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Set Measurable Marketing Goals for 2020

January 13, 2020

Setting goals for your marketing efforts is critical.

If you have a plan to increase customers or sales and you do not have a road map to get there, it is very likely that you could be spending advertising dollars on platforms or campaigns that are not truly helping you achieve your desired results.

It is important to establish both qualitative and quantitative goals. Qualitative marketing goals would be along the lines of improving customer service or increasing brand awareness, where quantitative goals would be more numbers-based. For example, you may wish to increase sales by 2% or increase your new customers by 5 every month. 

The important thing is to set goals and effective ways to measure them. Do not wait until the end of the year to look back on your progress. Set shorter milestone dates to help you determine if your marketing efforts are achieving your goals or if you need to make a change. Don’t be afraid to make a shift if it could help you achieve your goals. Below are a few tools to help you manage your digital marketing efforts.

Take advantage of Google Analytics. This is a free resource and can easily be installed on any web page. You will first need to sign up for a google analytics account. You will need to know some basic info about your site. After setting up the account you will need to add the tracking code to your site. Once the code is uploaded within a few hours Google will begin to generate data for you to view. If you are working with a professional web developer this would be a great thing to ask them to set up. If you do not have a web developer visit with us here at the SBDC and we can help you get started.  Now that you are able to track and collect data from your website visitors you will be able to better manage your site and increase its profitability.

If you are utilizing an email marketing platform then it probably has built-in reporting features to help you analyze the effectiveness of your campaigns. Some of these platforms include Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, and Emma, just to name a few. There are many different metrics that you can look at in order to create more efficient emails. Pay attention to things like open rate and unsubscribe rates. This will help you determine if people are interested in your emails. Review what links are clicked within your emails and if people are forwarding your content. This will help you understand what stands out most in your email so you can provide more related content.

Social media is a place booming with analytic tools. In many platforms, you can see directly on each post how it is performing. If it has likes or retweets or how many impressions it has. This information can be incredibly helpful in determining the time of day, type of content, and frequency that is working best for your followers.  Look at your metrics and soon you will start to see patterns emerge. Pick out the posts that perform well and recreate those at the same time, the day of the week, and with the same type of content. Seeking out these trends and developing content in line with what has worked in the past will help you to increase your exposure moving forward.

All of these metrics come together to help you determine if the tools you are using are performing effectively to help you meet your marketing goals. All of this leads to a better return on investment. These tools already exist and are working hard for you, now you just have to take advantage and put them to use.

“Business Tips” was written by Dezaray Johnson, Certified Business Advisor & Training Coordinator, of Angelo State University’s Small Business Development Center.  For more information on the topic of this article or the services of the ASU · SBDC, contact her at Dezaray.Johnson@angelo.edu.