5 Dos and Don'ts to Set a Smart Goal [examples]

When I was 14, my dream was to play college baseball. But I had a little problem: I only weighed 100 pounds. And even though I still had four years to grow and improve my skills, I knew I had a long way to go. Fortunately, my trainer has always given me opportunities to shoot so that my motivation remains alive.

I think of SMART goals like my old baseball coach.

After grueling practice or training, he was explaining how long term is just a series of short terms. And to drive that mentality into our heads, he made us write down our training goals.off season every year. But he didn't just accept the first draft of your goal sheet. He never did. He would make you change it until you knew exactly what your goals were and how you were going to achieve them.

Setting a goal like "improving upper body strength" and planning to lift weights three times a week was not enough. You were to note how much you would improve your bench press and how many times you would work your upper body per week.

Every year I set concrete off-season training goals for myself, and since I had a plan and a clear direction, I have always achieved them. By the time I was in high school I had gained 70 pounds of muscle and won a baseball purse.

In this article you will learn exactly what a SMART lens is, why iIt reminds me of my baseball coach and how you can define one today. Do you want to move on to the information you need most? Click on one of these titles to go to the corresponding section.

• What is a SMART goal?
• Why are SMART goals important ?
• How to create a SMART goal
• 6 examples of SMART goals that will make you a better marketer

When I I discovered SMART goals for the first time, I had a revelation. I realized that the reason I could keep improving my athleticism in high school was because my coach made me set SMART goals. But, to give you an eA more professional example, here is a template that shows how to encourage users to create their own SMART goals:

Download this template for free

In the world of work, the influence of SMART goals continues to grow. The reason that successful marketing teams always achieve their goals is that they also set SMART goals.

What are SMART goals?

SMART goals are concrete goals that you strive to achieve over a certain period of time. These goals should be carefully written by a manager and report directly to set them in place to be successful. "SMART " is an acronym that describes the most of each goal.

Theacronym "SMART " stands for "specific, " "measurable, " "achievable, " "relevant, " and "time-bound. " Every SMART goal you create should have these five characteristics to ensure that the goal can be achieved and benefit the employee. Find out what each characteristic means below and how to write a SMART goal that illustrates them.

What I love about sports are the life lessons you learn by practicing them directly in your career. Setting SMART goals not only helps you get better at baseball, but it also makes you a better marketer.

Why are SMART goals important?

When you set specific, measurable, achievable and relevant and time-bound goals, you increase your chances of success by ensuring that the goal isachievable, by identifying the metrics that define success and creating a roadmap to achieve those metrics.

If your goals are blunt, if you don't know what it will take to be successful, or if you don't give yourself a deadline to complete the steps towards reaching the goal , you may lose focus and fall short of what you want to accomplish.

How to create a smart goal

1. Use of a specific formulation.
2. Include measurable goals.
3. Aim for realistic goals to achieve.
4. Choose relevant goals related to your business.
5. Make goals time-bound by including information on schedule and deadlines.

1. Use a specific label.

When you writeSMART goals , keep in mind that they are "specific " in that there is a hard and fast destination the employee is trying to achieve. "Doing my job better " is not a SMART goal because it is not specific. Instead, ask yourself: What are you improving at? How much do you want to improve?

If you're a marketer, for example, your job probably revolves around key performance indicators, or KPIs. Therefore, you can choose a particular KPI or metric that you want to improve, such as visitors, leads, or customers. You should also identify the team members who are working to achieve this goal, the resources they have and their plan of action.

In practice, a specific SMART goal might say, "Clifford and Braden will increase blog traffic from emails ... " You know exactly who is involvedand what you are trying to improve.

Common mistake in SMART goal: imprecision

While you may need to keep some goals more open, you should avoid the blur that might confuse your team more late. For example. instead of saying: "Clifford will boost email marketing experiences, " say "Clifford will increase email marketing click-through rates by 10%. "

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Free SMART Goal Template

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2. Include measurable goals .

SMART goals must be "measurable " in that you can track and quantify the progress of the goal. "Increasing the blog post content from email, " by itself, is not a SMART goal because you cannot measure the increase. Instead, ask yourself: how much email marketing traffic should you be looking for?

