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SMART Goals are a foundation for marketing. However, different parts come together to make the marketing campaign successful. There are goals, strategies, and tactics. Although they all sound so similar each plays a huge role in making a marketing campaign. This is written from the review of Marketing Strategy vs. Tactics – Explaining the Difference by Charliesaidthat.
Goals are the overall true result that the campaign has a purpose for. Strategies are smaller goals that help make the goal. To break this down the goal may be to increase sales for a new pet toy product by 25% compared to the previous year. The Strategy for this would be for the there to be a push for consumers to visit the new website that the pet store recently created. As well as their new social media page for consumers to visit and connect to the website.
Now for the tactics, this is the how all of this will be done; or the what specific steps need to be taken to accomplish our strategies to accomplish our overall goal. In our example, a strategy would be to advertise a promotion on Facebook or TV during the target market’s favorite channels encouraging them to visit the website to check out the product and even see reviews on their Facebook.
SMART goals are so important because without a plan there is no marketing campaign. Each step that is planned is a crucial step to complete the overall targeted goal. Different questions must be asked to make the perfect SMART goal. Specific poses the detailed questions that we must ask. From our previous example this would mean, what must we know/do to attract our consumers to the website or Facebook.
Each goal must have some type of Measurable feature. Whether this is a qualitative result based on the number of products sold or quantitative based on the sales increase amount. This helps keep the goal Actionable. This means to show how the goal is “coming along”; or how each step can be used to improve the sales to 25%.
However, this must mean that each step must be Relevant to not only the other tactics but also to the strategy and overall goal. This means that advertising in a newspaper or ads may not bring you the digital attention that you were wanting initially in order to boost sales. Therefore, advertising on Facebook and certain TV channels in order to drive consumers to their newly designed website.
Finally, every goal must be Time-related. This means there has to be an ending to every goal. So, the increase in sales for pet toy products of 25% must be the result for the end of the fiscal year. Time-Related can also relate to themes per se like Springtime would drive more people to play with their pets as the weather warms up. This is to help identify when a campaign should take place and how long it should be in place.
Before finalizing the results of every tactic, strategy, and the goal, it is important to track the marketing metrics through each step complete. But what are marketing metrics? These are the different types of Measurements taken to understand how the data and numbers apply to the goal. For instance, form our previous example, the number of products bought VS the number of pet toy products bought. In addition to the ROI, SEO, how much engagement is involved with the consumer and the pet toy as well as even the engagement online. That essentially can break down to the number of times the ad on Facebook was clicked and routed to the website.
There are many more metrics that may also be used other than just the ones listed above. These and more are the KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) that provide us with the details needed to understand the data being collected. This also helps determine the overall goal and its effectiveness.
Without a SMART goal plan, the marketing campaign is merely a house with no foundation. Goals, Strategies, and tactics create the road-map. The KPI and Marketing metrics are in place to ensure the plan is carrying out as planned.
References
(Charlie), C. (2019, June 16). Marketing Strategy vs. Tactics – Explaining the Difference. Retrieved from CharlieSaidThat: http://charliesaidthat.com/digital/digital/difference-between-marketing-strategy-vs-tactics-an-example/
Kilpfolio. (n.d.). Key marketing metrics every marketer should measure. Retrieved from Klipfolio: https://www.klipfolio.com/resources/kpi-examples/marketing