Setting Goals (Not Tools) as the Foundation of Your Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

 With new tools introduced therefore often, it is easy for marketers to pay associate degree undue quantity of your time attempting to work out which of them square measure simplest for his or her own work. That focus, though, shifts our attention from what extremely matters: setting the correct goals for our firms. In today\'s Whiteboard weekday, Mackenzie Fogelson walks America through the five-stage method she uses to create positive her team\'s attention is on what extremely matters.


For reference, here\'s a still of this week\'s whiteboard!

Video Transcription

 Hey there, Moz community! i am thus excited to be here with you these days. I needed to share one thing with you that has been very powerful for the companies we\'ve been operating with within the last year concerning|some|roughly|more or less|around} about building community. it is a idea that we tend to decision \"goals not tools,\" and it works during this pyramid format wherever you begin along with your goals, you progress on to KPIs, you develop a technique, you execute that strategy, so you analyze your information. And this can be one thing that has been very powerful and helped businesses very grow. thus i am reaching to walk you thru it here.

We begin down at very cheap with goals. therefore the modify goals is that you just need to form positive that you are setting goals for your entire business, not only for SEO or social media or content promoting, as a result of you are making an attempt to grow your whole business. thus keep your focus there. Then once you develop your goals, and people goals can be to boost client communication otherwise you need to become a concept leader. no matter your goal is, that is wherever you are going to line it.

Then you progress on to decisive what your key performance indicators live} and what you are going to use to really measure the actual fact that you just could or might not be reaching your goals. thus in terms of KPIs, it\'s very reaching to depend upon your business. once we confirm KPIs with corporations, we tend to sit down {and we tend to|and that we} have that discussion with them before we develop the strategy, which helps United States of America to possess a awfully authentic and realistic discussion concerning expectations and the way this can be all reaching to work and what reasonably information they are expecting to examine so we\'re proving that we\'re truly creating a distinction in their business.

So once you\'ve got determined those KPIs, then you progress on to developing an ingenious strategy, an ingenious thanks to meet those goals and to live it the manner you\'ve got determined in your KPIs. thus this can be your elaborated roadmap, and it\'s 2 to 3 months at a time. lots of corporations can choose perhaps twelve months and check out to induce that top level summary of wherever they are going for the year, and that is fine. simply ensure that you are not particularisation out everything that you are doing for ensuing year as a result of it makes it more durable to be agile. thus we\'d advocate two- to-three month iterations at a time. Go through, check things, and see however that works.

During your strategy development you are additionally reaching to choose the tools that you are going to use. perhaps it\'s Facebook, perhaps it\'s SEO, perhaps it\'s content promoting, perhaps it\'s email promoting, PPC. there is all types of tools that might be used, and that they do not all have to be compelled to be digital. thus you only have to be compelled to be inventive and confirm what you would like to set up out so you\'ll be able to reach the goals that you\'ve got set.

Then once you\'ve your strategy developed, that is very a number of the toughest half till you get to execution. Then you are truly doing all the work. you would like to be consistent. you would like to form positive that you are staying targeted and following that strategy that you\'ve got set. you furthermore mght need to check things as a result of you wish the maximum amount information as potential so you\'ll be able to confirm if things area unit operating or not. thus ensure that in execution there area unit reaching to be things that come back up, emerging things, shiny things, exciting things. thus what you will have to try to to is weigh whether or not those things watch for ensuing iteration in 2 to 3 months, or whether or not you deviate your set up and you integrate those at the time that they are available up.

So once you are through execution, then very what you are doing is analyzing that information that you\'ve got collected. you are making an attempt to confirm: ought to we tend to pay longer on one thing? ought to we tend to pull something? ought to we tend to determine if something else must utterly amendment our plans so we\'re ensuring that we\'re adding value? thus analysis is perhaps the foremost necessary half as a result of you are continuously reaching to need to be watching the info.

So during this whole method, what we tend to continuously do is try and ensure that we\'re that specialize in 2 queries, and also the most significant one is: wherever will we tend to add additional value? thus continuously be wondering what you are doing, and if you cannot answer the worth question, you know, \"Why area unit we tend to doing this? will this offer worth for our customers or one thing internal that you are operating on? If you cannot answer that question, it\'s in all probability not one thing valuable, and you do not have to be compelled to pay some time on that. Go in different places wherever you are adding the worth.

Then the last question is wherever you\'ll be able to build the most important distinction in your business, as a result of that is what this can be all concerning is growing your business. thus if you keep targeted on goals, not tools, it\'s reaching to be very easy to try to to that.