5 Goals to Get Your Business Started Online the SMART Way
So, you’ve decided to add an online presence to your brick and mortar business, Congratulations! I have a question for you, did you stop to ask yourself what goals you should have in place for the website? What I mean is have you taken the time to personally write down what you hope to achieve by having an online presence?
Have no fear! Even if the creation of your website is not something that you personally want to handle, it’s still important to have goals set in place so that your designer and website marketing manager can all be on the same page; from start to finish.
Here are 5 goals that follow the S.M.A.R.T way to marketing online:
1. Specific: Do you have a list of goals that give you specific direction? Such as: Increase awareness of my business by adding a user-friendly professional blog. You want to add details to this statement to make it more specific, you can do that by stating “locate a professional blog designer and request a free consultation.”
2. Measurable: You need a beginning and an ending to your goal so you can measure the progress of your goal. Something measurable could be: to market your business blog by writing 5 articles per month for 3 consecutive months and submitting those 5 articles to 10 directories and post to your business blog.
3. Attainable: Goals are great and are necessary for charting your progress, but they have to be attainable or you will be setting yourself up for sabotage. If you goal is to reach 1 thousand newsletter subscribers in 2 months, without using online marketing such as article submissions, press release distributions or blog promotions, then you are not likely to reach your goal.
4. Relevant: Does your business goal directly relate to your business? In other words, your goal might be to outsource the blog creation and the marketing of your blog in order to reach those 1 thousand subscribers.
5. Timely: In order for your goal to come to fruition, you must give yourself a deadline, otherwise its just going to be another item on your to-do list. For example: you want to reach 1 thousand newsletter subscribers, to make this goal a reality you might want to say “starting today I will write 2 articles per week and submit them every Monday and Wednesday to a minimum of 5 article directories. On Tuesday I will visit related blogs and leave a great comment and on Friday I will spend time interacting on twitter and Facebook with my peers. Then set a start and end time, such as: I will follow these marketing techniques weekly, starting today, for the next 6 weeks.”
No matter how many business goals you have, make sure that each of your business goals fit into the S.M.A.R.T goal making list. Take the time to make sure that your business goals are each defined by being specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely; this will keep you from losing focus and being overwhelmed.
Stephanie Fish, CEO of Buckeye V.A., Ohio-based professional social media management and marketing business. Providing online marketing services for professional business owners, such as: life coaches, authors and offline companies. Do you know the importance of having an internet presence to meet the needs of your clients and the media? Stephanie provides free online marketing strategies, tips and checklists to her website visitors, while you’re there be sure to sign-up for my free marketing ezine list.
