Did your boss set marketing goals that look a little bit like this:
10 BILLION impressions! 1 MILLION followers!
100,000 DOWNLOADS!
Cool! Those are biiiiig numbers!
So, how are you going to go about achieving these? I mean, you do know how to get there,
right?
Oh...gotcha...it’s harder than it looks, right? Don’t worry...the Phlywheel Factor
has you covered.
[intro music]
Okay! You need to know how to get from where you’re at - which is probably zero? - to
where you need to be...millions of something or other.
Let’s start with the obvious here: how did your company get to those goals and why?
The most common issue with goal setting is that it’s not SMART. You know:
S.M.A.R.T.
Or, SPECIFIC, MEASURABLE, ACHIEVABLE, RELEVANT, and TIMELY. SMART.
Not saying that someone pulled those numbers out of thin air, but, well, actually, someone
pulled those numbers out of thin air.
So, let’s take a look at the MILLION followers. Sure, we all want a million followers. It
would mean that we’re popular and cool and followed...but why? And what for? In the SMART
goal world, it’s measurable but falls short on the other factors.
Is it achievable? Wellllll...that depends. Do you know what kind of time, money, resources
and efforts need to go into your plan to get to a million followers? Do you have this time,
money, and resources? This is where you need to determine your LEADING INDICATORS.
LEADING INDICATORS are the known inputs and factors that create a predictable outcome.
An example of this is calories. Consumption of calories will lead to an outcome of weight
gain or loss. So, if I want to lose weight, I consume x% less calories.
In this case, you would have to know the indicators that would lead to followers and you should
be able to control these indicators, too...so you can’t say, “A viral tweet.” That
is hard to predict. So, for ease of explanation, let’s say that a follower on Twitter costs
around $4.00. This is how much you’d have to spend to get a real person to hit the follow
button.
So, if you wanted 1 million followers, you’d have to spend $4 million on a Twitter follower
campaign. There are other leading indicators that can lower or raise the cost of that ad
spend - some that you can’t control like world events or viral tweets - but for simplicity,
that is what you’d need to achieve 1 million followers.
If you don’t have $4 million, then it’s not as achievable. It’s not impossible,
but it’s better to set your goal using predictable indicators.
Now, if you skip to the TIMELY part of the SMART goal setting, perhaps you know that
posting daily to YouTube brings about 50 followers per day. So, at that rate, and perhaps it
accelerates to 500 per day once you hit 100,000...it’ll take you about 5 and a half years to get to
100,000 and another 5 years or so to hit 1 million. So, let’s say 10 years.
If you don’t have 10 years, then it’s not achievable, either.
Let’s see...RELEVANT. Is 1 million followers or 10 Billion impressions relevant? What are
you - or your boss - ULTIMATELY trying to achieve? Are you selling something? Do you
know that a certain amount of followers or impressions will help you get there?
Don’t assume that having a lot of followers or impressions are leading indicators for
your ultimate goal. Hubspot, a customer relationship management platform, knew that blog posts
created sales leads. They were actually so good at measuring this that they discovered
that increasing blog posts from 3 to 5 per week led to a 25% increase in sales leads.
So, they could safely bet that increasing blog posts from 5 to 7 per week would increase
their leads again. That’s relevant.
Once again, it comes down to understanding your leading indicators and how they help
you achieve your goals.
So, let’s go back to achieving that seemingly random goal.
Here is a process to help you go back to your boss and present a SMART goal that you can
both agree with:
#1. Create a broad objective - one that ties to the business goals.
This doesn’t require specifics...yet. We’re just looking to narrow our focus. So, it could
be raising your company’s profile or driving sales leads.
#2. Ask the question: Do I know what has been done in the past that has helped achieve this?
You may have data from past campaigns or results from previous marketing initiatives to pull
from. It’s best to have numbers, but you can also have something like: “When I attended
that conference and spoke to 10 people, we had 2 solid leads.”
If you don’t have data, this is when you can start running some experiments. Spend
some money on various platforms and see what it brings.
This can create your leading indicators, which is #3! Back to the followers, if you want
to see what it costs to get a follower, experiment with it! Once you have that number - say $4
per follower or $75 per newsletter signup or the like - you know the leading indicator.
Smart companies setting SMART goals can use that indicator to try to make it more efficient.
Maybe you can reduce the cost per follower with funnier copy.
Either way, you are on your way to setting marketing goals LIKE A BOSS...or at least
in a way that you and your boss can live in harmony.
This has been the Phlywheel Factor and I’m your host, Tara Hunt.
Hey, me again! Now, this is a very simplified, quick lesson on setting smart goals and it’s
obviously more complicated than this, but here’s hoping that you have a good basis
to get you started. IF you need more, we’ve created all sorts of digital tools and deep
dive masterclasses on this stuff over at Phlywheel.com - that’s phlywheel with
a PH.