Goals vs Objectives: The Simple Breakdown Terminology is everything. Marketing, Sales, Product, Service — virtually every function in a business relies on some common terminology to do their best work. One area where alignment on terminology is essential is goal setting. Whether you use the OKR model, the KPI framework, the Golden Circle, or another methodology, everyone in the company should understand the difference between a goal and an objective. Without this shared knowledge, teams could risk wasting time on irrelevant activities, at best, or working against a common purpose, at worst. "Goals" and "Objectives" often seem like two interchangeable phrases on the surface. "We have ambitious goals for 2019," you might tell your marketing team, following up with, "Our objectives are aggressive but entirely possible." To make your strategy crystal clear and gain alignment, it's vital that your employees are up-to-date on the two most-used terms when outlining your quarterly and yearly strategy. Here, we'll explain the difference between goals and objectives and discuss some of the most effective goal-setting frameworks used by marketing professionals today. You’ll also find measurement tactics to track your progress. By the end of this post, you can wave goodbye to ambiguity when it comes to your long-term and short-term marketing plans. Goals are undoubtedly critical to your business's success. Ultimately, your company's goals should align with your vision and mission in order for employees to best guide their own actions and decisions. For instance, let's say this year your leadership...

Best Goal Setting Worksheet to Help You Plan & Achieve Accomplishing your goals is an incredibly gratifying feeling. However, it can sometimes be challenging to get that feeling, as achieving your goals takes time, effort, and a structured process. This is why it’s important to create plans of action for meeting the goals that will help you stay motivated and ensure you’re on the right path. In this post, we’ll go over a goal-setting worksheet created by HubSpot to help you outline your goals with the SMART framework and create a plan for achieving them. The template is broken down into relevant sections to help you through the process, and if you download it, you can follow along throughout the post. Goal Setting Steps 1. Identify your initial goal. The first step of the process is to simply identify what your goal is. It doesn’t have to be convoluted, just merely the objective you’re hoping to achieve. For example, if you’re hoping to grow your website, your baseline goal could be “I want to generate more site traffic.” 2.Define your SMART goals. The second step in the process is to use the SMART framework to elaborate your goals to ensure that they’re clear, measurable and that the process will help you get there. Here are is what each of the element in the acronym stands for: Specific: A specific goal clearly outlines what you’re hoping to improve. If you share your specific goals with your team, it should...

5 Dos and Don'ts When Making a SMART Goal When I was 14, my dream was to play college baseball. But I had one small problem: I only weighed 100 pounds. And even though I still had four years to bulk up and improve my skills, I knew I had a long way to go. Fortunately, my coach always knew how to give me opportunities to shoot for that kept my drive alive. I think of SMART goals like my former baseball coach. After a grueling practice or workout, he would harp on how the long term is just a series of short terms. And to hammer that mentality into our heads, he would make us write down our off-season training goals every year. But he didn't just accept the first draft of your goal sheet. He never did. He would make you edit it until you knew exactly what your goals were and how you were going to achieve them. Setting a goal like "improve upper body strength" and planning to lift weights three times a week wasn't enough. You had to write down how much you would improve your bench press by and how many times you would work out your upper body per week. Every year, I set concrete off-season training goals, and since I had a plan and clear direction, I always achieved them. By the time I was a senior in high school, I had gained 70...

How to Determine Your Internet Marketing Plan Based on Your Revenue Goals 91% of marketers are confident that they're making marketing decisions that will positively impact revenue. Are you one of them? As marketers, we're well-versed in the main goals of internet marketing: to generate leads and new business. Revenue generated from online marketing justifies why we include online channels in our marketing efforts. Some companies use revenue as a jumping-off point to build their marketing plans. This method determines if current marketing efforts should be changed or repeated based on lead generation and customer acquisition data. A tactic like this measures and drives the growth of a business. To put it another way, some companies use revenue marketing when planning online marketing strategies. Revenue marketing is about coming up with a campaign that is driven by the desire to create more leads and drive sales. How then, do marketers come up with a winning online marketing strategy that directly ties to their revenue goals? If you're unsure of the answer, we've got you covered. To give you a starting point of how you can follow suit we've come up with some steps you can take to begin marketing planning based on revenue. Revenue Marketing When we talk about revenue marketing, we're talking about a method of marketing that's used for lead generation. Some marketing campaigns are implemented to increase brand awareness or support a...