What are our target achievements? How do we get there?

 Author : William Royal

In this Part 3, of our blog series on SOSTC we will look at Objectives & Strategy

Every small business will have goals and targets they want to achieve to make their business a success. Defining these goals and how what steps you need to take to achieve them is one of the most challenging parts of creating your Marketing Strategy

 

Objectives

Every small business should set objectives for different stages of the online customer life-cycle. These objectives should have both long-term and short-term targets.

A starting point for any business to begin creating objectives would be to use the 5 S Plan.

This plan created by PR Smith refers to Sell, Speak, Serve, Save and Sizzle.

Sell is basically to grow sales. Speak: how can we get closer to our customers? Serve: how can we add value? Save – saving costs, Sizzle- how can we grow the brand digitally?

Below is a short explanation on this from Chaffey and Ellis- Chadwick 2012 *

 

Next when creating the objectives, we need to ensure they are SMART, what does this mean you may be asking?

S – SPECIFIC

Unclear objectives can lead to major issues and will impact success of your marketing strategy and your overall business results. It is imperative that your objectives are specific. For example: Increase sales by 10% by end of the year 2021

M -Measurable

What does success for your business look like? How do you know if an objective is achieved? This is why all objectives must be measurable and track able

 

A – Achievable

You must ensure that the objectives you set for your business are realistic and that they are attainable, based on your past performance and current constraints, plus resources

 

R – Relevant

All objectives should be relevant to what the business wants to achieve. If objectives are not relevant, then even if you achieve them, they may not have any positive impact to your business.

 

T – Time related

You should set a specific time period for each of your objectives. This ensures every objective has an end date and is not continual until you have succeeded.

 

More information on SMART objectifies can be viewed in the below video from Curriculum Wadhwani**

Now once you have your objectives created the next question you have to ask yourself, how can you achieve these objectives? What does the business need to do to achieve them? What is our strategy?

 

Strategy

Depending on the objective you will then need to create a strategy to enable your business to successfully achieve each objective .

The strategy will involve analyzing all of the information you obtained in the Situation Analysis section of your SOSTAC model .

Once you fully review and understand your Situation Analysis, then using this along with your Objectives you should be able to create a strategy

 

In our next blog we will look at Tactics , Action & Control

If you found this blog beneficial why not check out our other SOSTAC blogs :

·        How do I start creating a digital strategy : https://digitalmarketingspecialists7.blogspot.com/2021/04/how-to-start-creating-marketing-strategy.html

·         SOSTAC – Situation Analysis – What does it involve?

https://digitalmarketingspecialists7.blogspot.com/2021/04/sostac-situation-analysis-what-does-it.html

 

Reference List:

Chaffey and Ellis- Chadwick 2012 : the benefits of digital marketing 5S. Available From : https://silo.tips/download/so-what-s-this-session-all-about

Curriculum Wadhwani 2013 : How to set smart objectives. Available from : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6o5PyJM3bY&ab_channel=CurriculumWadhwani

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