SMART goals provide a framework for your marketing efforts, maximizing your potential for success. They keep your team accountable, guide daily tasks, and make it easy to measure progress and success.
In this article we look at:
  • What a SMART goal is
  • Examples of SMART marketing goals to guide your own efforts
  • Resources that will help you achieve your goals

Goals are what guide the day to day operations of every organization. Without them, employees would work aimlessly, never knowing what they should be doing or how to measure success. 

This is where SMART goals come into play. SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals that outline what the goal is, how the goal will be met, and when it should be accomplished by. 

Of course, all departments should be utilizing SMART goals, but they are particularly helpful for marketers. Below we explore 12 examples of SMART marketing goals that you may want to personalize and use to guide your own inbound marketing efforts.

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Examples of SMART Marketing Goals

Content Marketing Goals

If you’re a content marketer, you’re most likely tasked with planning and writing blog posts, developing effective CTAs, and promoting your content via multiple channels. 

When setting your goals, it’s important to think about why you’re tasked with writing blog posts. The true purpose of blog content is to contribute to larger business objectives by increasing website traffic and generating qualified leads.

That being said, your SMART content marketing goals might look like this:

  1. Double our website traffic over the next 12 months by publishing 5 high-quality, targeted blog posts per week.
  2. Redesign all blog content offer CTAs to increase CTR by 10% for the calendar year.

Here are some resources to help you achieve your content marketing goals:

SEO Goals

If your focus is SEO and improving your website’s visibility in search engine rankings, your daily tasks might include optimizing pages for search engines, identifying crawl issues, and link building. 

By completing these tasks, you’re ensuring that your business’s website is strong enough to reach their ideal customers. When setting your SEO goals, keep in mind the relevance of your goals to the overall business objectives of traffic growth and lead generation. Overall, you want your SEO efforts to contribute to a positive ROI.

Some examples of SMART SEO goals are:

  1. Increase our rank in organic search results from 10th to 1st for the keyword “marketing goals” by the end of the month by optimizing existing content.
  2. Strengthen our backlink profile by obtaining 50 backlinks by the end of the month from authoritative domains via a link building email campaign.

Here are some resources to help you achieve your SEO goals:

Social Media Marketing Goals

As a social media marketer, you’re often tasked with publishing content to various social media platforms, monitoring brand mentions, and overseeing paid social campaigns.

The overarching goal of your efforts is to increase brand awareness for your organization and generate quality leads that will ultimately convert.

Your SMART social media marketing goals might read like:

  1. Boost our Instagram engagement rate from 4% to 5% in 30 days by publishing 15 high-quality images and/or videos optimized with relevant hashtags.
  2. Gain 1,000 new Twitter followers this quarter by posting educational content, statistics, and industry news that we know our audience engages with, at least once per day.

Here are some resources to help you achieve your social media marketing goals:

Lead Generation Goals

Marketers responsible for generating leads might perform tasks like creating targeted content, running targeted PPC campaigns, and email outreach. 

Lead generation is a vital part of your organization’s most significant business objective: Increasing revenue. Keep this in mind as you set your lead generation goals so that you can determine which goals are the most valuable to pursue. 

Some SMART lead generation goals to draw inspiration from are:

  1. Increase the number of MQL’s in our funnel by 10% by the end of Q2 via a targeted email campaign.
  2. Generate 500 qualified leads per month by implementing a targeted PPC campaign with a click-through rate (CTR) of 5%.

Here are some resources to help you achieve your lead generation goals:

Customer Acquisition Goals

As a marketer concerned with customer acquisition, you’re the last piece in the puzzle before a deal closes. Thanks to your efforts, qualified leads become paying customers.

Your customer acquisition goals should be closely aligned with key business objectives and yearly revenue goals.

SMART customer acquisition goals might look something like this:

  1. Convert two qualified leads per month into buyers of X service so that we can generate $$ of monthly revenue.
  2. Boost our lead to customer conversion rate by 5% for the quarter by implementing a strong lead nurturing strategy which includes the publishing of targeted content aimed at our ideal buyers.

Here are some resources to help you achieve your customer acquisition goals:

Customer Loyalty Goals

Even though you’ve already acquired customers, the job of a marketer is never finished. 

Customer loyalty can lead to a boost in revenue as your customers become your promoters. Satisfied customers are more likely to become repeat customers and tell others about your business.

SMART customer loyalty goals might look something like:

  1. Improve our customer retention rate by 5% for the year by implementing cross-selling and upselling strategies and offering bundled prices.
  2. Improve our Net Promoter Score (NPS) by 2 points for the calendar year so that we can improve our referral rate by 10%.

Here are some resources to help you achieve your customer loyalty goals:

Developing Your Own SMART Marketing Goals

The examples listed above are just a few of the many different marketing goals that you may want to set for your organization. Depending on the overall business objectives of your company, the metrics that make sense for you to improve upon will differ greatly. Take these business objectives into consideration when choosing the appropriate KPIs that you will track your goals against. 

Regardless of your specific marketing goals, it’s imperative that these goals are SMART. Providing yourself and your team with clear goals and a well-defined timeline will boost overall productivity and keep everyone accountable for their actions. 

With SMART goals in place, you’ll find it easier than ever to strengthen your inbound marketing efforts. 

Use our free SMART goal setting template to get started.

Download SMART Marketing Goals Template