How to set SMARTER goals and achieve them easily?

Regardless of how you choose to market yourself, your brand, or your offering, you need to know what you are trying to achieve. i.e. your desired result. You can increase the chances of attaining these goals by making them “SMARTER”.

Let’s start with what a SMART goal is

The framework requires you to have a SPECIFIC goal in mind. The goal must be MEASURABLE to gauge performance and should be realistic or ACHIEVABLE. A RELEVANT goal that is aligned with organizational or brand strategies has to be TIME-BOUND. This helps in planning your tactics to achieve the objective.

The SMART goal framework then evolved to add periodic EVALUATION of your goals to assess their viability and achievability so you can choose to REVIEW them and re-adjust if needed. This turned into the widely used SMARTER goals model!

Let’s take a look at these in a little more detail. The below examples will help understand the use of the SMARTER framework in goal setting:

SMARTER goals stand for:

Specific

Think about how you set goals for your personal life? You could, at some point in life, have wanted to be healthier. But a SPECIFIC goal could’ve been to gain/lose weight or body fat. You could even commit to a fitness routine or a healthier diet. Specific goals define what you’re trying to achieve.

For your personal brand or organization, you may want to reach more people so they can see and hear what you have to say. Here, your SPECIFIC goal would be to increase followers on Instagram. You are mentioning the channel to refine your goal. In the process, be more detailed about where you want to increase your reach. You can specify goals by asking questions like What, How, or Where.

Measurable

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it” – Lord Kelvin

Even when specifying a goal, it is essential to select one that can be quantified. MEASURABLE goals can be evaluated to gauge success. Consequently, the entire point of setting goals is to achieve them and do better. (personally, professionally, or otherwise). So you want to know where you stand!

The age of analytics, dashboards, and data is upon us, so nearly everything can be tracked and recorded. Setting a measurable goal is fairly simple, but there could be multiple ways to measure success for any given goal. You have to decide which one(s) best suits your capabilities and needs. For example, you are trying to promote a product and aim to get the word out to as many people as possible. “Unique Views” is what you prefer measuring over “Total views”. Why? Because you want to know how many people have seen your content.

Achievable

“Shoot for the moon and if you miss, you’ll land amongst the stars” is great for a hump-day motivation read. Realistically, that’s a failure of your goal. You want to aim where you actually want to go. So set targets that are challenging, but will benefit you, the brand, or your organization. An inability to set ACHIEVABLE targets could mean constant failure. This leads to demotivation, or future goals not being chased effectively. On the other hand, setting the bar too low could lead to underperformance of your campaigns.

A pragmatic and rational goal is necessary for you to manage your expectations while still fueling growth. For example, for an email marketing campaign where you are providing an exclusive offer to customers. You want to have maximum click-through to the landing page with the offer. You decide to send the email to 100,000 customers. Since you know your email open rate is just 4%. And click-through from previous similar campaigns was just 1%. An achievable goal would be 1,000 offer redemptions.

Relevant

Any goals that you set must be part of your larger brand strategy, a certain campaign, or organizational initiative. Variations of the SMART framework have R as either RELEVANT or REALISTIC. You want to have relevant goals that are in line with the resources and limitations of you and your organization.

You want to set goals that are aligned with organizational values, the mission, and vision, and success metrics, however, you choose to define them. If you’re trying to promote sign-ups for tour packages to the Maldives on Instagram. Set a goal that is relevant to the estimations Instagram offers based on your buffet and ad duration or based on past data from similar campaigns.

Time-based

Deadlines help in getting you organized to achieve your objectives. TIME-BASED goals create an emergency and thus require you to proactively plan how you want to attain your goals. Circling back to our first example where we talked about gaining/losing weight as a personal goal. Setting a goal that says I want to gain/lose 4 kgs by November 1st is a more complete goal. It’s better than just wanting to gain/lose weight. The time-bound element helps create supporting strategies and tactics. This ensures that you are on pace to achieve your goals so you can make adjustments if needed.

Evaluated

Setting SMARTER goals involves having them consistently EVALUATED. Your SMART goal is measurable so you have metrics that will aid in their repeated assessment. You have to appraise your goals periodically so you can gauge if you’re on track to reach them. For example, you have a goal for a campaign being run over 3 months. You have to set a plan in motion for monthly or weekly evaluations. Instead of time-driven evaluations, you can even have goal progress evaluations for every 25% of the target achieved. Consistency in evaluations paints a clear picture of how you can achieve them.

Reviewed

Your evaluations may or may not be favorable towards the success of your objectives. But your response to those evaluations must always be agile. If some things not working for you, or external factors are affecting progress, then factor those into your estimations. Now, REVIEW or RE-ADJUST your goals so they continue to be achievable. Not adapting to changes in internal and external environments is unrealistic. Modifications or fine-tuning of your goals after evaluations benefits you, your brand, and/or your organization.

For example, a worldwide shortage of raw materials is going to seriously cut your overall production of a product. So you have to alter your goals to be in line with inventory and production estimates. Just so that they continue to be realistic and relevant.

Examples of SMARTER goals

Using the SMARTER framework for goal-setting ensures a higher probability of success while providing structure to how you set objectives. Let’s look at a few examples for SMARTER goals:

Increase traffic to the website by 15% by posting 12 blogs in the next 3 months. Monthly evaluation of progress to possibly extend the duration to 4 months if needed.

Increase inbound leads to 200 per month through organic content marketing across all social media channels within 6 months. Review set for 3 months to adjust goal if needed.

Improve customer experiences by aiming to maintain a Net Promoter Score above +60 until the end of the year for after-sales service. Weekly evaluation and monthly discussion on progress to possibly adjust to +/- 10 points if needed.

Let’s look at a personal example to showcase the versatility of the SMARTER goals framework:

To improve 5 km run time to under 30 minutes within 6 weeks by going for 30 minute runs every weekday and 60 minute runs on weekends. Review every week.

To build authority in marketing and brand strategy on LinkedIn over the next 3 months, by posting daily, and spending 45 minutes every day engaging with content. Assess growth every month to adjust.

I’ll admit, the last example wasn’t “specific” enough on how much authority I am aiming for. But with such an intangible target, having all other parts of the goal-setting framework still makes it a much clear goal than just “To build authority on LinkedIn”

If you want to read more about SMART goal setting, I highly recommend checking the Mind Tools blog post on this as well. They don’t include the “E-R” of SMARTER. But that’s something you can easily add on if you’ve made it this far on this page!

Applications of SMARTER goals in Marketing

The applications to the SMARTER (or SMART) goal-setting framework are endless. It can be used for:

• Marketing Environmental Analysis
  
• SWOT Analysis
  
• Choosing the right channels
  
• Overall marketing strategy like SOSTAC
  
• Establishing funnels like STDC
  
• Running a Content Audit
  
• setting up collaborative goal-setting with OKR

…and on and on.

Conclusion

Give it a go yourself! Try applying the framework to any goals and objectives you are setting. Understanding what you are trying to achieve is step 1. Noting it down is step 2. And repeated practice is what will give you the confidence to continue doing it. Being clear from the goal-setting stage will essentially provide you with an easier path to achieving the goal itself!