As the new year approaches, it’s time again to reflect and set goals that will enable you to get on track to take action … and find motivation! Regardless of the time and season you read our post, there’s always that time to plan the quarterly calendar, re-visit your goals, re-prioritize and make adjustments depending on your circumstances. In today’s blog post, you will read about what it takes to Plan Your Goals and Take Action.
Here, or at the bottom, you can download a S.M.A.R.T Guide and Worksheet we created for you to help you identify and organize your goals with the S.M.A.R.T criteria.
There are 4 main objectives to take away in order to be effective in your action plan. These may seem elementary, but they can serve as great reminders, and help us visualize and stay anchored on what’s important. Let’s dig in!
1. Set S.M.A.R.T Goals
Set S.M.A.R.T goals. What are SMART goals? Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely. It’s a strategy to help you set crystal clear objectives within a realistic and specific time frame.
2. Set Priorities
In an overflow of tasks, always set priorities. What’s the top priority of the day? Number your task list so you can keep track. Remember, you can adjust this list throughout the day. Priorities can often change in a small business, and you must be flexible (which brings us to the next point) …
3. Adjust your Plan
Always re-visit and be flexible. Nothing is set in stone. It’s normal to change your plan here and there. What needs to be adjusted in order to realize or complete your priority objective? In other words, what’s most important for the day or week?
4. Review and Track Progress
If you’re off track, it’s time to get back on track! Reflecting, analyzing and looking at trends doesn’t just happen once a year. It can happen every one to six months! Analyzing specific measurements of data like your Google Analytics (looking for trends and patterns) should be reviewed every three to six months.
Visualizing Examples—
Let’s explore some examples. Let’s say your goal is to convert more visitors into actual clients. You’ve seen a lack of visitors staying on, and you want to fix this. For starters, you may want to re-visit the following items that may be affecting the visitors experience to begin with: Is your website engaging? Easy to navigate? How are your clients responding to your products/services, and what interests them? Navigating your data and analytics will help you with this.
When taking action on this above example, consider the (realistic) S.M.A.R.T goal criteria. Setting up one-on-one coffee or zoom meetings to get to know your client can help you build trust and make a lasting impression that will keep them coming back. That’s a realistic goal example, especially when it can be done online. Set a goal for how many meetings you aim to set up throughout the year. Like, per say, 3 clients in 3 months. The more specific you can be with your goal, the better. And the more realistic and practical, the better.
Let’s say another goal surrounds better email marketing. You want to increase the click-rate on your emails or just engage your clients better, for example. You can create a survey and ask for feedback; directly hearing about what your clients wants can help you give them relevant and meaningful information. This is a way you can even get started on forming you goal and what’s most important. You’ll make a survey, hear their feedback, and use that to create your next steps.
If you’re not sure what direction to take and what goals to set, then you need to start with your data to help you determine this.
Define Analytics to measure marketing efforts
If you’re a bit hesitant when it comes to data and reading analytics, don’t worry. We have resources to help get your started. There are two resources you can explore.
- Blog post: Choosing the Right Data to Look at
- Training video: Looking at Your analytics
Define your current status, where you’re at right now, and where you want to see your business.
Always feel free to contact us at 630.320.2991.
Feel free to comment below. What has helped you set goals? How do you use S.M.A.R.T goals? Share what you took away from this blog post, or share your own bit of goal planning advice.
Get Our S.M.A.R.T Guide and Worksheet Here. Thanks for downloading.
Virginia Weiskopf, Personal Technical Guide
Over 20 years of expertise providing technical solutions that let you focus on your business.
