Why Setting Measurable Goals for Your Inbound Is So Important!

We won’t sit and pretend that we haven’t got a bit of the football fever here at BBD Boom!

It got us thinking about how important goals are – not just when it comes to the teams that we support but also when it comes to your inbound strategy.

SMART goals

No, we don’t mean an incredible back of the net from Harry Kane, or the Hand of God from Maradona, we’re talking:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant and
• Timely goals

That means that when you set your targets, you need to ensure that you break everything down in order to have any chance of achieving them. Setting SMART goals means you’re not getting ahead of yourself, causing yourself to go offside and having to take a step back.

It means that you have always got your eyes on the prize and are constantly implementing your goals within your strategy and actually achieving (or should we say scoring) them.

Break it down

But first, before you even start thinking about SMART goals, you need to break down the different outcomes you want to achieve.

So if we think about inbound, we want to achieve the ultimate hat-rick:

• More website traffic and active sessions on our website
• More contacts through our website
• More customers

In order to achieve these three outcomes, you need to set SMART goals for each. By setting goals and reviewing them regularly means that you will be on target and have more chance of achieving them and streamlining your strategy overall.

There’s absolutely no point in setting unachievable goals that you won’t be able to achieve just for the sake of it. It will bring down morale and get you even further away from having the ultimate inbound marketing machine.

More traffic

Ultimately, inbound is all about creating more traffic to your website. How will you do this? It’s simple.

More content, more social media activity and a website that’s updated regularly.

Set yourself a daily, weekly and monthly goal with your content strategy in mind when you do this.

If we then apply this to SMART goals we could say:

• Specific – We want more traffic on our website through our inbound strategies.
• Measurable – We can measure this daily, weekly and monthly through HubSpot and monitor what is bringing the most traffic.
• Attainable – Whatever the size of your business is will influence how much traffic you will be getting.
• Relevant – Make sure you are using relevant strategies (such as targeted content) in order to attract the right people.
• Timely – Daily, weekly, monthly. See what works for you and monitor easily through HubSpot.

That is broken down very simply just as an example, but you can go into lots more detail which will make sure you’re scoring the hat-rick (and if you’re inbound geeks like us, achieving an inbound hat-trick is just as exciting as the prospect of Rashford doing it on the pitch!).

More contacts
It goes without saying that if you want more contacts, you need to maximise the opportunities for people to give you that information.

Think more CTAs, more exciting and relevant content and effective forms (just ensure you are always adhering to GDPR).

Set yourself a target for the amount of contacts you want to gain from a lead magnet and again, measure this through HubSpot.

More customers

Imagine this is the winning trophy, it’s something you want and need, but instead of having just the one target, you want to set your sights on achieving lots of new customers!

Set realistic goals for the number of new customers you want to acquire by looking at your strategy and targets for more website traffic and more contacts. Not every contact is going to convert, but by streamlining your website means you will have more relevant visitors that in turn you can nurture through to a customer.

Think about the weekly, monthly and annual growth you want to achieve and break it down.

Again, HubSpot is your ultimate team mate in this process. It can tackle its way through the pitch of inbound marketing and provide you the all the tools needed to not only measure your goals, but to achieve them too.

So whilst you’re watching the tournament this summer, imagine you are the manager of an international team, and look at how each player works together to achieve that final goal. They are your different components of your inbound strategy and HubSpot is the coach alongside helping you to achieve it all.

If you would like any help on your inbound goals and strategy, then do not hesitate to get in contact with us at grow@bbdboom.com – we are here to help you.

To learn more about inbound marketing click here.