Puddle Jumping With Mindy: How Goals Drive Solid Results

I am a goal-oriented person. I set goals in every area of my life.

When the calendar turns to January 1, you will find me setting goals for the New Year in Evernote. Business and financial goals. Reading goals, and goals to start a new adventure or learn a new skill: Last year it was yoga! The year before I had a goal to read the Bible in a year. A few years before that my goal was to relearn an instrument I’d played years ago: The guitar.

But what I hadn’t realized until recently taking a much-needed vacation to the sunshine state of Florida, is that I have difficulty turning this goal orientation off.

This vacation, I brought along my favorite knitting projects and lots of reading – so fun and so enlightening at the same time! And, I enjoyed several walks on the beach.

On one such walk with my daughter, my Apple watch, fully dialed-in, reminded me my goal was to reach the one-mile mark. And I could not seem to cut short that walk: We will turn around at “exactly” one mile. It has to be exact. One more step. No, that didn’t do it. Another step. Another one. Oh dear. We almost have it. There! Got it! Now, we can turn around.

My daughter’s response? My goodness gracious – relax!

Using goals for good

While being goal-oriented, may not make for a relaxing walk on the beach, goals have been my friend, too. That same perseverance, that same exactness, makes me swim 1,850 meters when I get into the pool. It makes me read 13 business books a year. It makes me understand our goals for the business, and then connect business strategy to achieve those goals.

It’s the very essence of what a successful marketing program is built upon.

The questions we ask of our clients include:

• What are the business goals for your company?
• How can marketing support that?

Marketing is an extremely analytical sport these days; so it’s quite easy to determine how to support those business goals. If you’re trying to grow your company 10 percent, how does that translate to the marketing plan itself? The tactics have to support the strategy and interconnect to sell an additional amount of widgets that translates to the corresponding revenue increase, which may or may not be a bigger dollar figure.

For example, it could mean more targeting and less spend. We like to build a plan that assigns each tactic a number goal. Then, when added up, we are always trying to exceed the goal while keeping the budget line stable.

When things go wrong – and it’s inevitable they will occasionally, whether it be weather putting a damper on an event or an employee quitting at a critical juncture, or any number of unforeseen catastrophes – the company still needs to make the goal.

What happens then? How do we reset the plan each month and each quarter? We build in milestones to judge our progress. Our tactics are built on a platform that is fluid and can change on a dime.

The world we live in is marketing friendly with so many analytics to judge our achievements and progress. How we use them is our choice. I like to be in control of our success at each stage.

If you’d like to talk more about how we can use goal-oriented marketing to support your business strategy, drop me a line.