Small businesses often don’t have big marketing budgets, and that makes it even more important to set attainable small business marketing goals. Setting attainable goals and reaching them can provide motivation and confidence for reaching the next goal. On the other hand, setting unattainable goals and falling short can be demotivating.
Now, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t aim high. Growth is good, and sometimes that requires big goals for your business and for your marketing. But those goals also need to consider your time, your budget, and where your business is headed.
Start with your business goals
Your marketing goals should always be aligned to your business goals. You may be thinking that’s an obvious statement, but sometimes business owners get distracted by shiny objects and end up with marketing goals that don’t align.
If you don’t have clearly defined business goals, think about where you want to grow or expand your business and set a few goals. Once you identify those goals, you can start to set marketing goals then implement a marketing strategy that will help you reach those goals.
Evaluate where you are
It’s always helpful to pull quantifiable metrics, where possible, to evaluate where you are. Those metrics should include things like social media engagement metrics, email newsletter opens and clicks, website analytics, and how much time you’re spending on marketing tasks currently. Don’t forget tothink about the less tangible stuff too – what do you think is working and not working in your marketing? Realistically, is the time and energy you’re putting into your marketing sustainable? Are you seeing results?
Don’t overthink it
This is a big one: don’t overthink your marketing goals. They don’t have to be perfect. If you get through Q1 and it’s clear that a certain goal isn’t a good fit, you can pivot. You can always change your course. It’s better have something on paper (or on the screen) that will help guide your efforts and provide direction for where you spend your time and energy.
Implement a system to track your goals
In the words of a management expert Peter Drucker, “What gets measured, gets done.”
Again, your tracking system doesn’t have to be complicated so don’t overthink it! Come up with a way to track your progress and keep you moving forward. That might mean setting up goal tracking as part of your project management software or using a simple spreadsheet to track progress plus having regular discussions with your team to help keep everyone accountable.
If you need support with navigating your small business marketing goals, schedule an intro call with our team and let’s chat about how we can help you.