Inbound marketing is not about marketing your company for marketing’s sake. It is much more than that. It’s all about generating qualified leads for your sales team to increase revenue and customer growth. To measure how your inbound marketing strategy performs against your goals, you need to assess it continuously. You must identify your goals and the timeframe you will need to achieve them to ensure that your inbound marketing strategy is successful.
Measurable Inbound Marketing Goals
Measurement should be at the center of your inbound marketing goals. From setting your initial benchmark scores to figuring out your goals, measuring them is the only way you’ll know whether you’re on track.
Are you aiming to see an increase in overall web traffic? Are you looking for an increase in conversations with the people you’re already getting to your site? These are the things you should think about and focus your measurement on.
Also, when we say measurement, we mean consistent, ongoing measurement. This isn’t something you start and then six months later come back to. You need to be constantly measuring your performance. Identify what is going well so you can replicate it or see what isn’t working to either fix it or stop wasting time and resources on a bum tactic.
Begin by defining the marketing goals that your team would like to achieve in a given time frame. Your marketing objectives can be described as numbers or metrics that help you achieve your goal. You should set marketing goals that are specific and objective. This will ensure that the metric measures your performance. After you have identified the metrics you want to reach, it is important to be precise about how you will achieve them by setting micro-goals.
How To Set Inbound Goals
Your inbound goals must be SMART. This stands for Specific, Measurable. Attainable. Relevant. Time-bound. What does SMART mean for you?
- Select: You can choose specific metrics to improve, such as website traffic, subscribers, marketing qualified leads or customers.
- Measurable Set goals such as increasing visitors, subscribers or leads by a certain percentage over a specified period.
- Reachable: Make sure your goals are achievable. You can look at your previous numbers to see if your goal is realistic, but it will still take a shift in sales and marketing to achieve that goal.
- Relevant You need your marketing goals to align with the overall business goals of your company. If your goal is to increase revenue, align your marketing goals to help you capture more qualified leads for your sales team. This is where sales and marketing alignment intersect.
- Time-bound Establish a deadline to meet your metrics. To better understand your progress toward your goal, start by analyzing monthly metrics. Once you are clear about your baseline and areas for improvement, you can move on to larger quarterly or annual goals.
Practical Application
An initial increase of 8% in monthly leads for a professional services company was noticed. Their contacts were more likely to share their content and contact the firm for a consultation. Their SMART goal was to increase their leads by 10% -12% in three months. They did this by creating top-of-the-funnel content and new conversions on the website. This goal is a good example of a specific, measurable and achievable, relevant, time-bound, and attainable goal.
Inbound marketing goals are important to help you identify your desired outcomes and the timeframe you need to see them. You must ensure that you leverage SMART goals to ensure your goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
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