Setting objectives is an important part of any plan; without objectives you will have no direction, measurement for success or ability to focus on areas to improve in the future. It’s well documented that objectives should be SMART:

Specific

What exactly are you trying to achieve? E.g. Increase market share? Raise brand/product awareness?

Measurable

How will you measure the objective? E.g. Market share has gone up? Increase is sales? More inbound enquiries?

Achievable/Attainable

Can you achieve these objectives or are they to ambitious? If they are, perhaps they need to be broken down a little further for the short/medium term, but it’s ok to have more aggressive objectives for a longer period too.

Realistic

Are they realistic for your brand/organisation? E.g. If you’re a technology start up it’s unrealistic to think you will be competing with Apple after 6 months! Likewise you don’t want to under stretch yourself either.

Targeted/Time bound

Who is the audience and over what period does the objective need to be achieved? E.g. UK, by close of 2013

SMART Examples

The SMART framework can be used to set objectives in the corporate/business plan, marketing plan and down to the brand and communications plan. Here are some examples of SMART objectives:

-    Increase UK market share by 5% by close of 2015
-    Increase UK sales by 7% throughout 2013
-    Raise brand awareness score by 20% in 2012
-    Add 1000 Twitter followers to brand account in 2012
-    Reduce bounce rate on website to less than 60% by close of 2013

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