Imagine you wake up without any goals or specific targets to work towards. That would mean life is complete when you have nothing to achieve. Every living being has a purpose.
So what is a business objective, exactly? The goal is a target that you set for yourself or your business. You set it to achieve your dreams or business objectives.
You start to set up small objectives or goals to work toward. Setting up takes time and planning on how to achieve it realistically. Then, the action plan begins and should go according to the planning you have done.
It’s a competitive and thriving world of business which changes over time. A business objective is important if you are running a business. It helps you survive in today’s business world and reach new levels.
You can’t achieve a goal without having the correct method to plan it out. Methods help you strategize on how to set up your objectives in parts and achieve them one at a time. There are many methods to achieve your targeted goal. One of those methods is called the SMART goal. Let’s find out more about it!
What Is A SMART Goal:
A SMART goal is a method created by George T. Doran in 1981. To help set up business goals in an intelligent way for the management and the objective itself. Over time, it became one of the crucial methods to achieving any goal, whether for a firm or yourself.
Managers should focus when creating and implementing SMART goals. Because they are real targets that achieve the goal in a specific time.
So, it’s important to be careful when dealing with the SMART goals method. To know you have the resources to achieve them. But what does SMART itself mean?
The Breakdown Of SMART Goal:
The SMART goal is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. Each of these five words has a target set of their own. With that, every SMART goal is divided by each of these five-word goals individually most of the time. The exact meanings of these words are as follows.
- Specific: This means the goal you set should be limited. This means the goal should be set for a specific area that needs improvement. There is no room left for confusion towards that goal.
- Measurable: the goal could be easy to calculate and measure during its progress or over time. for example, many businesses target cutting down their costs or increasing profit. Measurable guides you that the goal should show progress. This helps your team in checking their overall progress and see if they can achieve it before the deadline.
- Achievable: The goal should be real, a goal that can be achieved. For example, let’s say you run a small business and decide you will beat the largest firm in the local industry within three years. It is practically impossible for you to do that in such a small time frame. However, a goal like increasing customers could be achievable.
- Relevant: The goal you are setting, is it gonna affect the overall performance of your business or improve you overall? Make sure the target you set is working towards the overall objective. And not being a different type of target that does not align with what you’re looking forward to achieving.
- Time-Bound: The objective that you have set should have a specific period. Meaning it should have a starting time and a deadline or ending time. This is important as it gives meaning to the overall target that you set. Without a deadline and starting time, you won’t focus on the goal you have set for yourself or the business. If it is a long-term goal you have set, then it should have a specific date. For example, your main objective is to pay off a small debt in four months. Time-bound helps in motivating time management habits.
This will help you overall understand a clear goal, and setting it up and achieving it will become easy. The SMART goal structure helps you do things to reach your goals. By arranging your plans this way, you can spot possible problems and make a clear map to beat them and solve them.
The SMART criteria:
To understand how SMART goal works, this is a criteria or SMART question you could ask yourself.
Specific: What will you do? What is it that you want to achieve?
Measurable: What will you use to measure your progress? What data would you use?
Achievable: Can it be achieved? Do you have the right resources and the right skills to achieve it?
Relevant: Does your goal match with the overall goal of your organization? Will the result affect the overall performance?
Time-Bound: What will be your goals overall starting time and ending time?
SMART Goal With Action Plan:
What is an action plan you might ask? The action plan means it is a list of tasks and things, for example, you need to finish a project or reach an aim. It’s like a list of things for you to do or plan for your work. Especially if you are used to working in places with tight deadlines.
For example, you set a goal for an HR department to hire 50 employees within three months. So, they plan on hiring from different recruiting websites and government agencies. This is called an action plan.
Mixing up the SMART goal with an action plan can achieve your goal in a much easier way. To get started with a SMART goal, you need to have a step-by-step plan. This action plan lists what needs to be done. It makes a good setup for succeeding towards your goal.
Why SMART Goal is important:
Setting goals gives you a set of motivation to work on those goals. But if you set a confusing goal that is beyond your reach, then motivation will go away in seconds. The Smart goal helps you not just set up a goal. But also set up a goal that is specific, realistic, and has the progress that can be measured and achievable.
It helps you understand the goal, which can make it easy for you to convey this goal to other people. Especially in a business environment where many people have different roles. Which can help you forward the goal set up and save the overall time of the organization. An understanding of this can result in everyone being on the same page.
The SMART goal can help you improve your career. Getting a goal and achieving it, is an important thing for you to learn. These goals can be about increasing your skills, progressing, or controlling your results at work.
What effects will SMART have? This will result in you being ready to work hard and stay dedicated to getting them done.
This means you could improve your time management skills through SMART goals. Managing time is important, but not everyone has the skill to manage their time.
Time-bound goals give a period for the goal to be achieved. What gonna happen next? This can result in your employees working as a team. Leading to efficiency while working to achieve the goal.
Creating a roadmap helps you understand the things that are required for the goal to be achieved and how to achieve it.
SMART goals help in providing accountability. Accountability is important to have when you are running a business or are an employee in an organization. A manager is accountable for their team. So this means that they work together to achieve the goal.
Guide To SMART Goals With Examples:
Understanding what SMART goal is is important. Because if you can’t understand your goal thoroughly how can you motivate yourself to achieve it? Below is a guide for SMART goals with examples. The following is the guide.
Facebook Vidoe SMART Goal:
Facebook is a famous social media platform with billions of users all over the world. Suppose you were planning to upload content like videos on Facebook. Then, the SMART goal for you would be like this.
