It’s that time of year again. One year ending, a new one beginning, and you need to evaluate 2021 and think about what you want to achieve for marketing in 2022.
Your marketing goals and plan will affect the direction you move forward in the year and lets you and your team know how you are going to proactively align your marketing with your business goals.
So unlike typical New Year’s resolutions, let’s make your marketing goals strong and attainable! Here’s our tips on how you can create some simple but effective goals for marketing. Achieve success in 2022!
1. Look At the Past
When setting goals for the future, it’s always a great idea to look at the past. So take a look at how you did in 2021. What worked? What didn’t? Why didn’t something work? Use your past knowledge and experiences to guide how you shape your goals for 2022.
It’s also important to identify possible pitfalls or challenges that may stop you from achieving the goals you’ve set, especially ones you’ve faced in the past. From there, come up with ways to solve these challenges or work around them.
2. Know Your Audience
You also need to know your audience and your customers. It might be helpful to re-evaluate your market research information. Who are they? What do they want that you may be able to provide? Especially when it comes to marketing, learn about what your audience wants from you and how they interact with content and marketing materials.
3. Identify Your Direction
What do you want to achieve? Use the information you gained through the past two sections to identify which direction you want your marketing to go. What is most important for you to focus on? Whether it’s internal or geared towards what your customers want, what areas are your priorities?
4. Be SMART
Okay, so you know your past successes and challenges, your audience and what you want to achieve. Now it’s time to turn that knowledge into effective, actionable SMART goals.
Specific
Get down to the nitty gritty details, the specifics of what you want to achieve. Ask yourself questions like:
- What needs to be accomplished?
- How are you going to achieve this goal?
- What steps need to be taken?
Measurable
Quantify your goals so you can track your progress much easier and know when they’re complete.
Think about what marketing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you want to focus on for the year. How are you measuring your success? Unique website visitors, sales qualified leads (SQLs), marketing qualified leads (MQLs), return on ads spend (ROAS)? There are many more KPIs for you to explore so if you want to learn more, here’s a handy guide by HubSpot: 15 Key Performance Indicators to Help Improve Your Marketing.
After you determine your measurables, you can build upon your goals once you achieve them!
Achievable
Your goals should be realistic and achievable. Remember, you want to achieve your goals; they’re not supposed to be an unreachable vision. So consider your resources, your time and your team, and decide what goals are possible for you.
If you know that the workload to achieve something isn’t possible with your current resources, scale back your goal. There’s no harm. It’s better to focus on achieving realistic goals than the unattainable ones.
Relevant
When setting goals, look at the big picture. Think about how the goal you are setting is relevant to you. Why are you setting this goal? Will this marketing goal help my business goals?
Time-Bound
Put a time limit on your goals. To make a goal truly measurable, you need to know at what point the goal has been successfully reached. Time-related measurements make it so that everybody involved knows when to do their tasks, when to finish and how to stay on track to achieve the goal within the time frame.
5. Think Positive
Remember to think positively; your mindset impacts your ability to stick to and achieve your goals. Follow approach-oriented goals, not avoidance-oriented goals. Don’t think you will fail if you don’t achieve a goal. Instead, make them realistically achievable, and use positive language and thinking to frame your goals. To promote positive internal motivation, focus on the potential benefits instead of the potential failure.
Conclusion
And there you have it! You now know how to set simple goals for marketing for 2022! We hope this has been helpful so you can create your own goals for success. Now you can plan your marketing strategies around your goals.
If you’re interested in more about different marketing strategies you can use to successfully achieve your goals, check out our series on Digital Marketing Strategies for F&B or our articles on WhatsApp Marketing.
• Written by Adrija Chakravarti
