It’s no secret that inbound marketing is incredibly important.
What many people don’t realize is that setting goals for your inbound marketing is equally important.
You want to grow your business and see higher conversion rates, and goal setting for inbound marketing is a vital part of that.
Pretty-Impressive is here to help you learn how to set — and reach — those goals.
Read on to learn what type of goals you need and how to set them.
Why Is Goal Setting Important in Inbound Marketing?
Why is goal setting important in inbound marketing?
Imagine arriving at a race and not looking at the route. No studying the map or making note of the finish line, just lining up and starting to run. You’re not sure how long the race is, it might be a 5k or maybe a marathon. You aren’t wearing a watch so you have no clue what your time is. On top of all that, you are running blindfolded and you cannot see the signs guiding the way.
Sounds ludicrous, right?
When you don’t set good goals for your inbound marketing strategies, you are doing the same thing — only this time you are investing a lot of money into it.
Not setting goals is like running a race blindfolded; you won’t get very far and you will probably get hurt in the process.
Goal setting is vital because, without it, you have no metric for success. You need to be able to measure if you are succeeding at what you are doing or if you should pivot and find a new path.
Inspire and Engage
At Pretty-Impressive, each client is unique. Which is why we create strategies tailored to the needs of each company. Reach out and we’ll help you get your brand exactly where it needs to be — ahead of the rest.
3 Positive Outcomes of Setting Goals for Your Inbound Marketing Campaign
1. Focused Approach
When you first dive into the world of inbound marketing, you will notice that there are many different options available within this sphere. Inbound marketing tactics include:
- Email marketing
- Social media marketing
- SEO
- Viral videos
- Webinars
Not every strategy will work for every need. For instance, if you are looking to boost brand awareness, you might want to consider options like SEO or social media.
If you want to help customers in the decision-making phase, you may find that relying more on tactics like customer relationships management (CRM) and email marketing is more effective.
Setting goals helps you determine what customer segment you want to focus on rather than just hoping that what you are looking for finds you.
Instead of wasting time and money trying things that don’t work or produce the wrong results, set your goals ahead of time so that you can specifically work toward them.
2. Budget Optimization
There is nothing worse than the feeling you get when you realize you just spent a ton of money on something that didn’t work. Dropping thousands of dollars without a good return on investment is not something you want to do.
Setting goals helps optimize your budget by eliminating pointless spending. When you know where you want to go, you can get there much more efficiently.
When you set a goal and make a plan you may find that you are saving money since you are no longer working from the “throw it out there and hope it sticks” standpoint.
If you want to save money and maximize your ROI, you need to set smart goals for your inbound marketing campaign.
3. The Ability To Measure Success
A good goal is one that is measurable, meaning you can concretely determine if you reached it or not.
When you sit down and take an honest look at the data, you won’t be scratching your head hoping you did a little better than last month. You can pull up the goal you set, see if you reached it, and know for certain how you are doing.
If you reached your goal, that’s awesome! Keep pushing forward and set a higher one.
If you didn’t reach your goal this time, maybe you need to attack it with a different strategy or simply give it more time.
Setting goals for inbound marketing helps you determine what you need to reach success and helps you know when you have succeeded by allowing you to translate those activities into sales and profits.
Inspire and Engage
At Pretty-Impressive, each client is unique. Which is why we create strategies tailored to the needs of each company. Reach out and we’ll help you get your brand exactly where it needs to be — ahead of the rest.
How to Set Goals for Inbound Marketing in 7 Steps
It is pretty simple to see — setting goals for inbound marketing is a vital part of any good marketing plan. But how do you take it from principle to practice and start setting goals for your inbound marketing strategies?
1. Establish Your Current Position
Grab some recent data and sit down with a fresh cup of coffee. It’s time to figure out where you are — this is a vital step in the process before you can decide where you want to be.
Look at the data and determine your current profits from your campaign compared to what it is costing you.
What are your marketing strategies and what are they getting you?
How many people view your website? What is the conversion rate?
How many of your leads are qualified potential buyers?
