Let's Set Some SMART Objectives For 2021...

Hey!

How’s everyone doing?

Let me know if you are okay during the holidays? I know the year has been tough on a lot of folks so if you need someone to talk with, let me know.

BTW, I’ve been asking y’all to give me a quick NPS score to I can share a lesson with everyone, but I’ve had the thing locked because I forget to turn the security system off so it is public. So if you have a second or two, let me know what you think!

I’m going to make this a two-parter. Since we are straddling the 2020 and 2021 this weekend.

Today, I want to talk with you about SMART objectives and how they play into two recent emails I talked about when I talked about strategy and tactics.

As a quick overview, I talked about marketing as being a two-part operation: strategy first and tactics second.

On the strategy side, we have market orientation, research, segmentation, targeting, and positioning.

On the tactics side, we have product, price, place, and promotion.

To tie the two together, we have strategy and at the heart is SMART objectives.

As we start thinking about how we can overcome whatever blows 2020 dealt us, we need to begin by looking at SMART objectives.

I may or may not have written about SMART objectives before but I’ll give you a quick overview of how I want this to play out for all of us very quickly.

When you look at the world through the eyes of your market, you are market oriented. If you are market oriented, it requires you to do market research because you have to recognize that you don’t really know much about the world but you know how to find out the answers.

If you are market oriented and you do some research, this opens the door to segmentation, targeting, and positioning, the holy trinity of marketing.

Segmenting is slicing up the pie of the market. It is all about the market and not about you.

Targeting is picking a road to where you are going. Targeting is all about knowing where you are going to compete.

Positioning is taking stamping a brand on your market’s brain where they know you exist and they have certain things they think of when they think of you.

Once you’ve gotten this far, you are making strategy decisions about where you will compete and how you will win.

To understand whether or not you are successful, you need to set SMART objectives.

Usually, 1 or 2.

Not too many.

Because most of us are limited by resources and our organizations can’t focus on too many things at once.

Where do SMART objectives fit now?

You need to know where you are going and what you are going to focus on so you can tell whether or not you are successful.

Since we are hitting the beginning of a new year, this is a good time to think through SMART objectives…so we can recognize that we need to set some goals so we have something work towards.

Let’s look at SMART objectives now so I can ask you to think through setting 1-2 SMART objectives for you or your business for next year.

Shall we?

SMART:

S: Specific

M: Measurable

A: Ambitious

R: Realistic

T: Time Bound

Specific in two ways. Specific goals and specific targets. What are you going to achieve in what area?

Let’s use a measurement I’ve been using to follow my top of the funnel activities lately and that is social media and measurable metrics like newsletter subscribers. That number is around 11,000.

Specifically, I want to double that number in 2021 with a focus on driving folks to my newsletters.

Measurable means we’ve started with the number 11,000 and we are going to go to 22,000.

Ambitious, just what it says. Doubling the size of the market I’m talking to directly is pretty ambitious, no?

Make it worth it.

Realistic means that we need to be able to deliver it.

Time bound, as the name implies, means we set a deadline where we are going to measure things.

This stuff all matters because when we meet here next week, many of us are going to be looking at 2021 with hopeful eyes that the year will be different and that we are going to see our lives return to a lot more normality.

But just hoping things are going to get better isn't going to do you much good. So we need to set our goals with some sort of framework, specificity, and accountability. That’s what the SMART objectives are about and they feed into the strategy you set and the tactics you use to reach your goals.

At some point this week, I’m going to post a few things on my website about the sales funnel that will help here, but for next week…come prepared with your SMART objectives, 1 or 2, built around what you want to achieve in 2021.

If you have any questions, send them my way!

Dave