If you want to measure your team's progress, you need to quantify your goals, like achieving an X percentage increase in visitors, leads, or customers.

Let's build on the SMART goal we started three above. Now our measurable SMART goal might say: "Clifford and Braden will increase blog traffic from email by 25% more sessions per month ... " You know what you're increasing, and by how much.

Common SMART goal error: no KPI

The same goal is to avoid imprecision. Although you might haveIf you need qualitative evidence or more open evidence to prove your success, you still need to come up with a quantifiable KPI. For example, instead of saying, "Customer service will improve customer happiness," say, "We want the average call satisfaction score after customer service in which customers should be seven out of ten or higher." "

3. Aim for realistically achievable goals.

An“ achievable ”SMART goal takes into account the ability to employee to reach it. Make sure the X percentage increase is grounded in reality. If your blog traffic increased by 5% in the last month, for example, try to increase 8-10% this month, rather than 25%.

It's crucial to base your goals on your own analytics, not industry benchmarks, otherwise you might bite more than you can chew. So let's add asome "attainability " to the SMART goal we created earlier in this blog post: "Clifford and Braden will increase blog traffic from emails by 8-10% more sessions per month ... "That way you don't set yourself up to fail.

Common mistake of SMART goals: unachievable goals

Yes. You should always aim to improve yourself. But achieving completely unattainable goals can derail you and make it difficult, uh, to track progress. Rather than saying, "We want to do 10,000% of what we achieved in 2019," consider something more achievable, like "We want to increase sales by 150% this year" or "We have a target of. 'achieve a 20% year-over-year sales increase. "

4. Choose objectives relevant to your business.

The oSMART goals that are "relevant " relate to your company's overall business objectives and take into account current trends in your industry. For example, will growing your traffic from email lead to more revenue? And is it really possible for you to dramatically increase your blog email traffic given your current email marketing campaigns?

If you are aware of these factors, you will be more likely to set goals that benefit your business - not just you or your department.

So what does this have for our SMART goal? This can encourage you to adjust the metric you are using to track goal progress. For example, your business may have historically relied on organic traffic to generate leads and income, and research suggests you can generatemore qualified prospects this way. Our SMART goal might instead say: "Clifford and Braden will increase organic traffic to the blog by 8-10% more sessions per month. " This way your traffic increase is aligned with the income stream of the business.

Common error for SMART objective; Losing sight of the business

When your business is doing well, it can be easy to say that you want to pivot or grow in another direction. While businesses can be successful, you don't want your team to lose sight of the heart of your business.

Rather than saying, "We want to start a new B2B business in addition to our B2C business, " say something like "We want to continue to increase B2C sales while striving for impact that our products might have on the B2B space within the next year. "

5. Make goals time bound including schedule and deadline information.

A "time-bound" SMART goal keeps you on schedule. Improving on a goal is good, but not if it takes too long. Putting deadlines on your goals puts a fair amount of pressure on your team to achieve them. It helps you make consistent and meaningful progress over the long haul.

For example, which do you prefer: increasing organic traffic by 5% every month, leading to a 30-35% increase in six months? Or try to increase traffic by 15% without delay and achieve that goal within the same amount of time? If you chose the former, you are correct.

So what does our SMART goal look like after we tie it to a period? "Over the next three months, Clifford and Braden will work to increase organic traffic from the blog 8-10%, reaching a total of 50,000 organic sessions by the end of August.

Common SMART Goal error: no time limit

Not having a time limit or very large time in your goal will cause the focus to be re-prioritized. effort or prevent you from seeing if your team is on track. "This year we want to launch a big campaign, " for example, "In the first quarter, we will focus on the production of the campaign in order to launch the campaign in the second quarter. "

If you want a more concrete understanding of SMART goals, check out the examples below. You can always check out this blog post and refer to it when it's time to set your goals.

6 Examples of SMART goals that will make you a better marketer

1. Blog traffic target

• Specific : I want to increase our blog traffic by increasing our weekly publication frequency from 5 to 8 times a week. Our two bloggers will increase their workload from 2 articles per week to 3 articles per week, and our editor will increase her workload from 1 article per week to 2 articles per week.
• Measurable : An 8% increase is our goal.
• Achievable : Our blog traffic increased by 5% last month when we increased our weekly post frequency from 3 to 5 times per week.
• Relevant : By increasing blog traffic we will build brand awareness and generate more leads, which will give sales more opportunities to close.
• Limited in time : End of this month
• SMART goal : at the end of this month our blog will see a8% increase in traffic by increasing our weekly posting frequency from 5 articles per week to 8 posts per week.

