One of the first things you need to do when starting an online business or a new marketing campaign is to determine what your online marketing goals are. Do you want to increase sales conversions, get more traffic, improve your reputation or expand your brand? It is very important to understand that for a goal to become a reality, it needs to be specific, measurable, attainable, and realistic, as well as time specific. These are called SMART goals.

Potential Online Marketing Goals

First create a general list of goals, and then get more specific. A potential list of goals is below; yours will be different and based on your products, services and possibilities.

* Generate More Sales – While this may seem like an obvious goal, it’s important to state exactly how many more sales you want to achieve, in what period of time, and for what product.

* Expand Online Presence – Every business today needs an online presence but the larger you build it, the more attention you’ll get, and the more money you’ll earn.

* Increase Website Traffic – You want targeted website traffic, not just more website traffic, to ensure that you reach your other goals.

* Get More Social Media Followers – More social media follows engaging with your posts can lead to an increase in so many other business indicators.

* Generate Leads – You want to nurture leads that can turn into sales.

* Grow Authority – The more authoritative your online presence, the better for all your other goals.

Making Your Goals SMART

The next step is to make your goals SMART. These points will help steer you in the right direction.

* Specific – If you can’t name what you want to accomplish in precise terms, it will be hard to know whether or not you’ve even achieved success. It’s important to note whether or not you want to increase traffic, get more subscribers, or establish yourself as an authority, so that you’re not acting without any knowledge of where you’re going.

* Measurable – If you can’t provide a number detail to your goal, how will you know whether or not you achieved the results you wanted? To translate that, consider stating that you want to increase subscribers to 1400 starting from 800.

* Attainable – It’s important to know your audience enough to know if what you are shooting for is possible. Look back on the past as a good indicator of how well your future campaigns will go for your particular audience.

* Realistic – If you have a goal of increasing subscribers, but you’re not leading them to your newsletter form sign-up, then you’re not being very realistic. Each campaign and goal must match each action that you take.

* Time – If you don’t set a time limit, you may never achieve your goal because you will be too tempted to procrastinate. Set deadlines that are realistic for the project that you’re doing, based on your industry and past experience.

Making SMART goals part of your repertoire will increase your success exponentially. The reason is that you will have an actual final goal as something you’re shooting for in order to succeed, instead of not having a clue where you are going. Plus, you’ll be able to study the results to see if it worked. If it did not work, you’ll be able to find ways to adjust for the future.