One of the things I struggled with the most when I was a Marketing Manager at a SaaS company was learning how to set goals for our department. It sounds like a simple-enough task, but over time I came to see goal-setting as something of an art; it requires practice, constant refinement, focus and a little bit of playfulness (unless you want to drive yourself crazy).
Numerous questions swirled in my mind as I set (and re-set) goals for our marketing department:
How do you set goals that are challenging yet still achievable (is there an exact formula for this, like always shoot for x% more than last month)? How many goals should you set––one, three, six? Should you focus on a new goal every week, month, semester, quarter or year? If you’re a small company and you need to achieve quick growth, how do you pick which goal is most important when there are a billion urgent things that need to happen? How do you stay focused on your goals (once you’ve finally decided on them) and not let other stuff get in the way, like tempting partnership opportunities or new tactics you want to try out?
Aaahh.
I got better at this over time, but it’s definitely still something I struggle with. One of the best ways to figure out how to do something is to find someone more experienced or smarter than you who is already good at it and study how they do it. So I reached out to several top marketers to learn how they go about setting goals that are actually achievable, and then stay focused on these goals and execute like nobody’s business.
Here’s what they had to say:
How To Set Marketing Goals You Can Actually Achieve: Advice From The Experts
