SMART Goals – So smart, they are brilliant Transcript
You are probably wondering what SMART goals are. In short, SMART goals or SMART objectives are created using a specific criterion that paints the picture of your goal in a specified period.
Transcript – SMART Goals – So SMART they are brilliant
Welcome to the digital revolution and I am your host, Keith Connell. This audio and video series is dedicated to helping you better understand the digital world around us and what to look for next.
George is a Marketing Manager for a smaller organization working in the manufacturing sector. His boss has asked him to increase the overall visits to the website. Based on his experience, he knows what will make this happen, but the challenge is that every time he tried to initiate a project like this previously, it has failed. The problem is that there was no clear pathway to success and the vision of what success looked like was convoluted. As a result, people stopped caring about the project and eventually the task simply disappeared.
After careful consideration George has decided to leverage SMART goals for setting the plan in motion and tracking the results.
You are probably wondering what SMART goals are. In short, SMART goals or SMART objectives are created using a specific criterion that paints the picture of your goal in a specified period. The acronym stands for specific which answers the questions of what needs to be achieved, who holds the ownership, and what steps are required to achieve the goal. Measurable – there is a saying that you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Because of this you need to quantify your goals which will help you understand if you have achieved your objective.
So let’s look at this so far. If George needs to increase the number of visitors to the website, he needs to figure out what that number is, after all, increasing by one visit will satisfy the objective. He and his team have figure out that Marketing is to build an AdWords campaign through Google, to increase the number of monthly visits by 5000%. Checking the construction, it is specific and definitely measurable. So we are done right? Wrong.
Objectives and goals are people driven and people thrive on achieving what they set out to accomplish. To ensure the project continues moving forward, be certain the target is achievable. While 5000% is measurable, chances are unless the site has only one visitor each month, it’s not going to be immediately achieved and could impact the morale of the team. George went back to the drawing board and determined that if the site had a 30% in traffic it would account for additional sales. So now their SMART goal is that Marketing is to build an AdWords campaign through Google, to increase the number of monthly visits by 30%. Before you pass out the cigars and champagne, consider two aspects, one that was just mentioned, relevance and the other is time-bound. We established that there is a definite relevance to increasing the visitors to the website. Afterall, the more visitors translate to more opportunities for sales.
But without an end date, technically, if the traffic to the site increased by 30% in twenty-five years, the objective could be successfully completed, but who has 25 years to wait? So the team developed a new strategy where they wanted this increased by the end of their fiscal year 2022.
So looking at the objective now, it reads that Marketing is to build an AdWords campaign through Google, to increase the number of monthly visits by 30% by the end of the fiscal year 2022. Now you can see it is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
This concludes your spelling lesson for the day, but remember, when asked to create smart objectives for projects, you do not need to create one objective for each letter, but one objective that encompasses all the objectives.
Until next time, I am Keith Connell, reminding you to be good to each other and stay safe. Most importantly, welcome to the digital revolution.
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