Next year is just around the corner. It's time to start planning your yearly business goals if you haven’t already.
An important category of your overall business goals is creating goals for your marketing. As you've probably learned, the old saying "if you build it, they will come" is not solid business advice. Without marketing goals, your dream won't succeed.
Creating those marketing goals can be confusing. How do you pick the best one that aligns with your business and goals? This post offers you ten ideas for small business marketing goals and helps you determine which one to choose. Ready to get planning?
Why Do You Need Marketing Goals?
You might be wondering why you need marketing goals in the first place. Aren’t overall business goals good enough?
Not quite. Marketing goals help with:
Growth. Every business owner will probably say they want more sales. But how do you get them? Through marketing.
Guidance. There are a lot of ways you can market your business. You can focus your time and efforts better by creating a specific goal.
Consistency. Marketing is all about getting in front of people. But if you don't have a goal to help you do that, marketing can fall by the wayside.
How to Decide Your Marketing Goal
Audience
Who your audience is helps you know how to reach them. Moms of three need different marketing tactics than Gen Z teenagers and vice versa. Pick a marketing goal that will best connect you with your ideal customer.
Business Stage
Match your business stage to the kind of goal you set. Newer businesses should focus on building authority and getting sales. Businesses that have been around for a few years will probably focus on customer retention, and businesses in the 5-10-year range may focus on fine-tuning their marketing.
Budget
Finally, what kind of budget do you have for marketing? If it’s low to none, you’ll want to focus on free marketing goals, like building social media. If you have money to spend, you might want to invest in things like website design, email copy, or running ads.
Small Business Marketing Goal Ideas
Increase Sales
This is a common goal for businesses of any size. But you want to make this goal more specific. Increasing sales is great. But how do you measure that? What does that look like for your business?
Instead of just saying “increase sales”, consider other ideas like:
Get 100 sales a month
See a 30% increase in sales from email
Onboard 2 new clients a month
This way, you’ll know exactly what you want to accomplish. Then, you can break your goal down further, figuring out what you need to do each month to make it happen.
Create More Content
Content, especially blog content, is a great long-term marketing strategy to focus on. Again, get specific with this. What does "more content" look like for your specific business?
While focusing on quantity, don’t overlook quality. Posting to your blog once a day isn't worth it if your content is terrible. That doesn’t build trust or authority with your potential customers.
Instead, find a way to balance quality and quantity in your content. Take a writing course. Learn how to optimize for SEO. You can even hire a blog writer if you have the money.
Improve Email Marketing Strategy
If you read my blog, you know I’m a huge advocate of small businesses spending time on email marketing. So many business owners overlook or underutilize it, even though it has one of the highest returns on investment of any marketing strategy.
Improving your email marketing strategy is a great goal for businesses of any size. You could work on:
Setting up an email list
Enhancing your email design for better conversions
A/B testing all emails and using that data to improve
Building a consistent email marketing strategy
Increasing sales through email
Best of all, free ESPs such as Mailerlite, Brevo, and Mailchimp exist. They're perfect if you're not ready to spend money on email software yet, giving you all the tools you need to get started.
Get More Return Customers
Getting sales is good. But it's even better to get those same people coming back and buying from you.
Repeat customers are a goldmine. They already purchased from you and know they like your products, often leading to bigger sales. And since you've gotten past the initial purchase hesitation, they're much more likely to buy from you again. Not only that, but repeat customers also help promote your business through word of mouth.
Getting people to become repeat customers depends on your business and audience. You could:
Add them to your email list
Set up a loyalty program
Provide top-tier customer service
Sending coupons
Getting them to follow you on social media
Create an Inbound Marketing Strategy
Inbound marketing is the secret to getting more customers with less work. Rather than you going out and selling to them, it focuses on creating strategies that attract people to your business.
Creating an inbound strategy for your business may take time, but it’s worth it. You can sit back and watch sales come flooding in without grabbing random people off the street and begging them to buy your product.
I suggest checking out HubSpot Academy’s Inbound Marketing and Inbound Sales courses if you'd like to work on this. They're free, self-guided courses packed with value. I’ve taken them myself and can testify how beneficial they are.
Improve Social Media Presence
Social media is many small businesses' bread and butter for marketing. They find it brings the most sales and helps them get discovered by the most customers.
Whether you've figured out social media or not, there are always improvements to make. You could focus on:
Improving your Instagram reel creation
Posting consistently on Facebook
Mastering a new social media platform
Paying for ads on Instagram or Facebook
I will caution you not to put all your eggs in the social media basket. I see a lot of small businesses that don’t even have a website, relying on Instagram alone for sales. This can be dangerous because your business is dead if these platforms ever disappear. Focus on diversifying your platform instead, making social media only one part of your business and sales.
Increase Website Traffic
You won't get sales if people don't come to your website. Of course, getting your website ranked and seen is only getting harder. But that doesn’t make increasing your traffic any less valuable.
Once again, get specific. Increasing website traffic isn’t a clear goal. Instead, your goal could be:
Get 500 website visitors a month through targeted Facebook ads
Invest in your own domain name and hosting
Improve your website design for better ease of use
Have a 20% conversion rate
Remember, it’s not just about getting visitors to your website. It’s about getting them to buy from you, or at least get on your email list where you can nurture them to become customers.
Implement More Automations
As your business grows, so does the amount of tasks you have to do. You'll drown under their weight if you don’t start implementing automation.
There are many ways to automate your marketing tasks to save you time, such as:
Setting up email automations for welcome emails, shipping notifications, and abandoned carts
Social media schedulers
Creating email and blog post templates
Hiring a VA to help you
Personalizing emails
While some of these automations might cost money, they're worth every penny. They take away your mental stress and those little tasks that pile up, allowing you to focus on making products and getting sales.
Invest in Marketing
Spending money? Gross, right? Unfortunately, "You have to spend money to make money" is actually true.
If your business is at the point where you’re getting consistent sales and earning a profit, it’s time to invest money back into your marketing. This could include:
A paid website
A better email plan or ESP
Paid ads
Email design
Web design
Invest your money wisely, though. Make sure you’re spending it on things that align with the rest of your business goals.
Hire Marketing Help
Another way to invest in your business this year is by hiring someone to help you with marketing. This can seem scary, especially if you’ve never hired or worked with a freelancer.
But these people’s entire job is marketing. They're knowledgeable about best practices and big changes. You reduce your workload while still seeing results from your marketing. A few kinds of help you can get include:
Web designers
Blog writers
Social media managers
Email designers
Marketing agencies
I know I might sound biased since I am a freelance writer. But I’ve seen how my work reduces stress and improves marketing quality for my clients. Hiring help is worth it if your marketing is overwhelming or just not working.
Setting goals is the way you find business success and longevity. Any of these marketing goals will help you build a better business next year.
Are you ready to hire help for your business this year? I’d love to see if we’re a good fit! Click the button below to view my services and set up your intro call today.
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