Marketing Automation Introduction
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When it comes to setting marketing priorities, business owners might find that they’ve got unrealistic or poorly defined marketing and sales goals that don’t easily translate to automation. This is especially true for relatively new businesses.
It’s one thing to see great growth at first and to hope a company will improve year after year, but to improve awareness, leads, engagement, and increase revenue overall, it’s important to have goals clearly defined so that they can translate to every part of your business.
Rinse and Repeat
Looking at a blank document or whiteboard and asking what goals you should set can get a company confused, off base, lost in the weeds, or lose the big picture. Before getting overwhelmed thinking about where to start, we recommend using a tried and true framework that you can use for goal setting in any part of your business.
No need to reinvent the wheel. Start by understanding the Smart Goals Framework, then create goals specific to your marketing.
So what are SMART Goals?
SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely.
This framework gives you questions you need to ask yourself and define for every goal you create. By doing this you will find unknowns, create clarity for your team and be able to set goals that take out generalizations and guessing and ultimately create a clear path for you and your team.
Marketing Automation SMART Goals
When you are about to start a new campaign, launch a new split test, begin a new lead flow, or do anything related to marketing and automation, you’ll use this framework to set explicit goals for each project.
Don’t worry, we’ve outlined a few examples and more clearly defined this framework for you below:
Specific: Is the goal clearly identified in precise detail?
Marketing Automation Example:
- Improving lead conversions is too broad.
- Improving lead conversions from your main website homepage pop-up on exit intent is a specific goal a company can focus on.
Measurable: Is the goal quantifiable by a specific metric?
Marketing Automation Example:
- Making the email user experience great sounds like a project, but doesn’t tell me how that is measured.
- Update email automation in the marketing and sales flow to send emails that can be opened and then viewed within 3 seconds of click is specific and measurable.
Attainable: Is the goal too far out of reach or something that is a step in the larger goal direction?
Marketing Automation Example:
- Increase website SEO, although a great goal, is too large for a specific goal and should be broken down into attainable goals.
- Updating all blog articles in one category by the end of this quarter to be SEO-friendly using this keyword-analyzing software is specific, measurable, and attainable.
Realistic: Is the goal realistic for your budget and team?
Marketing Automation Example:
- Asking an entry-level marketing employee to start running 10k/month advertising campaigns from the investment they just secured. Realistically you won’t see any money back and should start slowly or hire an expert.
- To build a lead campaign for a new target segment, take advertising courses and then begin running a 500/month campaign the next quarter is more realistic for an entry-level team that must learn as they go.
Timely: Is there a clearly defined timeline and due date?
Marketing Automation Example:
- Run a split test on our main email marketing campaigns. This goal doesn’t give your team any specifics or guardrails.
- A timely goal would be to run a split test of the homepage button color for 3 weeks and then make a statistically significant decision on what to move forward with.
Have marketing goals but don’t know where to go next?
Automated Dreams is here to help you set and reach your goals. We offer strategy, full marketing plan outlines, and implementations. Contact us for a free consultation and learn more about our strategy and implementation packages and retainers.
For help with automating your marketing efforts, be sure to reach out to us at Automated Dreams today.
Read More :Marketing Automation Strategy
