Marketing is all about strategy and developing plans to reach the audience more effectively. Before you can build a strategy, goals and objectives should be set. Without goals and objectives, how will you evaluate the successfulness of your strategy?
A beneficial tool to use when setting up framework is the acronym SMART which stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This can serve as a guide to setting goals that will end in reaching milestones and achieving real results. SMART goals can often be concisely summed up in one sentence. Instead setting of a goal of “Post more frequently,” the goal should be written, “Increase posting frequency from one to three posts per week.”
Specific – State what will be accomplished using verbs.
Ask: Does this help bring us closer to our end goal?
Measurable – Establish measurement parameters and an evaluation method.
Ask: What metrics can show us we are closer to our goal? Are we setting quantitative or qualitative metrics? Both?
Attainable – Determine if it is within the skill set of your team.
Ask: Do we have the capability to reach our goal?
Relevant – Improve the brand in a way that makes sense.
Ask: How will this marketing effort benefit our goal? Does this make sense? Is the productive?
Time-bound – Put a deadline or working timeline in place.
Ask: What is a reasonable time frame to achieve our goal?
Case Study
The Tate museum began when an industrialist inherited a collection of art. He tried to donate to an existing gallery but was denied. After receiving his rejection, he took his paintings and a monetary donation to another new art establishment. The establishment was eventually nicknamed The Tate Gallery. The Tate visitors were different from the normal art museum crowd, they were the local working class and schoolchildren. Their key objective is to increase the public’s accessibility to art.
A fictitious example: The Tate is launching an app which includes a game and wants to raise awareness and increase app downloads.
Specific – 200+ app downloads during app launch week.
Measurable – Quantity in the number of app downloads and completed quests in the game.
Attainable – Have retainer with app development team. In-house marketing team to develop and distribute marketing communications on all appropriate channels
Relevant – Marketing communications will drive users to download the app. The app will connect users to art (which is part of their founding mission)
Time-bound – One year to develop the app. Two – three weeks to spread the word and get the audience excited about the app release.
References
Avery, J. (2018), “The Tate’s Digital Transformation Harvard Business Review Case Study. Published by HBR Publications.
Christina, N. (2019). How to Set and Reach Social Media Goals (+ 10 Types of Goals to Track). Retrieved from https://blog.hootsuite.com/smart-social-media-goals/
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