Setting Digital Marketing Goals

Are you struggling to achieve your business objectives?

Do you find yourself chasing vanity metrics that don’t actually mean anything to your brand?

If yes, then it’s highly likely you are not setting the right digital marketing goals.

Goals are crucial for all businesses as they essentially provide direction for your marketing strategies and, without them, you are basically directionless.

That being said, if you are not using the right digital marketing goals and metrics, you will not see the results you want.

Within the guide below, we will talk you through everything you need to do to set digital marketing goals, both in the short term and over a longer period of time.

We will also explain:

• How to set your key performance indicators (KPIs)
• How to make SMART goals
• Why are SMART goals important?
• How to align your marketing strategies with your business objectives
• How to set channel-specific goals

Ready to get started?

In just a few minutes time, you will be a goal-setting pro!

How to set digital marketing KPIs

When setting your digital marketing KPIs, you need to first decide what you will measure, i.e. what metrics you are going to use. This is vital as it will ensure that what you are measuring directly aligns with your goals and objectives.

Typically, digital marketing KPIs are connected to a conversionA conversion is a desirable result on a website that leads to an action such as completing an order, filling out a form, or simply clicking on a link.. This does not just mean a sale; it refers to any action that you wanted a user to take. For example, sign up to your email subscription service or download an e-book.

When choosing what to measure, you need to focus on quantifiable metrics such as sales and leads and leading indicators such as time spent on a web page.

You shouldn’t focus any of your efforts on elements that you can’t change or so-called vanity metrics that don’t provide any real value to your business.

Channel-specific metrics

As well as setting KPIs for your overall business goals, you also need to set channel-specific KPIs.

For example:

Social Media: Number of followers, level of engagement, and number of site visits.

SEO: Number of impressions, number of site visits, conversions.

Email: Delivery rate, open rate, and click-through rate.

Content: Content visits, bounce rateBounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a website who visit only one page. A high bounce rate indicates that visitors are not satisfied with your website., and content shares.

When setting KPIs for each channel, make sure that you choose realistic KPIs for each, as some are much less likely to result in conversions than others. However, this doesn’t make them any less important.

For more information on setting digital marketing KPIs or any other aspect of digital marketing, checkout our Knowledge hub here.

How to set SMART goals

If you have not used the SMART framework to set your digital marketing goals before, then you are in for a treat. Smart goals, as the name suggests, are goals that have a greater chance of being accomplished.

In terms of digital marketing, setting smart goals allows you to ensure that you have covered every important aspect of a marketing goal, maximizing your chance of success.

Let’s take a closer look at SMART goals below:

Specific

This reminds you that you need to be specific when setting your digital marketing goals. You need to have a clear objective in mind with each goal that you set. You also need to be very specific about what this goal means for your business.

Example:

Start: Grow my business

Specific: Grow my business by 25%

Measurable

This relates back to your KPIs. You need to determine what you need to measure to understand whether or not you have reached your goals. It is worth remembering that some channels are easier to measure than others. For example, it can be difficult to quantify social media success.

Example:

Start: Grow my business by 25%

Measurable: Increase my revenue by 25%

Achievable

While you may want to aim for the skies, you need to make sure that your marketing goals are in some way achievable. Otherwise, there is no point in setting them, and you will quickly lose the motivation to succeed.

Ask yourself – is this goal achievable, and how can I achieve it?

Example:

Start: Increase my revenue by 25%

Achievable: Increase my revenue by 20%

Relevant

Consider how your marketing goals will help you achieve your business objectives. If they don’t, scrap them. To help remain relevant, always keep your business objectives at the forefront of your mind when setting your digital marketing goals.

Example:

Start: Increase my revenue by 20%

Relevant: Increase my revenue from inbound sales by 20%

Timely

Finally, you need to set a clear timeframe for achieving your marketing goals. Be sure to include a start date and a target date, as this will create urgency and help you achieve your goals.

Example:

Start: Increase my revenue from inbound sales by 20%

Timely: Increase my revenue from inbound sales by 20% by December 30^th 2022.

Why do you need to set SMART goals?

If the above seems like a lot of work, you may be wondering, “why do I have to set smart goals?”.

Well, let’s take a look:

• They provide purpose and direction. SMART goals give you something to work towards on a daily basis.
• They allow you to see your progress. The measurement aspect of SMART goals provides you with actual evidence of your achievements.
• They enable you to improve. By setting goals over a specific period of time, you can make any necessary changes to your campaigns to ensure optimum results.

Digital marketing goal examples

Now that you know how to set marketing goals for your business and why they are so important, the next step is to actually start setting them.

If you are not sure what type of digital marketing goals you should be setting, then the below digital marketing examples should be able to help you.

1.     Generate more leads

Lead generation can be a tough task, but that doesn’t mean you should neglect it. In fact, generating new leads should be one of your top priorities as a business.

