You can make a change any time you want. There’s nothing to say that the new calendar year is your only chance to implement some positive evolution in your life or your workplace.
But there’s yes, as the digits in the year tick over, there’s a sense that now, more than ever, you can leave the past behind and start fresh with some new ideas.
All the same, there’s no shortage of stories New Year resolutions failing. In fact, far more people fail than succeed. It’s one thing to say you’re going to eat healthier — and it’s another to get overwhelmed and default to that burger. It’s one thing to come back from a Christmas break with lofty marketing goals like taking SEO more seriously or spending less time in meetings… only to similarly fall back on old habits as the stress piles up.
It's the difference between "throwing a dart" and "throw a dart at a dartboard, aiming for the bullseye, right now, to win the game."
The key to success lies within a well-known acronym: SMART. Forget making a resolution. If you want it to work, you’re goal-setting. Frame it like this, stick to the plan, and you’ll find that rather than resolution-breaking, you’re goal-achieving. Look at you go.
Make Your Goals Specific
“I want more leads.” Sure you do. Who doesn’t? But you can’t just set a goal of “more leads.” After all, that’s what you’re always wanting, and if it’s what you’re always wanting, you won’t change your method to get it without an extra step.
Instead, set yourself a specific goal, like “I want to generate 10 more leads per month by revising my SEO strategy and replacing all those old forms.”
Keep Your Goals Measurable
If you’ve made your goal specific, you may already be halfway here. Put a number on your goal. If you’ve decided that you need to redesign your website, set some criteria by which you can measure success. This could be seeing 50 per cent more organic traffic within three months of the launch.
If you don’t do this, you risk getting dragged into a long, slow process of doing a lot of work and being unable to know if it was all worth it. If you’re unable to measure if you succeeded? You probably failed.
Your Goals Must Be Attainable
Be realistic. If your goal is to triple your leads, do you actually have a plan that can achieve this? Do you have the resources? Does it really make sense to set such a lofty number if you have a low chance of making it there? Even if you do increase your leads, you’ll still be disappointed you didn’t hit your target — and if you’ve shared your goal, your colleagues will have built expectations as well.
Better to shoot for something you know you can manage. After all, you can always adjust as you go. If you’ve hit a goal to increase your leads per month by 50 per cent and you’ve nailed it three months running, yeah, you can aim a little higher moving forward.
Keep it Relevant
It’s easy to get carried away when you feel you’ve got a good idea and, well, it gets fun. But you need to keep yourself grounded. Let’s say your goal is to revamp your SEO and increase organic traffic to your website. Yes, you could try to argue that attending more networking events would increase web traffic — and it might be a great idea in and of itself — but it’s not really in line with your goal.
When you’re trying to achieve your goals, keep your efforts relevant. If you get some other cool idea that would conflict with your ability to achieve, maybe hand it off to someone better positioned to take it on.
The Last Step: Time
Set yourself a great goal without thinking about when you want it done is a great way to never get it done.
But when you do put a deadline, or a per-month target, or something in some way time-limited, you’ll be less likely to let things slip because you can “always do it later.”
Good 2019 Marketing Goals vs Bad 2019 Marketing Goals
Of course, all of these examples assume that the goal is attainable based on your starting point and resources.
Bad Goal:
Increase traffic
Good Goal:
Increase organic traffic by 25 per cent per month through ongoing SEO improvement
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Bad Goal:
More lead conversion
Good Goal:
20 per cent higher lead conversion by March 31
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Bad Goal:
Increase revenue
Good Goal:
Use an Inbound Marketing engine to drive a 50 per cent increase in revenue by end of year
Want to know what happens when we achieve our goals? We’ve helped more than 60 B2B companies across Canada and the US succeed through smart marketing technology and great content. Here’s a recent case study that explains some of our methods. If you like what you see, why not connect with us and get started setting and attaining your own goals for 2019?