Setting objectives and goals for your business is essential. It will not only allow you to determine where you’d like your business to go, but it will also help you evaluate your progress in getting there.
Here are a few key objectives and goals to set in your business.
Mission statement
A mission statement describes the key objective in your business, the purpose.
It captures the essence of your target market and says why you’re business exists.
It puts in a single concise statement why you’re in business and what you plan to accomplish in your business.
Marketing objectives
Marketing objectives are the goals you have for marketing your business. Ask yourself what marketing objectives will help you achieve your mission.
This might include things like:
- “Reaching 100 new people per week who are interested in purchasing what we sell.”
- “Getting 20 new calls for our services per week.”
Once you know what your marketing objectives are you’ll be able to see more clearly what you’ll need to do to achieve those objectives.
For the examples above this might be:
- “Get new leads from an advertisement on my local television station for people interested in our products.”
- “Put our business in online directories and promote our business on Google so that it’s the first result when people are looking for a similar service in our area.”
Goals
It’s important to set specific concrete goals in your business.
Your goals relate to how you will increase sales, demand for your product, awareness of your services, and how to maintain customer loyalty.
It’s essential to determine both short and long term goals before you start your business.
One of the best ways to set goals is to be sure to include how you’ll achieve them and measure them and in what time frame you expect to achieve them.
This is setting a “SMART” goal.
SMART stands for:
- Specific: A well defined and focused goal
- Measurable: A goal that is measurable
- Attainable: Something you can achieve and isn’t too much too quickly
- Relevant: Goals relevant to the current reality of your business and the economy
Time-based: Goals with a specific time frame for achievement