How to Set Marketing Goals for the New Year

We’re done with the first month of 2016 already. Can you believe it? On New Year’s Eve, you were probably making some resolutions to create and stick to marketing goals for the coming year. A lot of people have likely already fallen off track in that regard. But we’re here to tell you that’s okay. Whether you’ve lost track of what you wanted to accomplish or you never even created goals in the first place, what follows is a quick resource for setting marketing goals for the remainder of the year and how to stick to it once it’s put in place.

Look at Your Current Goals and Strategies

Basically you need to take a good hard look at what you’re currently doing for marketing. What’s currently working for you? What’s leaving room to be desired? How are you doing in terms of progress toward achieving your current goals? You need to do this because it not only gives you a good starting place for establishing new goals but also forces you to do a little research. What needs to go into a marketing campaign is always changing, especially with regard to the digital age. So, take a look at what the current trends are in terms of social media and online marketing. See what is working for others then evaluate how you can apply those tactics to your goals. A few things to look for include specific tools and software along with established strategies like content marketing that will get you the results you want.

Evaluate SEO Changes

Google is always releasing new algorithm updates that modify how they process search results. It’s important to keep on top of these changes so you can ensure the SEO for your site is always in keeping with the current best practices.

Look at Your Competitors

What better way to figure out what you need to be doing this year than to take a gander at what your competitors are doing? While everyone is likely undergoing a bit of shift right now, as we get farther into the year, company goals will become clearer. It will also become more apparent who has stayed on top of trends and who hasn’t. This is about more than keeping up with the Joneses. Rather, it’s about staying ahead of the curve and ensuring you’re doing everything in your power to set goals that maximize your company’s potential.

Create a Plan

One of the most important things you need to remember about setting marketing goals is they need to be realistic and there needs to be some sort of metric attached to them. That is, they need to be actionable enough to actually accomplish and there needs to be a tool you can use for measuring your level of success. Another key is writing your plans down! Hubspot offers a really useful marketing goals planner that you can use to write down all of your ideas and keep them organized in one place. Set daily, monthly, and/or quarterly goals. It’s really useful and is a quick way to visualize everything you need to do to get to where you want to be.

Put it Into Action

Once you have your marketing goals written out and planned out, you can start implementing the steps you need to take to achieve them. This is both exciting and difficult. Anything worth doing is hard, right? And this is especially the case with business. It is only by really putting in some elbow grease and sticking to your plan that you can ever hope to see your marketing goals come to fruition.

Like our blog? Subscribe to our newsletter.

Over 4000 marketers love it. Receive information on best marketing practices, exclusive offers, and ways to boost efficiency, quality, and productivity.