Austin Stanfel

Austin Stanfel believed that you need to be careful when setting new marketing goals each year. If you keep setting higher goals, then your team may focus too much on the needs of the company rather than on the needs of the customers. Even if your team is more motivated, it won’t matter if the needs of the customers are not their top consideration.

Marketers spend too much time worrying about reaching certain marketing results and numbers. You could get a million hits to your website each day, and it might not generate the number of sales you want. It is so much more important to worry about your customers and their needs. That is how you generate sales and increase growth within your company.  If you produce something that customers want, then the high numbers will follow.

Let’s explore the best ways to create realistic marketing goals that put your customers’ needs ahead of your company’s needs while allowing you to reach your marketing numbers too.

Setting Realistic and Achievable Marketing Goals

Have you ever heard of the SMART goal marketing framework? SMART goals are a special set of realistic goals. They clearly describe what your goals are without any misunderstandings or unachievable wishes.

Here is the gist of the SMART goal framework below:

Specific – How many team members do you want to work on a particular task? How many leads do you want to receive? How many sales do you want to have in 12 months? Set goals that are specific and answer these kinds of questions.

Measurable – You must keep tabs on the progress of your team. You can do this by setting goals which you can track and quantify. For instance, you may want a 50% increase in leads over the next 3 months. That would be one measurable goal.

Attainable – Is it possible to achieve this marketing goal? If you gained 10 leads over the last 3 months, then set a goal to generate 30 more leads over the next 3 months. Don’t set a goal to generate 1,000 leads or something unrealistic like that. Always be realistic with the marketing goals you set.

Relevant – Do your marketing goals relate to your company’s objectives and goals? Make sure your marketing goals are relevant to what your company is trying to accomplish. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your time. Time-Bound – Don’t be afraid to set deadlines for your marketing goals. Without deadlines, your team members might procrastinate too long on a particular task. Setting deadlines gives them extra motivation to push themselves over the finish line before the work is due.

An effective marketing strategy must always have research to back it up. Austin Stanfel says “Don’t just randomly think of a marketing strategy without having some idea whether it will be effective or not.”

A lot of business people make the mistake of assuming that a certain marketing strategy will be effective. But if you haven’t reviewed case studies of your competition or looked into the newest trends in your industry, then you could end up wasting your time and money on an ineffective marketing strategy.

How to Plan a Winning Marketing Strategy

First, do not assume you know everything about your industry. The business world moves quickly, so things change all the time in every industry. For this reason, it is imperative that you conduct thorough research into the current market of your industry. You can start by reviewing the following:

• The newest product or service trends. See if you can create a new strategy which implements or tests this trend in your organization.

• Study what other businesses in your field are doing and see which strategies are working for them.

• Don’t assume you know your audience. Remember that people’s interests change all the time. Conduct new research on your audience each year to see if their needs have changed.

Put the Research into Action

Compile this information and create a new marketing strategy for 2020 which revolves around it.

For example, let’s say you run a clothing company and the target market for blue jeans happens to be men between the ages of 18 and 35. You could redirect your marketing campaigns online to target this specific demographic. If you use Google AdWords or Facebook Ads, they make it easy to promote your ads toward any particular age group or gender that you want. You can even set which location you want your target audience to be.

Collaboration
Collaborate with your team members constantly. This includes your senior leadership, product team, sales team, and customer service team. Each one of these teams has their own designated leader. They should all be kept in the loop about your marketing strategy so that they can create their own separate strategies for their individual departments. Once they put their minds together, the overall business goals of the company can be met.

There are many businesses that are up and running nowadays. This makes the market competition very stiff. If the smallest mistakes are done, a business is likely to fail. Having and running a business in all about goals and milestones. With precise planning and considering all the factors in a business, a business manager is able to lead the way and help the business to survive. The planning can also be done using methods and techniques that are easy to formulate. A business can also achieve high levels of success and become one of the world’s leading companies. The basic idea of achieving business goals is the goals that fit the SMART goal setting. These goals are clear and give the manager a clear idea of action; to know the exact roles of the manager and also the team members in a certain time frame.

Austin Stanfel believed that the idea behind a goal may be a top-notch objective, but it is only goal-setting that can make it feasible. A goal must be well defined and realistic in its essence in accordance with a given time. For example, saying that you want to increase your online sales this year; It is a realistic goal perhaps, but it is also extremely vague. Instead, it is possible to say; you want an extra 10000 visitors on your business blog, 400 leads and doubled number of your online sales by the next 6 months; This is an accurate goal setting. Here are 9 points that help a business manager to have a well-defined goal and the details to match a goal with a business setting.

1. How much revenue is expected from inbound marketing work

The accurate calculation of the data involved helps you to know the exact prospect that is expected. The previous process of a work’s data and the expected result leads you to understand the targeted revenue required to reach a goal. For example, if your last year’s revenue in sales was $4,000,000. Your goal is to increase your sales by 10% in 12 months. This means that you have to increase the revenue by $400,000 in the next 12 months.

• How many sales until reaching the set milestones or goals

The revenue gap divided by the average value of the sales shows the amounts of sales you require reaching your goals. This data gives clear expectations about the milestone in the given time period.

• Closing rates and the number of possible opportunities must be calculated

You need to continue to do your data analysis to the closing rate for your sales. For example, if the closing rate is 60 percent, that means 60^ of your sales opportunities go for closing. This means you will need 38 opportunities to hit your goal.

• Identifying the number of required SQLs

SQL is an abbreviation for sales qualified leads. These leads are passed to a team. This is only calculable if a business has had previous inbound marketing. In the case of being a first time inbound, these statistics must be realistically estimated. It is recommended to consider the rate of the usual 50%.

• Identifying the number of required MQLs

MQL is the short form for marketing qualified leads. These leads are usually qualified, but they are not ready to close a sale. They require more marketing to give them the opportunity of being sold ready. Like the previous point, if there is no inbound history in a business, it must be calculated. They usually estimate it at the same 50% rate.

• Accounting for the number of required leads

Having the statistical data of the leads is essential, but also it is important to know not all the leads will be qualified. It is vital to provide the correct estimate of the qualified MQLs to be able to know how many leads exactly will be required.

• Recognising the amount of essential traffic

The expert uses a rate of 2.5% over a period of 12 months to identify how much traffic needs to reach the set goals. They also affect these estimated based on the progression of a project; In the beginning, the estimate is set to a lower rate and in the last quarter is set higher consequently.

• Other existing key business goals

It is important not to overlook the other key factors involved. They are as essential as the sales and growth factors in a business. This metrics include:

Particular product sales

Already existing revenue

Requires new skills and hiring professional while growing

Increase in the rates of customer-to-lead conversion

• Benchmark setting

It is important that reaching a goal is a time-consuming process and cannot be achieved overnight. The last quarter of a goal’s milestone is much more rewarding to compare to the first. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to set benchmarks in the last quarter higher than the rest. The first requires having the lowest benchmark. These targets must be estimated based on the other metrics pointed out in number 8 and the ones that exist around your specific business. This gives you a higher hand to avoid disappointment while staying true to your process.

Conclusion

Austin Stanfel teaches that goal setting sometimes can be a tedious task but also rewarding. It is important to collect the right data and troubleshoot your idea before setting foot in your upwards journey. Complete research and realistic data prediction can highly ensure the future success of the goals. Other factors to always look for are; the team’s capabilities, being on the toes when it comes to timely decision making as a team leader and respecting the deadlines.

While being in the process of your goals, it is important to take a step back and do data analysis of the factors involved, the progression and the new data to add it. This helps to stay grounded and secure your success.