In the business world the terms 'goals' and 'objectives' are often used interchangeably. In actuality there are key differences between the two.

• Marketing goals are usually a broad aim toward which your efforts are directed.
• Marketing objectives on the other hand are specific and measurable milestones that must be achieved in order to reach a goal.

More on 'what is a marketing goal?'

A marketing goal is a broad aim toward which your efforts are directed. Marketing goals don’t have to be specific. Because of their open-ended nature, setting only marketing goals is not the ideal way to achieve something in your business.

To gain a better understanding of marketing goals, let’s look at a few examples:

• I want more customers to visit my website
• I want to rank on page one of Google
• I want a massive social media following

While these goals tell us what we want to accomplish they don’t tell us how to get it. Despite this fact, marketing goals are important because they lay the foundation for your marketing endeavours.

More on 'what is a marketing objective?'

Before setting your marketing goals, go over your business plan to re-focus on the business objectives. Doing this will help you align the marketing goals to your business objectives. Put simply, this means that your marketing goals should support the objectives set out in your business plan.

Set your marketing goals by making sure that each of your goals is SMART. Smart is an acronym for:

SPECIFIC
MEASURABLE
ACHIEVABLE
REALISTIC
TIMELY

Here is an example of a non SMART goal and SMART version of the same goal:

Not SMART: I want to generate traffic to my website to increase profit.

SMART goal: I want to generate 50 additional visitors to my website per month, to increase online sales by 15% by the end of the year.

Once each of your goals aligns to your business objectives, list them in order of priority so that you have a starting point at which to focus your marketing activity.