Goal Setting for Online Marketers – Part 2

What Makes a Goal Achievable?

 Achievable goals are goals that challenge you. They force you to create a strategy and a plan to follow through. However, it’s the ability to follow through that determines whether a goal is achievable or not.

Here’s an example, let’s say that you decide you want to double your income by adding five new team members in the first quarter of 2018 to your business.

You take the steps to attract new people to your team. Great. However, if you don’t also follow through and create a supportive environment and the training they need that will motivate them to succeed, then sales won’t increase and neither will your goal of doubling your income.

If you don’t promote your network marketing opportunity and bring on highly motivated prospects, you won’t hit the income goals you plan to reach.

So, an achievable goal is a goal that you can realistically follow through with the steps required to make it happen.

Summing it up, an achievable goal is:

Challenging – Achievable goals don’t need to be easy goals. They should challenge you to work hard.

Motivating – Your goal should make you feel motivated with every step that you take. As time goes by, you want to be able to continue taking positive steps toward success.

Realistic – it might take hard work but with a doable plan, you can reach the goals you set and have the success you want…you must be able to follow through on your plans to make it happen.

Achieving Success – Milestones Are the Secret Ingredient

 Milestones are actions or events that mark a significant step in your process. For example, if you’re writing a book then you’ll have a better chance at success if you set smaller goals that lead up to your end goal of writing the book.

You can work backward to determine what your milestones should be and when they should be accomplished. For example:

Goal: 50,000-word eBook/information product done by June 15th

• June 15th      Book edited and ready to publish
• May 15th       50,000 words
• April 15th      40,000 words
• March 15th    30,000 words
• February       15th 20,000 words
• January         15th 10,000 words

Milestones help you stay on track to achieve your goal. It makes a larger goal much more manageable and breaks the process up into smaller goals that are also specific, measurable and so on.

Setting milestones and breaking your goal down into manageable steps is a test. If you’re unable to do that, then the goal is not achievable. IF your smaller goals and milestones seem too difficult to achieve, then the goal is not achievable.

We’ve talked quite a bit about what an achievable goal is and why it matters. We’ve defined what achievable means in terms of goal setting and how to know if your goal is achievable. It’s important to also take a look at what types of goals help you take your business to the next level. It’s easy to get caught in the “more money” type of goals. However, there are other types of goals that can lead to increased profits and a better business as well.

The Three Major Goal Categories to Grow Your Business

 If someone were to ask you right now what one step you could take to grow your business what would you answer?

Generally speaking, there are three categories to look at. And if you establish attainable goals in all three areas, you’re on your way to fantastic business growth and a good year.

#1 Income Goals – Income goals are just that. They are “I want to make $XXX in profits this year.” They require some pretty strategic planning. You have to determine how you’re going to reach those income goals. What are you going to add, change, get rid of, and so on?

#2 Audience Goals – An audience goal is growing your followers, prospects, and ultimately your leads. This approach builds your exposure and awareness and generally leads to more profits. Again, you’ll want to decide what's a doable audience goal and how you’re going to reach it.

#3 Product Goals – This refers to promoting new and existing products. Take a look at your audience's needs, motivations, and buying process.  How can you add more value to products or services and grow your business?

As you look at these goal categories, you’ll see that they support business growth and they support one another. A larger audience increases profits; more products and promotions may also increase your income.

• Identify your goal for the upcoming year
• Break it down into smaller goals
• Set milestones
• Achieve success

Now, couple this information with the tools below, and you’ll start achieving your online marketing goals in no time.

Now Let’s Talk About the Templates and Tools

Ok, I'll admit it… I am a template junkie! Why?

Because templates are a simpler and faster way for better RESULTS from your marketing. With that in mind, let’s look at the tools below.

Goal Setting Worksheet

Getting your goals down on paper is a great start! Use this worksheet to document your milestones, completion dates, resources needed, your tasks, tasks you can outsource and the status of each goal.

Now you’ll have it all in one place, so keep this worksheet handy to keep track of all your online marketing goals.

Goal-Focused To-Do List

 The Goal-Focused To-Do List is where you can keep track of goals by breaking them down into Audience Building, Income Producing, and Products to Create or Promote sections.

There are also sections for you to list out other tasks for yourself and tasks that you can outsource.

This worksheet will keep you focused on your goals as you list your detailed tasks.

Never Ending Ideas for Your Audience Building

 This brainstorming checklist gives you 50 detailed ideas to use for your audience-building efforts. You no longer have to struggle with what to do next to build your tribe. Keep going down the list and try them

Audience Tracking Spreadsheet

Keeping track of your audience growth is so important so you can easily identify what is working and what isn’t in your marketing efforts. Use this spreadsheet template to track your audience growth over time comparing it to your monthly and yearly goals based on all the different platforms including social media, website traffic, and your email list. Find what’s really working and what isn’t to grow your audience.

Never Ending Ideas for Your Income Producing

 This brainstorming checklist gives you 50 detailed ideas to run with when you are looking for more ideas on how to grow your online income. As you grow your audience you’ll want to find new ways to engage them and convert them into sales.

Bookkeeping Spreadsheet

Tracking your income, expenses, and profits are essential to the success of your online business. This spreadsheet makes it easy to quickly see a summary of your income, expenses, and profit for each month of the year. No more wondering if you are losing money. This will keep you organized and keep everything all in one place.

Never Ending Ideas for Product Promotions

 This brainstorming checklist gives you 50 great ideas on how you can run product promotions. Sometimes we need a little inspiration and this list will give you just that! Examples are included too to make it even easier.

Product Launch and Promotion Tracking Spreadsheet

 It can be difficult to keep track of all of your products and how they are performing in your business. That’s why we created this template to make it easy for you to track the income, expenses, and profits for each one of your products. No more guessing which product is actually your most profitable, you’ll have it all documented in this spreadsheet for easy reporting.

Daily Planner

The daily planner will keep you on track with your goals by breaking out the To-Dos into sections of Audience Building, Income Producing, Product to Create or Promote and Tasks to Perform or Outsource.

Use this template every day to ensure your tasks are in line with your goals.

Weekly Planner 

The Weekly Planner will give you a high-level overview of what tasks you performed each day to bring you closer to your goals within each of the sections also listed in your daily planner. Yet another check to ensure you are staying on the right track with your tasks in order to reach your goals.

Monthly Planner

The monthly planner templates give you a template for each month of the year. They are fill in the blank so you can re-use them from year to year. You can track your income goals, audience goals, product creation goals, products to release/promote and your content publishing.

Combined with the daily and weekly planners, you are guaranteed to stay on track with your goals.

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Related posts:   Goal Setting for Online Marketers – Part 1