What is SMART Digital Marketing? | Universal Creative Solutions

Digital marketing is key to any business’s success. Through smart digital marketing, you can reach a worldwide audience and grow your customer base more quickly and effectively than traditional marketing. At Universal Creative Solutions, we specialize in creative problem-solving to help your marketing reach its full potential. Learn how our smart approach to digital marketing can bolster your sales and build a strong relationship with your customers. Marketing campaigns come in many different forms, some good, some bad, and some downright awful. If you find your sales performance is suffering, it may be time to refresh your customer outreach program and campaigns.

SMART marketing is an acronym that describes our targeting approach to create effective campaigns that can reach your customers and drive sales. By implementing the five SMART points, your campaigns can maximize efficiency and turn potential customers into repeat business.

Each of the points below has a meaning on the customer-facing side and for your back-end marketing as well. So let’s have a look at how SMART Marketing can help your business.

Specific Marketing and Goals

Specific and deliberate marketing is essential for effective customer outreach. Sometimes, enthusiasm for your product may cause you to want to ramble on about it in an unfocused way. An unclear or unfocused message doesn’t just miss the mark but can also drive customers away. If your product has one or two features that make it unique, be sure to not only mention those features but highlight them in your marketing; be specific! The customer should have a clear idea of how your product or service can benefit them before your first conversation. Sales calls should answer particular questions from already interested potential customers, not lay the foundation that your marketing campaign missed.

An excellent specific advertisement doesn’t deluge an entire laundry list of every feature of your product or service. Instead, a focused and specific ad highlights a few key elements that truly make your product stand out from the crowd. On the back-end, you also want to be specific about your marketing success and goals. Don’t just aim for “more sales,” aim for “1,000 more sales at the end of the quarter,” and then plan accordingly.

Measurable Marketing Statistics

Regardless of your marketing strategy, you need accurate data to determine the success of your campaign. A SMART marketing campaign has measurable data-points that can be referenced, giving you a meaningful view of how your campaign performs. Data should include successful responses, previous interactions (if any), and other relevant demographics. Using this data, you can get an accurate representation of how you perform in specific areas and make changes where needed.

Rather than flying blind and taking guesses as to the next steps, you will have a clear path to follow and know exactly how to proceed and what to avoid in the future. Without this data, you will always be taking shots in the dark about which ads perform well and which could use improvement. We can help you develop a clear vision of who your primary market is and how to reach them effectively. Leave the gambling to Vegas casinos, and let us help you make smart choices using reliable and trustworthy marketing data.

Attainable Goals Lead to Success

When designing a digital marketing campaign, it’s easy to get carried away with overzealous expectations. However, it’s essential to keep your marketing realistic and attainable. Don’t try to reach every single demographic with one monolithic ad campaign. It’s much better to design several smaller, targeted, tenable campaigns. Keeping things manageable allows you to avoid getting bogged down in your messaging and proceed with clear intent and focus. It is also wise to keep your own sales goals achievable for you on the back-end of things. If you’re starting out, or amidst difficult times, don’t expect large sweeping sales numbers across the board. Keep your goals within reach, and you will be much more likely to achieve them.

Relevant Marketing is Key

Have you ever seen a commercial that left you thinking, “Who cares?” Relevance in advertising is crucial to your audience responding well to your message. Whether in text, audio, or video, your digital marketing campaigns need to paint a clear picture of what problem your product or service solves. At Universal Creative Solutions, we advise on smart marketing solutions through our marketing operations consulting to help you craft a relevant, concise message that facilitates optimal returns. With a relevant message, a potential customer will never need to be “convinced” to buy from you; they will already see your company as the solution to their current problem and will be much more willing to transition into a sale.

Time-Based Marketing Can Drive Sales

The final letter of our acronym, T, stands for time-based marketing. As the name suggests, time-based marketing refers to specific campaigns that have limited runs. Such advertisements are designed to take advantage of certain seasons (such as major holidays) or create customer urgency through limited-time discounts. These limited-time deals can be great motivators to get an interested customer to “pull the trigger” and make a purchase. Such discounts can also be an excellent opportunity to build a niche market, leading to reliable sales boosts at certain seasons throughout the year.

How to Set SMART Marketing Objectives

Each of the SMART goals can positively impact your marketing performance, and when combined, the difference can be quite dramatic. When setting these goals, considering certain factors can increase your likelihood of success.

Set a Reasonable Deadline and Stick to It

Just as time can play a role in motivating sales, time can also be a fantastic motivator for achieving goals. When a plan has a deadline, it is far more likely to be completed. If goals are just left floating free with no drive, no vision, and no deadline, then they can scarcely be called a goal at all.

Deadlines are crucial, not just for the big projects, but for the smaller goals as well. Setting reasonable but firm deadlines for each segment of a goal can avoid stagnation and keep the momentum high.

Now obviously, your deadline needs to be a reasonable one. It can be demoralizing to set harsh and unreasonable deadlines you can’t meet. Ideally, you want to set a deadline that pushes you just enough to keep things moving without adding undue stress. Needless to say, you’ll need to synchronize schedules between different departments or any other companies involved in your marketing campaign.

Reach Big Goals With Small Steps

It’s okay to set big goals. Having a big vision and dreams is healthy for a business. Without vision, companies will stagnate and crumble to dust. There should always be an infusion of fresh, new ideas to drive progress and encourage innovation. The key is how to reach those big goals. Sometimes the ambition to accomplish goals can lead to overzealousness. While you always want to be moving forward, you never want to “bite off more than you can chew” which can be disastrous. Instead, big goals can be achieved through small steps. Set small goals that serve as breadcrumbs, which eventually lead to a broad goal. This way, you can keep from becoming overwhelmed and stay focused on your marketing.

