- You likely have a vision
of what you need your marketing to accomplish,
but how are you getting there?
One of the most common mistakes in marketing
is not setting goals.
You can't just start marching forward.
You need a plan.
Now, a common approach is to align your goals
with an acronym called SMART.
And this means that for a goal to be effective,
it must be specific, measurable,
attainable, relevant, and time-bound.
The approach that I use to map out goals,
which is also in use at companies
like Google and LinkedIn, is to use OKRs.
And the acronym stands for objectives and key results.
It looks like this.
First, you set the objective.
Objectives answer the question where do we want to go?
And then two or three key results.
The key results define whether the objective was met.
They answer the question
how do we know that we've gotten there?
This is important because otherwise you can't decide
if you've achieved your goal or not.
Let's say we want to increase online sales
for a coffee shop.
Here's how we'd set SMART goals
inside the OKR framework.
I'll start by setting my objective,
and it'll be specific:
increase online sales for filters and mugs.
Next, we'll set our key results,
and these are measurable,
relevant to the goal, and attainable.
For this example, let's say sell 100 packages
of coffee filters and sell 250 coffee mugs.
Now, all goals should be time-bound.
Traditionally, OKRs are time-bound by a quarter.
So we might say this objective is due
by end of Q1 of next year.
As you can see, the key results are how I'm qualifying
that we've increased sales.
I've decided that if I achieve each
of those key results, well, then we've hit our goal.
If you'd like to learn more about OKRs,
I recommend John Doerr's book, "Measure What Matters,"
or check out Jessie Wither's course
on Goal Setting: Objectives and Key Results.
There are many ways to set goals.
What matters is that you commit to setting them
and measuring your progress.
Failing to do so,
well, that'll put you at a serious disadvantage.