Episode 06: How to Plan Marketing Goals You’ll Actually Achieve

Tiffany Barry (00:00):
Welcome to the Passion to Profit show, where we talk about how to scale your passionate business into a profitable empire. I’m Tiffany Barry, a marketing expert and relationship marketing enthusiast. Join me for 20 minutes or less every week to talk about business, scaling up CEO, mindset, freedom and flexibility for entrepreneurs level up to six and seven figures. Let’s get started. Welcome to this week’s episode of passion to profits. This week, we’re gonna be talking about how to plan and actually achieve your marketing goals this year. Now that we are firmly in the new year, I am sure you have some goals. You have thought about what you want to get out of this year. You’ve thought about how you want this year to go. You’ve thought about you, may you, hopefully you’ve you’ve started taking action. So here’s how to do that for your marketing. And we’re gonna talk about why it’s so crucial for your success and how to actually make stuff happen.

Tiffany Barry (01:12):
Now, marketing is crucial to sustainable success in your business because it’s the awareness factor. It’s getting leads coming consistently. It’s showing up in all the places so people can find you, right, but too often marketing goals look like I wanna get more followers or I wanna be more consistent. So if you have big plans for your business, and that’s the kind of goal that you’ve set for yourself, something really general and, um, maybe a little vague, uh, there is a chance that you’re making it harder for yourself to actually succeed, to actually hit any milestones because those aren’t really great marketing goals, right? You’ve gotta get really clear about what you want. You’ve gotta know why you want to achieve those goals and you need to get smart about how to set them. So that’s what we’re talking about today. And by the way, I absolutely have something to help you.

Tiffany Barry (02:16):
I have a handy goal planning, cheat sheet, ready to help you out. I’m gonna include the link in the show notes and the podcast as, so you can head to Tiffanyebarry.com go to the podcast section and you can grab that. All right. Now, when you’re setting marketing goals, clarity is paramount, but we’re not talking about just finding a sense of clarity and feeling great about it, right? Because those feelings are temporary clarity without action and follow through is pretty useless. let’s just be real here. It’s pretty useless. It’s, it’s kind of like a, a guaranteed way to fill yourself up with this amazing feeling and then watch it slowly, fade away, leaving you feeling like a total failure, right? It’s kind of, um, like you think about going to the beach, filling your hands up with sand, you know, the dry sand that just takes so much time to trudge through to get to packed beach sand, right?

Tiffany Barry (03:20):
You’re filling your sand, your hands up with that sand. And then you’re watching it solely slips the cracks. So when you’re setting marketing goals, you wanna get massive clarity, um, figure out exactly what you wanna achieve in your business, and then immediately hone your focus into that. So think about things like what’s your core mission, what opportunities in your life do you want your business to give you what tasks and to dos in your business, fill you up? What doesn’t, what do you wanna do more of in your business? What do you wanna do less? Right. Think about where you want your business to go so that, um, you’re kind of setting yourself up for, uh, the anti shiny object syndrome, right? Not all the shiny objects that are floating, floating around. You will distract you when you have that. Why? You know, so when you’re answering those questions, I always recommend to my students and my clients to find a few mental that really resonate with them, tune into their message and then tune out the rest.

Tiffany Barry (04:26):
I can tell you that I speak with more students and clients who are on information overload than any other issue. It is the number one issue that I see in my marketing practice is information overload. People come to me, we sit on a discovery call or we’re, we’re doing a connect call or coffee chat. And you know, it’s like, I’ve tried everything. I’m downloading all the freebies, I’m doing this and this and this. And the thing is, and any, any strategy that aligns with your business and your needs and your audience will work any of them, if you wanna go all ads and evergreen funnels it’ll work. If you wanna go organic and social selling and networking it’ll work. But when you’re trying to do pieces of all of it, nothing will work. All right. So tune into the message of mentors that you resonate with and tune the rest out.

Tiffany Barry (05:29):
The online space is so loud and there are any number of knowledgeable and not so knowledgeable gurus and specialists and coaches and mentors, ready to share the, your experience in methods. And it’s really easy to try to listen to all of it and you’ll find yourself getting absolutely nowhere. All right, work, a strategy, stick with it. Find something you vibe with vibe with tune into that work, that strategy, work, that method be consistent and dedicated long term. That is probably the biggest takeaway. If I could get you to, to take something away from this, this podcast episode, that’s the biggest one. All right. Because like I said, the truth is any strategy that aligns with your business will work any of them. All right. Now, a few tips for planning this overarching marketing goal. Okay. First of all, it’s okay to have more than one goal.