Challenge Yourself to Reach New Heights

Somewhat related to setting big goals, it’s important to keep challenging yourself, even after you experience success. The downfall of so many companies is to rest on past achievements and stop moving forward. But rather than becoming complacent, use your past accomplishments to encourage you to continue moving forward and reaching even higher levels of success. An example of this is when you reach your sales goal of 1,000 new customers at the end of the first quarter. That’s great! However, now continue forward and set a new goal for yourself. Don’t allow yourself to stagnate. What can you do to increase that number further? Keep growing.

When to Use SMART Goal Setting?

SMART goals have a wide variety of use cases and implementations. The most obvious time to implement SMART goals is when you see deficits in productivity. If your marketing goals are not being met and your sales are not meeting your projections, then it’s time to re-evaluate your current paradigm. You may also consider setting SMART goals if your marketing department is at a stand-still and has trouble making forward progress. As your company grows and evolves, things can slowly become convoluted if not closely monitored and maintained.

Another scenario where SMART goals are beneficial is if you are actively losing market share and can’t seem to figure out the cause. Such a situation can be stressful and somewhat disconcerting. However, it’s an excellent opportunity to regroup and implement new strategies. At Universal Creative Solutions, we can help get your digital marketing back on track with expert strategy consulting services. We can assist in creating effective marketing strategies that allow you to reach your full potential. Using our intelligent, data-driven marketing insight, you will be able to confidently proceed knowing that industry experts back each decision. Our marketing specialists have spent their lives understanding market trends and knowing how to navigate the ever-changing digital landscape.

Dos and Don’ts When Making a SMART Goal

As we’ve hinted at earlier, there are a few things to keep in mind when implementing SMART goals into your marketing. Our marketing operations consulting services can help you avoid these pitfalls, but we will briefly cover some of these dos and don’ts here.

DO: Follow through on your plan

It may seem obvious, but you would be surprised how many companies make plans and never follow through with them. SMART goals are not “set it and forget it”, they must be checked to ensure proper compliance and adequate oversight. For example, when setting deadlines, you should periodically check with your team to see how things are progressing, and if there are any issues that need addressing. Good follow-through dramatically increases the success rate of a SMART goal.

DO: Implement changes gradually when possible

Gradual change is typically better than a massive, swift overhaul. There are times when fast action is needed to correct serious problems, but a team will respond better to slower changes in most cases. Implementing large-scale changes all at once can quickly become unmanageable and present a haphazard and unprofessional appearance. Team members may show resistance to significant changes that happen without adequate time for adjustment. It may also be more challenging to adapt to many new operation methods, leading to confusion and frustration.

DON’T: Be afraid to ask for help

Pride is a killer. The temptation to try and handle everything yourself can be destructive and the burden can quickly become far too heavy. Our goal at Universal Creative Solutions is to help you achieve success by identifying and solving the problems that impede your success. We are here to help you. So don’t be afraid to reach out to us, and let us be that second pair of eyes providing the clarity you need to succeed.

DON’T: Give up

In many cases, the issues facing your marketing campaign did not manifest overnight, and some things may take some time to fix. Don’t give in to despair and give up. With some perseverance, good old-fashioned determination, and our expertise, your digital marketing will be turned-around.

It can be disheartening when you don’t see immediate improvement or success, but most healing takes time, and we have a proven data-model and track record of success. Quite simply, we know how to handle your digital marketing so that you will see results, even if it takes some time.

The Right Reporting Tools to Measure Goal Attainment

We back up all of our digital marketing with expert data and analysis. Accurate data reporting is the golden compass of marketing. If the data is wrong, then you can’t make correct decisions. We understand the importance of having reliable, trusted, real-time data to report exactly how a marketing campaign performs. This information can save you valuable marketing capital, as you can drop underperforming campaigns and focus more resources on the most beneficial advertising to your business. Stop throwing good money on bad marketing decisions, and stop chasing the wrong segment of customers. Using our highly detailed data reporting, you can gain valuable insight into who is most interested in your product and focus on growing your base.

Understanding Your Market and Customer Relations

We can use our highly-detailed data to identify specific opportunities in particular markets or at certain times. These opportunities generally go unnoticed when using traditional marketing analysis. Because our data is analyzed rapidly by industry-leading artificial intelligence, we can see minute details and project marketing shifts. Equipped with this data, you will be able to strategically position your company and your marketing to take full advantage of the latest trends as they happen, giving you an edge over your competition.

Additionally, we can create a completely customized Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system for your business. This CRM will give you detailed insights into how your customers view your business and be a valuable tool in analyzing potential leads. Let us put our consulting experts and cutting-edge tools to work for you and equip your marketing for the modern age.

Return on Investment

Our data reporting also includes detailed return on investment (ROI) reports so that you know which campaigns are an asset instead of a liability. Just because a marketing campaign is crafted well doesn’t mean your customers are responding to it. You need to know which campaigns are translating into real sales. This data is some of the most valuable information you can have because it directly deals with your bottom-line.

Our specialized data reporting tools will synergize customer data, leads, and sales to generate comprehensive, detailed reports. These reports give you a complete picture of how each aspect of your digital marketing performs, both individually and as part of the more extensive operation.

Search Engine Tracking

One aspect of campaign specific to digital marketing is search engine ranking and click-through-rate (CTR). Many companies underestimate the value of basic search engine placement and SEO ranking. However, if customers can’t find your website quickly, that often translates into a missed sale.

In our digital electronic age, attention spans are shorter than ever, and customers want results fast!

Our reports also include relevant data about how your websites and digital ads are performing in search engines. If you’re paying for ad placement on search engines, you should know whether those ads are being clicked. If they aren’t, why? And what can you do to improve their performance?

Our digital marketing team can offer expert suggestions to place you in the top results and improve your CTR across the board.