How many of your sales can you trace back to your inbound marketing plan?
Answering these questions honestly will help you get an idea of where your compant is.
2. Create Specific Goals
Developing a good goal takes more than just having a dream and working toward it. You want your goals to be S.M.A.R.T — Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based.
Just like Rome, your perfect inbound marketing campaign can’t be built in a day. You need to set goals that target specific aspects of your plan.
For instance, if you want more qualified lead conversions, you may need to start by getting more qualified leads.
If you wish to up your B2B sales, you may need to adopt different B2B marketing strategies as part of your goal. Make it unique to the results you want.
Making sure your goal is specific includes things like:
- Appointing a person or team to making sure the company is working toward the goal
- Knowing what area of your business to target
- Estimating how much time it will take and setting an appropriate timetable
- Forecasting the vision of what it will mean for your company to reach this goal
3. Measure Data
Now you need to decide how you will measure your success rate. There are things that every company needs to measure, like:
- Low bounce rate and high click-through rate
- Visitor-to-lead conversion rate
- Lead velocity rate (LVR)
- Cost per lead (CPL)
- Lead-to-close conversion rate (CVR)
- Spike in marketing originated customer rate
- Increased website traffic
- Return on marketing investment (ROMI)
Again, meeting all of these, or even just a few of them, with a single goal may not happen. So you need to decide what you want to focus on and move forward with that.
For instance, if you want to lower your bounce rate and increase your click-through rate for local customers, you might focus on bettering your local SEO so that more people …
- Find you
- Stay on your page; and
- Decide to give your product a try
4. Make Sure Your Goals Are Attainable
If you set your goals too high, you may find yourself unsatisfied with your results and always feeling behind. If you set them too low you might meet them all, but they will not produce enough results to be worth having in the first place.
You want your goals to be something that you have to work for, something that is not yet a reality for your company.
But you also want them to be something that your company can reach in a timely fashion. Especially if this is your first time setting a S.M.A.R.T. goal for your business, you may want to start slow.
Whatever goal you set, be sure it is easy enough to reach and difficult enough to require some work.
5. Double-Check The Relevancy Of Your Goals
Before setting your goal, you need to make sure it is relevant for both your business and the market.
For instance, say your business relies heavily on in-person consultations. During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, setting a goal to have 20% more in-person consultations from web leads would not have been relevant for your market aor your business
Before setting your goal you need to do some good market research. Learn what matters to your target audience.
What drives them right now?
What are their concerns?
What are their needs?
Where are they in the buying process? If you keep losing people during the closing phase, you should take a closer look there and see what might not be working for them.
If your goal is not relevant to your market, it is destined to fail.
6. Establish A Goal Timeframe
Decide when you want to reach the goal. Make sure your timeframe gives enough time for your team to work on reaching the goal without burning out.
But make sure it is short enough that you can still reach the goal without forgetting about it.
A solid timetable helps you keep your focus and remain committed to getting the results you are working toward.
7. Analyze And Evaluate Goals
Just because you are in the middle of working toward a goal doesn’t mean you cannot still pivot.
Keep an eye on your goal and how well you are staying on track. If something is clearly not working, it might be time to reevaluate and see if there is a better solution.
Remember, the purpose of your goal is to strengthen the overall structure of your company, not to check another box.
Inspire and Engage
At Pretty-Impressive, each client is unique. Which is why we create strategies tailored to the needs of each company. Reach out and we’ll help you get your brand exactly where it needs to be — ahead of the rest.
Crush Your Inbound Marketing Goals With Pretty-Impressive
At the end of the day, no matter how hard you are working, sometimes you just need a team of experts to have your back. Inbound marketing is a complex world that can be tough to navigate.
Pretty-Impressive is here to alleviate the pressure and help you crush your inbound marketing goals.When our expertise and your ambition team up, incredible things happen.
If you’re tired of watching discouraging data roll in month after month after month, it’s time to take action and master your inbound marketing campaign. With Pretty-Impressive, you can do just that.
Schedule your completely free, no commitment, 30-minute strategy session now and start changing your company for the better today.
