2nd Quarter SMART Goal Setting Strategy

*8-Minute Read*

Whether you’re a business owner or part of a marketing team, understanding and setting SMART business and marketing goals are absolutely essential. Goal setting is one of the ways you can ensure that your business is meeting your milestones for success. Regardless of your business type or how much revenue it generates, you can always improve upon your success with SMART goal setting.

The purpose of setting goals is to:

Ensure that your business can grow consistently over time
Get organized and a sense of direction
Manage your team effectively
Set the stage for the next phase of controlled growth

You may think that goal setting is an annual process, and yes it can be. However, the entire process should be conducted more often than once per year. You’ll need to set goals for the quarters, months, and weeks of the year as well.

Breaking down goals into such small pieces will allow you to be able to calculate, and control the way your business grows.

For starters, get goal planning done for the next quarter before the start of each quarter. With the 2nd quarter coming up, it’s the perfect time to settle down and establish a killer plan with SMART goals to ensure growth. If it sounds overwhelming, don’t fret. We’re here to help you plan for the 2nd quarter.

Here you will find some of the most important goals for your business in the next quarter. Before we get down to the goals, let’s first talk about what SMART goals are.

What Is A Smart Goal?

SMART goal setting is a technique that is highly effective due to its quantifiable output after completion. Most businesses, especially small-medium businesses, adopt this technique to ensure that business growth is controlled and comes steadily. Establishing SMART goals allows you to have a precise plan for growth in order to alleviate the risk of wasting time on fruitless efforts.

So what exactly are SMART goals? The acronym S.M.A.R.T can help you formulate your own SMART goals:

Goals that are SPECIFIC: Meaning having a clear definition of what needs to be accomplished.
Goals that are MEASURABLE: Meaning that the targets and milestones have been identified so that progress can be tracked.
Goals that are ATTAINABLE: Meaning setting goals that are achievable and manageable.
Goals that are RELEVANT: Having a goal that fits in with your business model.
Goals that are Time-bound: Meaning having a timeline to achieve goals and milestones.

Incorporating this goal-setting strategy will allow you to ensure steady growth during the second quarter and beyond. Let’s check out some of the business-related goals that you might consider adopting in the 2nd quarter.

Reducing Business Expenses

A vital part of the survival of many small businesses is their ability to minimize expenses. Consider reducing your business expenses to include those that are only absolutely necessary. When setting up your business expense budget for the next quarter, first make a list of the things that you need but may be able to reduce the cost. For example, paying for a CRM system for 1,000 contacts when you only have 100 is asinine. Contact the company to inquire about reducing your monthly rate or the availability of a free plan.

Consider also the business expenses that can be eliminated by going paperless. Are you printing proposals/contracts to send to clients or allocating funds for business cards and other marketing material? The content in these types of documents or materials can usually be delivered to prospects via email. Are you running ads on social media or online that have not produced a good ROI? Are there expenses for tools, supplies, or software that you’re just not finding very useful?

Examine your bank statements to learn more about recurring fees for services that you are not using anymore. These may not be your issues specifically, however, most of us are in some way paying for things that are not absolutely essential to our business function. Be sure to review your expenses monthly in order to keep expenses low.

Implementing Changes To Increase Productivity

Oftentimes you’ll find that a business is focused on setting goals that relate to revenue growth. However, before jumping to establishing these types of goals you should first ensure that you have a hardworking team of people who can “get the job done.” Are our team members inefficient at doing their job? Well, it’s time to ramp up the work and increase productivity. A great goal to consider in this case is establishing periodic performance reviews that will allow you to track productivity and work with team members to improve their ability to meet goals.

Have conversations with your managers about how to better streamline your work processes. Also, ask them to provide feedback about things that may be becoming distractions in the workforce. Lastly, look at ways for you to improve communication with clients, employees, and other stakeholders.

Driving Traffic To Blogs & Landing Pages

Driving traffic to blogs and landing pages is how you get more sales and grow customer loyalty. If you ask any expert they will say that this goal is one of the most important for every small business out there. Now one of the ways you can ensure traffic is through content.

You should revamp and update your content marketing strategy for the 2nd quarter. Make sure you have killer content ready for the quarter that your target demographic will love. You need to ensure that your content is relevant and engaging enough for visitors coming into the money pages and blog of your business.

After you have the content ready you should also create a plan to handle customer input that may come in. You should most definitely have a way to handle customer complaints should any come through.

Greater Social Media Marketing Efforts

Often we think we have our marketing efforts sorted but then find out it wasn’t good enough. Now, this has been the case with many small businesses and social media marketing. Social media is a huge part of everyone’s lives. This means that your customers are all very active on social media.

Not having an aggressive social media marketing effort is like leaving money on the table. So this 2nd quarter you should be looking to utilize all the social media channels to drive traffic to your business. Social media is not only about bringing in money but it’s also a vital part of ensuring sustainable growth.

Utilizing social media properly can mean that you sell, retain, provide customer service, and build relationships with your customers. So make sure you take all these factors into account when creating your social media plan.

Taking Care Of Your Business Finances

Do you have a handle on the finances of your business? Are you monitoring the revenue and expenditure of your company? Well, this would be a great time to start. With April 15 being the last tax filing date for businesses, now is the perfect time to get your company finance in order.

Try to modify your accounts receivable process, get rid of zero-usage inventory, try leasing instead of buying, etc. Along with that, clear out your tax filings and get the profile ready beforehand, so that you don’t rush anything. Make sure you utilize a “tax write-off checklist” to make sure you pay the right amount.

You can check out important information regarding deadlines here. Now doing the taxes, especially for your business can be confusing and laborious with so many forms and codes to think about.

If you are not careful you can easily miss some cost-saving opportunities. So make sure you get a “tax write-off checklist” when doing your taxes during the second quarter.

Develop Your Brand

Often small business owners overlook the fact that their brand can bring recognition and growth to their business. Your ability to stand out in the crowd will help your business get more customers. So make sure to create a plan for your brand.

If you are already working on it, then great. However, if you haven’t started already, then this is the time to do it. Make it a goal for this quarter and make sure you have a solid plan in hand to boost your credibility this quarter and you will reap great benefits, trust me.

An Efficient Quarter

There you go, those are some of the goals you should adopt for your small business for this 2nd quarter of 2020. Adopting all the SMART goals here will ensure steady growth for your small business. Make sure you create a thorough plan with all the goals with attainable milestones and don’t forget to file your taxes.

That brings us to the end of our discussion. Let us know in the comments below if you are having trouble setting up SMART goals for your business. We can help you figure out a killer plan. Till then, See ya!