2. Target of video views on Facebook

• Specific: I want to increase our average number of views per video native by reducing our video content mix from 8 topics to our 5 most popular topics.
• Measurable: a 25% increase is our goal.
• Achievable: when we reduce our mix of video content on Facebook from 10 topics among our 8 most popular topics six months ago, our average number of views per native video increased by 20%.
• Relevant: By increasing the average number of views per native video on Facebook, we will increase our social media following and brand awareness, reaching more potential customers through our video content.
• Limited in time: in 6 months.
• SMART Goal: In 6 months we will see a 25% increase in the average number of video views per native video on Facebook by reducing our video content mix from 8 threads to our 5 most popular topics.

3. Email subscription goal

• Specific: I want to increase the number of subscribers to our blogs via email by increasing our Facebook advertising budget on blog posts that historically attract the most email subscribers.
• Measurable: a 50% increase is our goal.
• Achievable: Since we started using this tactic three months ago, our blog email subscriptions have increased by 40%.
• Relevant: By increasing the number of subscribers to our blog by email, our blog will generate more trafficic, will increase brand awareness and generate more leads to our sales team.
• Deadlines: In 3 months.
• SMART Goal: In 3 months we will see a 50% increase in the number of our blog subscribers by email by increasing our Facebook advertising budget on posts that acquire historically the most subscribers to the blog.

4. Objective of inion to the webinar

• Specific: I want to increase the number of inions to our Facebook Messenger webinar by promoting it through social media, email, our blog, and Facebook Messenger.
• Measurable: A 15% increase is our goal.
• Achievable: Our last webinar on Facebook Messenger saw a 10% increase in inions when we promote it only through social media, email and our blog .
• Relevant: When our webinars generate more leads, sales have more opportunities to close.
• Limited in time: before April 10, the day of the webinar.
• SMART Goal: before April 10, the day of our webinar, we will see a 15% increase in inions by promoting them through social media, e- mails, our blog and Facebook Messenger.

5. Landing page performance target

• Specific: I want our landing pages to generate more leads by switching from a one-column form to a two-column form.
• Measurable: a 30% increase is our goal.
• Achievable: When we A / B tested our traditional one-column versus two-column form on our high traffic landing pages, we foundrt that two-column forms convert 27% better than our traditional one-column forms, at a significance level of 99%.
• Relevant: If we generate more content leads, sales can close more customers.
• Limited in time: In one year.
• SMART goal: One year for Now, our landing pages will generate 30% more leads by switching their forms from one column to two columns.

6. Goal of the link building strategy

• Specific: I want to increase organic traffic to our website developing a link building strategy that prompts other publishers to link to our website. This increases our ranking in the search engine results, which allows us to generate more organic traffic.
• Measurable: 40 backs to our company 's home page are our goal.
• Achievable: According to our SEO analysis tool, there are currently 500 low quality links directed to our homepage from somewhere else on the internet. Considering the number of partnerships we currently have with other companies and the fact that we generate 10 new inbound links per month without any outreach on our part, 40 more inbound links from a single link building campaign are an important but achievable target.
• Relevant: Organic traffic is our main source of new leads, and backs are one of the main ranking factors on search engines like Google. If we build links from high quality posts, our organic ranking increases, thus increasing our traffic and leads.
• Limitated in time: in 4 months.
• SMART Goal: Over the next four months, I will be creating 40 more backs leading to www.ourcompany.com. To do this, I will be working with Ellie and Andrew from our PR department to get in touch with publishers and develop an effective outreach strategy.

Now that you know what a SMART goal is, why is important, and the framework for creating one, it's time to take some inspiration and put that information into practice. . Whether you're setting goals for personal achievement or as part of reaching important marketing milestones, it's good to start with what you want to achieve and then reverse-engineer into a concrete SMART goal.

Editor 's note: This article was originally published in December 2019 and hasbeen updated for completeness.