Business goals sound pretty high-brow right? They might make you think of board rooms and suits, but they’re essential for every business, small or large! But what are they?
Business goals are goals that a business aims to accomplish in a set period of time. You can set business goals for your company as a whole, or for particular departments, employees, managers or customers. Goals need to be in line with your company’s larger purpose and establish an end goal for you or your employees to work toward. They don’t have to be narrow or have an unchanging set of actions. Instead business goals are broad outcomes that the company wants to achieve.
So now you know what they are, why do you need them?
Business goals help your brand in many ways, but some key reasons to set them are:
Provide a way to measure success
Keep all employees on the same page as to what the goals of the company are
Give employees a clear understanding of how decision-making reaches the company's goals
Ensure the company is headed in the right direction
Some common business goals you might have:
Increase profits.
Build brand awareness.
Build a client base.
Expand to new markets.
Drive more sales and generate more revenue.
Increase website traffic.
These are fairly broad, and there are a few things to consider when choosing your goals, such as:
Short term or long term?
Both! You’re going to need short term and long term business goals, because they have different purposes.
Short-term goals help you maintain a sense of urgency while working towards a larger long-term objective. They provide motivation and are a great way to track progress on a daily or monthly basis. Long-term goals, on the other hand,give you your vision. They help you to keep your sense of direction, you know where you’re going and what your purpose is! Tracking both short and long-term goals helps you to balance immediate actions and your big picture plan.
To illustrate the difference, here’s a long term goal, with some short term goals that support it.
A long term goal: Drive more traffic to the shop tab on the website.
To achieve this, you need some short term goals, for example:
Develop social media campaigns which increase posts.
Update website to include a moving graphic, which directs visitors to the shop tab.
Design a landing page for your social media campaign that entices viewers to shop.
What makes a good goal?
You’ve probably heard this before, but a great way to make sure you can achieve and measure your goals is to make them SMART! Smart goals need to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.
Let’s make one of our examples into a SMART goal. Develop social media campaigns which increase posts.
Becomes Produce an Instagram campaign which increases posts to once daily, with four different post types per week in line with our social media pillars (e.g. entertain with video, educate on new products, build trust with review sharing) to gain 10 new click throughs to the shop tab, via our LinkTree by the end of the month. Why it’s SMART: This goal is specific (Instagram), measurable (once daily, four different post types, 10 new click- throughs) achievable and realistic (depending on who’s able to complete the project, but we’ll assume they’re able to produce the content) and time-bound (by the end of the month).
You’ve got your short-term SMART goals, so what’s next? How do you achieve it?
To start, answer two W’s: Who? Who do you need to achieve this goal? Which team members or outside support? What? What do you need to achieve this goal? Are their particular assets, pieces of equipment or even expertise you need.
In this case, assets!
You’re going to need resources and assets to produce this campaign, whether that be designing a new landing page, icons, artwork, illustrations or photographs to post to your social media.
Before you head off and start making, remember your SMART goal. This needs to be timely so check back and see when you need everything done to keep you accountable and on track: this is the timeline for creating the campaign, not the campaign itself. Start by working out how much time you have and what you need to do in that time. How long will it take to commission an illustrator? When do you need all your photographs edited by? We’ll have a more in-depth post on planning a marketing campaign in future, but for now remember that whatever your goal, think about what resources you need to achieve it and how you will get them in time.
To summarise: Goals are essential, they let you know you’re going in the right direction both in the long and short term. A good goal is a SMART goal, because they give you a clear action plan and you know if you’ve achieved them! Think about the Who and the What first. These are the essential basis for putting your plan into motion.
If you’re not sure what business goals you should focus on,we’ve simplified the steps into a guide that gets you ready to start your branding journey. Click here to download the guide and start defining your business!
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