How to Write a SMART Goal Work can feel like a never-ending grind when you're not chasing a clear goal. A SMART goal template can help you clarify your motivations, set a clear direction for you and your team members, and ensure you're able to celebrate the wins when they come along. But what exactly is a SMART goal, and how does it differ from a regular goal? To help you write SMART goals, we've created a free template with all the tools you need to get started. What is a SMART goal? The letters of SMART stand for: Specific Measurable Attainable Relevant Time-Bound The SMART acronym is a framework that will enable you to write goals that drive greater impact. Write goals with each of these aspects in mind, and you'll be able to quantify how far you've come and how far you have left to go against your goal. When you reach the milestone you articulated in your SMART goal, you'll be able to celebrate knowing that you achieved something tangible and impactful. To make setting a SMART goal simple, we've created a free, downloadable SMART goal setting template. I'll walk through the template below as we discuss each aspect of a SMART goal. I'd suggest downloading the template yourself to follow along with this blog post. However, before anything else, let's dive into the importance of each aspect of the SMART acronym. What does each aspect...

How to Create a 5-Year Plan You'll Actually Stick To One common question you’ll get asked in an interview is, "Where do you see yourself in five years?" When it’s coming from a hiring manager, we usually have an answer ready. When it comes to your personal life, do you have a five-year plan? In the most stressful times in my life, planning brings me great joy and peace. But who says you have to wait for the stress to come? In this article, we’ll outline why you should create a five-year plan and how to build one you’ll follow through with. Benefits of a 5-Year Plan Whether professional or personal, a five-year plan can serve as a reset for your life. Who doesn’t like a fresh start? After all, that’s why New Year’s resolutions are so popular. They give us something to look forward to. There’s also something to be said about writing out a detailed plan. It can be a great motivator to put something in motion. Personally, I’ve said countless times that I want to be fluent in Spanish. However, it's not until I write a detailed plan for how that it will become real.  This brings us to our next point: clarity. Sometimes, a path seems scarier than it actually is because we don’t actually know what it looks like. Creating a plan is like pointing a flashlight in a dark road. A more accurate description is that it turns that dark,...

Why Every Company Needs to Know Its Core Competencies Every resume has a skills section. It’s an opportunity to highlight your top professional attributes to attract employers. Core competencies serve the same purpose for brands and their customers. Let’s dive into what exactly a core competency is, why you need it, and how to find it in your brand. You might be wondering, "Isn’t this a value proposition? " Not exactly. While both are used to differentiate you from your competitors, competencies are what you leverage to support your value proposition. For instance, at Uber, their value proposition is "Always on, always available." What’s their core competency? An easy-to-use app and reliable access to its services at any time of the day. Establishing your core competencies early on is incredibly valuable, as it can inform your marketing strategy moving forward. You can use them in your messaging to attract your target audience and stand out among your competitors. If you’re a trailblazing company with a fresh product in an underserved market, then finding your core competency will be easy to spell out. However, if you’re in a saturated market and struggling to distinguish your brand, working on your core competencies will be key to your success. The sooner you discover what they are, the quicker you can implement them in your marketing and sales strategies. From an individual standpoint, everyone has core competencies that they leverage in their professional lives. When you want to land a new...

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...