work toward them.
Unrealistic goals feel overwhelming and may never get off the ground because it feels like you’ll never get there.
What’s more, realistic goals are usually the ones that will help grow your business faster. And believe it or not, a lot of what you want to do to grow your business falls within the “realistic goal” category.
Let’s say you decide that you want to make 100 of your products each month. Right now, you’re making 25 and they’re flying out the door. However, you’re only selling to your friends.
Or, let’s say you do consulting, like I do. Right now, you have 2 clients, but those contracts are running out in a few months. You decide you have room in your schedule for 4 clients total and you want the contracts to last a specific amount of time.
How do you grow your audience? How do you bring in more customers?
These questions will help you determine the types of marketing you’ll need to do and the goals you’ll want to make around them.
Make Your Marketing Goals Specific
I mentioned this earlier in this post.
It’s not enough to say that you want to grow your email list.
How many new subscribers do you want to add to your email list?
Are you looking to grow your list in general or are you looking for a specific audience?
No, “people who will buy my stuff” doesn’t count as a specific audience.
“People who are interested in Product X” are. That is an audience you can define by the problem they’re facing which Product X solves. Now, you can create a marketing plan focused to appeal to them.
By specifying your marketing goals, you make it easier to lay out the steps you’ll need to take to achieve those goals.
Speaking of which…
Create a Plan for Each Goal You Set
Okay, Let’s say you’ve decided that to sell 100 of your products each month. To do that, you need to get 300 new people on your email list. You’re already selling 25 of your products to friends every month, you just need 75 new customers who want to buy regularly.
For sake of ease, we’re going to say that your product is something people buy more than once, that way you don’t have to worry about bringing in new customers every single month.
How do you plan to do that?
Will you create a lead magnet that shows why your product or service is the ideal solution to whatever problem it solves?
Will you give out free samples in exchange for email addresses? (You can do this in person as well as online, by the way.)
Will you ask all of your current customers to recommend your product to at least one person and get them to sign up for your email list?
Will you give them a bonus product (or something similar) if they send a certain number of new potential customers (let’s say 5) your way? I talked about referrals in last week’s blog post.
Map out exactly how you want to bring these 300 new leads in.
Then map out exactly how you will convert them into customers, once they’ve joined your email list.
Break those out into projects and tasks.
For instance, your lead generation funnel would be a project. The tasks would include:
- Researching your target audience.
- Creating your lead magnet.
- Building a landing page to collect email addresses.
- Writing a welcome email sequence for your new subscribers.
- Decide what kinds of traffic you’ll use to grow your list.
And so on.
Planning makes getting all of this done more manageable.
Consultants and service providers, you may not need large subscriber numbers like these, but the process is still about the same.
Set Deadlines for Each Marketing Goal, Project and Task
Great. We know you’re going to get 300 new email subscribers and we know you want to ramp up production to 100 of your products each month.
When will you have this done?
Obviously, there’s no point in making 100 of your products each month until you’ve got the customers to buy them.
How long do you think it will take you to get 300 new email subscribers?
Set a deadline by which you will reach this goal.
Then set deadlines to complete each task in your projects.
Again, make these realistic. Don’t assume you can get 300 new subscribers in a week, unless you’re really good at running social media ads. If you can, good on ya! Go for it.
If 3 months sounds more reasonable, go with that. Then you can ramp up production as the new orders come in.
90 days is a really common length for goal setting. Most businesses run on quarters, so they’ll set marketing goals for Q1, Q2, etc.
Now that you know how long you have to get those new subscribers; how long will you take to get everything in place to make that happen?
Remember, you do need a lead generation funnel in place to get those email addresses online. If you’ve already got one is that your main funnel or, are you duplicating it to make a new one with fresh marketing collateral?
Or, if you’re generating leads in person, you need a collection method and plan to make that happen. How long will it take you to put that together?
Your deadlines will depend on how much time you devote to creating these funnels every day, or week.
What Resources Will You Need?
Next important question: What do you need to make all of this happen?
Do you have an ESP and a way to build landing pages? How are you going to follow up with all of these new subscribers once they’ve gone through your welcome sequence?
If you’re giving free samples, how are you going to do that? In person? By mail?
Do you have a delivery method set up, whether it’s you standing at a booth in a weekend market or packaging everything up and sending it via the postal service?
Sit down and make a list of the resources you need to reach your goal.
How many of those resources do you already have? How many will you need to purchase? How many can you find for free somewhere on the internet or beg, borrow, or steal from friends and family?
By the way, that linked, bulleted list up in the task section? All resources. You’re welcome.
Failure Is an Option
I want to make this really clear.
You may not reach every single goal you make.
You may not even reach every deadline you make.
That’s okay.
Cut yourself some slack. If you’re creating your product or producing your service while doing all of this, you’re going to be busy.
Do set aside time every day or every week to work on your marketing goals.
Don’t beat yourself up if something else takes precedence. (You know, like sleeping, eating, taking care of your health, paying bills, etc.)
Sometimes, you’ll discover that the goal you set isn’t what you really want. That’s okay. You’re allowed to change your goals or to pivot and make entirely new ones.
Sometimes, it will take you longer than anticipated to reach your goals. This is also okay.
Lots of companies set goals and end up rolling them over to the next quarter if they aren’t accomplished by their assigned deadlines. This is normal.
Don’t let your goals paint you into a corner.
This is your business. You get to make the decisions here.
Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series said, “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
Yet he was a very successful author, writer, and radio producer.
You can be successful too, even if your deadlines go whooshing by and you don’t necessarily reach your goals as planned.
Adapt your business to your life and your desires. Don’t let your business force you to adapt to it.
Yes, I say this from personal experience. Seriously. Be kind to yourself.
Success takes time and patience. All those “overnight success stories” usually involve a lot of hard work put in before the “overnight success” part happens.
Start Making Those Marketing Goals Happen
You’ve set your marketing goals.
You’ve mapped out a plan to reach those goals.
You’ve created projects and defined tasks within those projects.
You’ve set deadlines for each of your goals, projects and tasks so you know when they need to be complete.
You’ve even know what resources you have and still need to make all of this work.
You’re amazing! Look at how much you’ve already gotten done! Go you!
Now, start doing.
The sooner you start, the sooner you can hit those deadlines and cross them off your list.
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