Tiffany Barry (06:29):
It really is. You might have, you know, um, I, I spoke on a sales call last week with a client, um, who actually ended up signing with, um, one on one. And I don’t take on many one on one clients, um, uh, nowadays, and, and, you know, she wanted to build her authority and grow her audience. She wasn’t really concerned about ROI at this point, she’s making money, she’s doing fine. She wants to start building. an authority becoming a go-to expert. All right. So you can have more than one goal, but keep them under the same umbrella, you know, have them all be kind of related to each other because when you focus on too many different goals at one time, you can really cause confusion with, um, you know, what should you be focusing on? You can get frustrated and ultimately that’ll just result in a lack of progress.

Tiffany Barry (07:22):
Okay. Now the third, uh, quick tip is to keep this goal simple and meaningful, meaningful goals are those that actively influence your business growth or revenue. And they’re really actionable. You want your goals to be things that you can actually achieve. Okay. Now, as you are setting this goal, you’re gonna be thinking about how we are going to set the goal and take action right now. I’m a huge fan. I know not everyone is I am a huge fan of smart goals. Um, and I’m gonna talk a little bit about what those are just second, for those of you who are not familiar. Um, but the reason why you should be thinking about goal then action plan is kind of step one, set the goal. Step two, create an action plan is because it kind of serves as a fail safe for the days when it’s really hard or the motivation just isn’t there let’s be honest.

Tiffany Barry (08:16):
Motivation is sometimes something we have to bring to the party ourselves. Right, right. so it, so having that action plan is that fail safe, right? It also gives you deadlines and metrics to keep you on track and moving forward. And that’s so important because you know, there, if you don’t set a deadline for yourself, and if you don’t set way to measure progress, then you know, you don’t have a way to measure your success. And at the end of the day, you don’t have anything to look back on and say, yeah, we achieved the thing we set out to achieve right now, your goal setting action plan should also list roadblocks and challenges so that you can manage your expectations and, and actually prepare for what’s up ahead. Okay. And then you need to break down those big goals into actionable steps and milestones.

Tiffany Barry (09:11):
Now, all of these things that I’m telling you, all these, that your action plan, your marketing goal action plan should have, these are listed on that goal, cheat sheets, that goal plan or cheat sheet that I mentioned at the very beginning of this episode, that you can download for free, um, at the link in the show notes. So I’ll share that to make sure that you can grab it, but you can also just write them down on a piece of paper, put them in your calendar, put them in your journal. The, the free download is really just a tool. Um, but at the end of the day, the actual items, you know, that is that’s gonna be the, the most important thing. Okay. Now my, I said, my favorite way to set goals is creating smart goals. So let’s segue a little bit and talk about that.

Tiffany Barry (10:02):
I love to set smart goals because I think it’s a really great built in system to make sure that your goals are kind of designed from the ground up to be effective and attainable. And I know there’s a lot of approaches to goals. Smart goals may not be your thing if they are not replace this section with something that is effective for you. Um, but for me, it’s really important to break down my goals into something that’s very specific. Something that’s met, measurable, attainable, relevant to my business, and timebound, which means there’s a deadline. And if you’re keeping track of the acronym that spells smart S M a R T specific measurable, attainable relevant timebound um, so I feel like the best goals are smart goals. They’re specific without, um, overly broad. Your progress can actually be measured. Your setting goals that are actually attainable, a challenge.

Tiffany Barry (11:03):
You should absolutely be challenging yourself, but they’re attainable. Okay? It’s not like you’re sitting at $2,000 a month in revenue with $0 to invest in anything. And you’re saying, I’m gonna make a million dollars at the end of the year. You could, but is it, is it going to be highly probable? Probably not. Now, if you’re sitting at $2,000 a month in, uh, in revenue and you are going to invest all $2,000 in Facebook ads for the first month and then reinvest for the next six months, could you, could you hit a million possibly, you know, if you can hire on a bunch of team, uh, team members to help you, if you’ve got capital. Yeah. There are lots of ways that you can do crazy big goals, but you wanna look at your circumstances and you wanna see, okay, what’s gonna be a challenge for me, but still attainable.