Specific: Your target would be increasing viewership on each content. By having content that has more variety of topics to cover.
Measurable: Your goal would be to increase the viewership by more than 35%.
Achievable: If you increase your content. That is being uploaded from eight videos to ten videos. If each video is about a new trending topic then your content viewership would increase.
Relevant: When increasing your viewership on each of your content. This would increase your social media platforms. So this means that your followers can see the content? Well, yes! In this way, your page awareness will increase. So does the potential of having future followers.
Time: This goal should be achieved within the next five months.
So, your SMART goal would mean your target is to increase viewership by more than 35%. By uploading eight to ten videos and making sure each content viewership increases. This goal of your Facebook page is to be achieved within the next five months, with increased followers and more potential followers.
Increase Website Traffic SMART Goal:
The traffic you have on your website tells how much people love your brand or service. It’s a very important goal for many small businesses that are still struggling in the industry. The SMART goal for your website would look like this.
Specific: You want to increase traffic for your website. You want to increase your organic traffic for your website. You want to achieve this goal by aiming to increase brand and website awareness.
Measurable: Using website analytics tools to find the accurate data of relevant competitors. Help’s seeing content that gains more traffic and content that gains less traffic. Increasing traffic by 40%
Achievable: The goal is to change your content and make it more engaging. This is achieved by uploading videos, optimizing designs, and having informative content. Creating your content in such a way with a user-friendly interface. That will give you an advantage over competitor websites.
Relevant: Make your content that would result in more traffic. Also, increased interaction with your followers on social resulting in more traffic. This leads to an increase in brand awareness. The potential of having more target audiences turn into traffic in the future.
Time-bound: This target would require you to be achieved within seven months.
So, your SMART goal for increasing traffic on your website would look like this. You want to increase traffic. That is by targeting to increase brand image and website awareness. This is achieved by using website analytic tools for example Google Analytics. To measure data and compare the data. With also the aim of increasing traffic by 40% on your website.
This would be achieved by creating engaging and informative content for the visitors. For them to attract. This will help you by giving you a competitive advantage and also help in gain more followers. Therefore, increasing your brand awareness. The goal deadline that you set is within the next seven months.
Email Subscribers SMART Goal:
Email subscribers are used to create email listings for your website. A listing that you have used in email marketing, which is one of the digital marketing methods.
What is email marketing? Email marketing is used to send newsletters, special discounts, and much more. To the people who have subscribed to you through their emails. If you are planning on increasing email subscribers by using the SMART goal, then it would look like this.
Specific: You need to increase the number of email lists for your blog or your website. Also, want to increase online advertising? for blog posts or content that gets a lot of email subscribers
Measurable: Your goal would be to increase email subscribers by 45%.
Achievable: By doing A/B testing on online advertisements. You were able to increase 20% of the email subscribers.
Relevant: When increasing email subscribers will it be effective? Yes, your website will generate more traffic. Plus, will result in more people engaging in your content and boost awareness and sales.
Time-bound: It would take around four months to achieve it.
So the SMART goal would look like this.
You aim to increase the number of email subscribers. Plus, also increases online advertisements. Your target is to increase email subscribers by 45%. Yours have already achieved 20% by A/B testing on online advertisements. This will lead to more people engaging in your website and increase sales. This goal would need to be within four months.
Podcast SMART Goal:
Recently podcasts have become a lot of popular. Are you running a podcast page? If so create a SMART goal. Here is the guide with an example of how you can create a SMART goal.
Specific: You want to increase the number of people who listen to your podcast. How about using small clips? Which when shared as content on your social media attract listeners.
Measurable: Your goal is to increase the number of listeners for podcasts up to 30%
Achieve: When you upload four short clips on YouTube. After the clips on YouTube a couple of weeks later, your listener number increased up to 10%.
Relevant: Is it relevant? You would increase your content awareness about your podcast. And other people on different types of social media platforms.
Time: The deadline would be the start of the 3rd month.
So, a SMART goal for your increasing number of podcast listeners would look like this.
Your goal is to increase the number of listeners of your podcast. Your goal is to increase by 30% of the listers. Which is 10 percent of were able to achieve. Within a couple of weeks when you uploaded short clips on your YouTube channel.
Increasing the number of listeners would result in your podcast awareness. And the possibility of selling your product or becoming a sponsor. You would aim to achieve this target before the start of the 3rd month.
The SMART goal for Exercising:
You want to get fit, so here is a SMART goal for you.
Specific: Your Goal is to workout every day for an hour at least to build muscles to stay fit and healthy.
Measurable: You hired a professional trainer who would set your goals. Which can give you nutrition food plans. They are important for your workout as they are professionals and experts in the field.
Achievable: When you get help from your trainer. With some diet plan to follow from your side, you can achieve your fitness goal.
Relevant: A fit body will improve your mindset and bring energy. That reduces the health issues that occur when you do not stay fit. For example diseases, heart issues, and so on.
Time-bound: Your target is to achieve this goal within the next six months.
So, the SMART goal for your fitness would look like this.
Your goal is to build muscles and stay fit. Which would need a professional trainer and a good nutrition food plan. Due to you having past experiences of exercising. Plus, going back and forth to fitness, you can achieve it. Does your body stay fit when your body is in good shape? It becomes healthier, and you focus on achieving these goals within the next six months.
Conclusion:
Everyone sets goals in their lives, and every goal has a method and planning. One of these methods is the SMART goal strategy, created in 1981 for management and business. This has now become the most important method for setting a goal. It helps in understanding in detail the goal you set for yourself. Of your business, or for professional reasons.