2.     Boost your conversion rate

One of the most popular digital marketing goals that we see, converting more followers/users/readers into customers should always be on your agenda.

3.     Increase sales

The ultimate goal for most businesses, big and small, is to improve upon their sales figures, so one of your goals should be to increase sales.

4.     Increase website traffic

From organic trafficOrganic search traffic (sometimes called natural or unpaid search) is the traffic that's driven to a website because of unpaid placement on a search engine results page. to social media traffic, you need to set goals to help you drive more users to your site.

5.    Boost brand awareness

Brand awareness allows you to increase your reach and grow your audience. It is particularly important for start-ups and small businesses.

Of course, there are many more digital marketing goals that you can set in addition to the above major players. Just make sure that you keep the SMART framework in mind when selecting them.

How to set marketing goals based on business goals

It is not uncommon for businesses to struggle to align their marketing campaign goals with their overall business goals. Unfortunately, in order for your marketing to be meaningful, it needs to be focused on your main business objectives.

If you are not sure how to tie in your marketing goals with your business goals, then this is something that we can help you with.

Understanding your business goals

Let’s take social media, for example. Your digital marketing goal might be to increase your number of followers. However, how exactly does this help your business?

1. It can increase brand awareness
2. It can help to establish your brand as an authority
3. It can help you to reach new customers

These are all objectives that can have a meaningful impact on your business.

Connecting your business and marketing goals

The first step in connecting your business and marketing goals is to be clear about your business goals. Make sure you understand what it is your company is trying to achieve.

For example, let’s say your business needs more customers. This is their number 1 business goal for the year ahead.

This means that your digital marketing goals need to help your business achieve this goal.

In order to achieve this, your sales team will need to generate x amount of leads per week. For them to achieve this, your marketing efforts will need to drive these leads.

Therefore, as the business objective is to increase revenue by increasing customers, a good marketing objective could be anything that actively helps to generate more leads.

This could be by:

• Optimising your webpages
• Running A/B tests
• Creating high-quality content
• Running social media competitions
• Updating your keywords
• Creating a responsive website

How to set channel-specific digital marketing goals

We are now going to break down how you can set specific digital marketing campaign goals for each channel.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

The basic goal of SEO is to boost your online presence by rising in the ranks of SERPs. This can be broken down into three sections for each level of the sales funnel.

Top of the funnel SEO

• Raise awareness of your business
• Target informational keywords
• Focus on providing value to searchers

Middle of the funnel SEO

• Establish authority in SERPs
• Share helpful SEO content
• Direct users towards making a purchaseBottom of the funnel SEO

• Target transactional keywords
• Promote your business
• Drive purchases

Email

Email marketing offers one of the best ROI out of all digital marketing strategies, so it should always be one of your top priorities when setting marketing goals.

There are many email marketing goals that you can set to help you achieve your overall business objectives. These include:

• Grow your subscriber list
• Increase your open rates
• Improve your email click-throughs
• Retain customers and turn them into brand advocates
• Increase email engagement

Content

Content marketing is another crucial aspect of any digital marketing strategy, enabling you to increase your online visibility significantly without blowing your budget.

That being said, this is only the case if it is done right, and unfortunately, many brands are still failing to deliver high-quality content consistently.

When it comes to setting content marketing goals, you need to ensure you use the right content to achieve each specific goal.

Goal: Increase brand awareness

Content type: Social media posts and guest posting

Goal: Position your brand as a thought leader

Content type: Long-form content

Goal: Drive website traffic

Content type: Any type of high-quality, relevant content

Goal: Generate leads

Content type: Website and email content

Goal: Upselling

Content type: Email and social media content

Social media

Social media marketing is becoming increasingly important with each passing year, yet it is also one of the hardest aspects of digital marketing to get right as it is constantly evolving.

That being said, if you set the right goals and track the right metrics, social media can be a highly effective channel for achieving your overall business objectives.

Social media marketing goals and metrics you might want to consider setting include:

Goal: Increase brand awareness

Metric: Number of followers, post reach, and number of mentions, shares, and retweets

Goal: Drive traffic

Metric: Number of visitors from social media, share of overall traffic from social media, bounce rate of social media traffic, and clicks on social media posts

Goal: Generate new leads

Metric: Personal data collected via social media, downloads of gated content, participation in competitions, clicks on lead-generation posts, conversions of leads from social media

Goal: Grow revenue from sales and signups

Metric: Revenue from ads, sign ups, and revenue from each social media channel

Goal: Boost brand engagement

Metric: Number of likes, shares, and comments per post, mentions, and replies per post

Conclusion

Although setting digital marketing goals can seem overwhelming, the most important thing to remember is that they should always be data-driven and well-informed.

If you need help setting digital marketing goals that directly align with your business’ main objectives, then we can help you. We have a wealth of experience in creating bespoke digital marketing campaigns for businesses in even the most competitive of industries.

Book a call with our friendly and professional digital marketing team here, and let us help you plan for a successful and lucrative year ahead.