An introduction to Digital Marketing. Part 4: Digital Marketing Objectives
In this post of our digital marketing section, we focus on marketing objectives and effective methods to define and develop them.
Objectives are the soul of any business. If you are an aspiring entrepreneur or you have already launched your startup, it means that you have goals to reach. However, just having some objectives is not enough. You also have to be aware that business goals and marketing goals are not exactly the same thing. So, in order to have a more efficient company – and get the success that you aspire to – you must harmonize your general business objectives with your marketing goals.
This means that you have to clearly define your digital marketing strategies, so you can combine them with the objectives of your company. Otherwise, the expected results might not be delivered, which means that the value of your goals drastically drops as well.
So, let’s start with what digital marketing objectives are
Setting an objective for your digital marketing campaign is the first crucial step to achieve your success. The objectives can be whatever you can imagine: to sell more t-shirts in the upcoming year; generate X% more traffic to your website; or simply increase your social media audience with X amount of followers…
However, do keep in mind that in digital marketing it is crucial to have very specific and narrow goals. For example, saying “next month I want to sell more T-shirts,” is a very poorly defined goal, which, trust me, will not pave the way for success. Rather, you have to be more precise, like “this month I will sell 15% more shirts, and will increase my revenue by measuring and following objectives X, Y, and Z.”
Defining your goals in this way will help you get a better understanding of how you have to act in order to achieve your targets.
How to set your digital marketing objectives? Be SMART!
In digital marketing, the most common framework used to define objectives is SMART. The SMART acronym stands for:
- Specific – a well-defined and clear goal stating exactly what you aim to achieve: What do you want to accomplish? Why is it important? Who is involved? Where is it located, and when will it happen?
- Measurable – an obtainable goal that is quantifiably described: can an attribute be applied to create a metric, KPI’s, etc.?
- Achievable – an objective that is achievable with the suitable skill, staff or resources: how can I accomplish this goal? What are the resources allocated? Is the goal realistic? How much time do I or my team have to dedicate for this?
- Relevant – an objective that is an added value within the context set: is it worth it? Does it complement other efforts? Is the team and me prepared for this?
- Time-related – an objective that can be achieved within a set timeframe: What is the appropriate deadline for this? What can I or my team do 1 month from now?
So what is an example of a SMART objective?
To get a more concrete understanding of what a SMART objective is, here is an example related to this platform:
By the 1st of August, 2023 increase website traffic with 89% using our own optimized content and creating new, high-valued content, SEO optimized, in order to drive users to our site organically and increase our website authority, therefore making the advertising space on the website more lucrative.
As you can see SMART objectives are designed to develop a result-driven digital marketing strategy. The business gets more clarity in what the goal is and if there is progress toward those targets.
In later articles of this series we will definitely return to marketing objectives, but for the next one we are moving on to another important aspect of a digital marketing campaign, namely Digital Research. Stay tuned!
