Strategic goal setting

April 14th, 2011

Marc Iannacone

The key to achieving success with a brand management framework starts with goal setting methodology. Making the goals ‘intelligent goals’ is so often overlooked. What are some of the common traits of intelligent goals which are key to this space? It’s a broad discussion so I’ll limit this piece to to three characteristics of ‘intelligent goals’.

The first I suggest is that if you place a brand in the digital context is that you have no excuse for not being accountable. The internet, mobile devices, servers…are all rich with data. So much data that the process of filtering it and finding the relevant pieces is daunting. However, the first intelligent chracteristic is to set ‘measurable goals’.

Being measurable goes against being esoteric, which is one of the frustrations that many people have with brand. Often the inability to understand the premise with brand comes with the assumption that brand is esoteric and ‘fluffy’. While that might be true of the values of a brand (let’s hope not), the digital space can make your brand wonderful. It can work hard, and you can measure its results.

Choose goals that can have a measure assigned.

This could be as simple as increase our number of facebook followers by this date; or as complex as a social media peer index measure to gather social mindshare.

The second characteristic of goal setting is to set goals that take you in the direction you want to go. This sounds like common sense but it’s amazing how often this is overlooked. Setting a goal like “let’s have more people talking about our brand”, does not align the goal with a reason for doing it. The digital space is a great place for growing mindshare with multiple ways of doing so, but without structure, a goal like this can be damaging.

Have a clear business benefit attached to the goal.

By understanding the reasons for achieving the goal, we can then manifest its attainment.

The third characteristic is realism. There is a difference between an achievable goal and a brand ambition. Achieving the goals takes you towards the achievement of an ambition, but those goals need to be real given the circumstances you operate in and the resources which you are willing to commit to it. Spitting out overly ambitious goals might be great for stirring up a room for a positive reaction, but they will come to be hated by the people tasked with achieving them; and soon end up in the too hard basket.

The Internet is ablaze with some amazing stories (Will it blend being the oft-quoted example) of people achieving great things with minimal budgets. What goes un-discussed though, is the hard work required to make those things happen. Giving someone limited budget, limited time or limited internal commitment to a goal simply squeezes the ability for it to be achieved.

Create goals that you can commit to, that compliment a roadmap to your bigger ambitions.

The great thing about Content Search Social, is that it’s a great model for anyone who has ever been frustrated by the Internet space. The ability to translate business requirements into achievable goals and action points has never been easier; and the ability to integrate outcomes as data into your planning and ‘brand changes’ so to speak exists. It’s a great method for digital branding of the ‘organisation’.