It’s a new year and with that comes resolutions, goals and planning. Did you know that 92% of all resolutions fail? In order to be successful, you need to do a little planning first.
Have you heard about SMART goals before?
What is a SMART goal?
SMART goals are:
- Specific – What target do you want to reach?
- Measurable – How will you measure success and keep yourself on track?
- Achievable – Goals should be 75% achievable meaning they’re challenging but not impossible.
- Relevant – Is the goal relevant to your business objectives?
- Time-bound – How long do you want to take to reach this goal? 1 month, a quarter, before a big event?
Examples
Goal: Increase visitors on our website
SMART Goal: Increase visitors on our website by 15% this quarter by publishing blog posts weekly
We’ve decided that we want to increase our visitors but until we set our SMART goal, we haven’t really planned for how we’re going to achieve this. In our SMART goal, we’ve stated that we’re going to publish weekly blog posts in order to increase our website visitors by 15%. We now know that each week we need to work on a blog post for our website so that we can publish on a weekly basis in order to reach our goals
Goal: Get more clients
SMART Goal: Get 2 new clients each quarter by creating a lead generation form with a free ebook giveaway
We all want more clients but what steps are we going to take to get those new clients. We know we need to create an ebook and a lead generation form to help educate and inform potential clients of our services and helpful tips. From there we know that to reach our goal, we need to get 2 new clients each quarter.
Goal: Blog more consistently
SMART Goal: Create a content calendar to map out our weekly blog posts for the next quarter.
Here we’re going to work on a content calendar for the next 12 weeks so we know what we’re going to blog about before we even sit down at our desk. This helps when you’re faced with writers block or just aren’t sure what you want to write about that week. You can start working on your blog posts ahead of time and schedule them to post each week as you finish them up.
In each of these examples the goals have a specific target, which we can measure, is achievable, relevant, and bound by a timescale.
Wrap Up
By taking the time to map out the steps you’ll take to achieve your goals, you’re setting yourself on the path to success. Goals won’t just magically achieve themselves, you have to make them happen. Setting SMART goals gives you the actionable items you need to achieve this.
