The most surprising thing about developing a marketing strategy is that it’s not all strategy.
Huh?
A lot of it is heart. As in, the heart of the matter.
It’s determining who your company (again, with the “who”...) are and what’s important to it. It’s pretty deep stuff.
In the craziness of every day life in a vacation rental company, It’s easy to see why this would be put off or simply ignored altogether.
It requires you to find some zen time. Dig deep. And examine a lot of fundamental questions that may not be comfortable.
And we’re gonna do it.
Today, we’re going to cover the foundation of our marketing goals, which will determine what we do moving forward.
You’re probably thinking, “My goal is to make more money! You’re making it harder than it has to be!”
Nope.
That’s not your only goal.
Do you want people to find you online?
Do you want people to interact with you on your social channels? Comment on a post, share a photo?
Do you want people to share your posts with their friends and family?
These are all marketing goals. And not one of those three will make you money by itself.
I know. It’s hard to think of any of these as marketing goals, right? But they are.
They are all various points on your customer’s sales journey. And each of them requires different marketing actions to keep that customer moving along in the right direction. Take the right action at the wrong time and you’ll lose that prospective customer.
The ultimate direction, of course, is the sale. But as you can see from this example, it’s not a one-size-fits-all marketing message.
So, let’s talk about marketing goals.
As a marketing newbie, one of the first concepts you learn about setting goals is that they have to be SMART. This acronym stands for:
Specific - Self-explanatory, right? A good specific goal is “100 new followers by June 30” as opposed to just “more followers”. It does you no good to have a nebulous goal that you can’t quantify.
Measurable - To make your marketing goals measurable, you must have a benchmark for comparison. That benchmark is a Key Performance Indicator (KPI).
According to KPI.org, a KPI is defined as “the critical (key) indicators of progress toward an intended result. KPIs provide a focus for strategic and operational improvement, create an analytical basis for decision making and help focus attention on what matters most.”
We’re going to go into more depth in the next post on KPIs, but for now, know that your KPIs have to be identified and quantified as part of your marketing goals.
Attainable this means you have to be realistic. If you currently have 500 FB followers, it is not realistic, or attainable, to commit to 5000 followers within 30 days. Keep it doable.
Relevant or Realistic there is disagreement among “experts” as to what the “R” stands for. For our purposes, we’re going with relevant, because our “attainable” goal is too close to realistic.
So, relevant refers to a goal that makes sense within the framework of your broader business goals. For instance, if your goal is to increase reservations by 15%, it wouldn’t be relevant to launch a marketing campaign aimed towards acquiring new properties.
Time-Bound this one is easy. It means giving your goals a date-stamp.
So, with all this in mind, let’s create four goals for Alissa’s Experience Rentals.
** Increase organic website traffic by 10% within 6 months.
** Increase mobile website traffic by 15% within 6 months
** Increase social media likes/shares by 20% within 3 months
** Increase reservations by 20% within 1 year.
Over the course of the next few articles, we’ll begin fleshing out a step-by-step action plan, but for now, I’m exhausted just by naming the goals.
Next time, we’ll be learning more about Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Unique Selling Propositions (USPs). Gotta love all these dang acronyms, right. What do you suppose people do with all the time they save typing abbreviations instead of full words???
So, what do you guys think? Are these following the SMART formula? Anything you’d add or subtract? Click reply and let me know!!