Tiffany Barry (11:57):
And what’s gonna be relevant for my business right now, along with creating a goal that is a smart goal, right? I talk about building in your fail, safe, all right. You’re fail safe is your why. And, and it’s not your overarching business. Why it’s not the, why did I start my business for my kids, et cetera, right? It’s, it’s the, why is this goal something I can stay focused on? Because staying focused is hard. You wanna make sure this goal is meaningful. So why you wanna list out why is this important to you? And on the cheat sheet that I mentioned that you can download, there is a section for that. Why? Right. It helps you stay clear of all those shiny objects, cuz that’s hard. That’s really hard. Keeping motivation going is also hard, but your goal is really important and achieving it means big for your business.

Tiffany Barry (12:54):
Okay. Especially when we’re talking about marketing goals, because marketing is visibility, marketing is lead generation marketing is more clients, more revenue, more customers, more money in your pocket. Okay. So marketing goals are hugely impactful for your business. So building that fail safe for when the going gets tough, cuz it will, it will. All right. And think about why achieving this goal is so important. How will it affect, how will, uh, achieving this goal affect your business in a positive way? How will you benefit it? What is your motivation? Um, you know, why is this a priority for you? These are all really keys to staying focused on your goal. Um, you know, why it matters and um, and, and how, how it’s going to affect your life when you achieve it. Now, another thing I wanna talk about when we’re talking about setting goals and being consistent, building in your fail, safe, uh, is how to stay on track.

Tiffany Barry (13:55):
All right. Consistently staying on track. It’s something I personally struggle with. I talk about it all the time. It’s one of the hardest aspects of achieving your goals. It’s really easy to set the goal. It’s really easy to spend all this time, creating milestones and dreaming about life. Once you’ve achieved it, it is much harder to take consistent action. And this is where deadlines and KPIs. Um, that’s key performance indicators are basically the metrics that you’re using to measure your goal. This is where those come into play. When you’re creating a goal, set, a start date and a deadline bone. If you find an accountability partner or a community to help you stay on track in, um, the skyrockets, a profit program that I run, that’s my marketing program. Um, we create a monthly thread in slack to announce track and celebrate goals every month.

Tiffany Barry (14:55):
So it’s a really great way to get support when you need it and share your triumphs when things are going great. Um, you know, and helps everyone kind of stay accountable to one another. Um, so, you know, if you are not part of my marketing coaching program, find a network group, um, you know, find a Facebook group that you can be a part of. So maybe start a little pod in like a Facebook group message that’s private or Instagram group message. That’s private. Um, just find a, a support network for people who are invested, you know, just a small niche group of people, right? So aside for deadlines and accountability tracking, the right metrics is key. So I talked about KPIs just a second ago. All right. So I’m gonna expand on that a little bit. So make sure to keep an eye on the metrics that actually move the needle for your goal.

Tiffany Barry (15:45):
So for example, more followers properly, isn’t the best metric to track if your marketing goal is to get more clients from social media, instead your engagement rate, your DM response rate, even link clicks from your bio would be great metrics to track your followers. Uh I, you know, we, um, when I was, when I was still running my marketing agency under the brand umbrella, I’ve since moved it under, um, I don’t take many agency one-on-one clients anymore because I have my group program, but, um, and that’s all episode for a whole nother day. But when, um, when, when we were running our Instagram, I mean, I think we had 300 max and I was making multi six figures and I had a team of like 10 people. So, you know, if followers are not the best metric to track, if you know you want more clients, um, so think about, what’s gonna be the essential numbers for you to watch those become your KPIs, those become your metrics, track them over time to see how you’re doing.

Tiffany Barry (16:56):
Okay. Now I have two more things I wanna talk about. So if you , if you’re listening, hang in there, um, first is how to set yourself up for success by having just better expectations. And then finally, I wanna talk about some of the key, um, stakes that I see being made that, and that, that you can know to avoid, right? So challenges are gonna happen. All right, there’s gonna be times where you’re gonna hit a roadblock. So set yourself up for success. As you’re creating this marketing goal, as you’re making this action plan by making a list of roadblocks and challenges that you expect to encounter and then make a plan for how you’ll deal with them. Some of these might require some mindset work and then to keep moving, others may require a more strategic shift or a delegation or outsourcing. So not only by doing this, not only are you helping to better prepare for those issues, but you’re also managing your expectations around them.

Tiffany Barry (17:56):
And that is I think even more key. All right, when you do encounter a barrier, you’ve gotta plan that. I mean, think about that. That is huge, right? It becomes a barrier to overcome rather than a barrier to your success. All right. Take it all one step at a time. And if you hire a coach or a strategist or invest in a program like sky rocket to profit, look at finding somebody or some or a program that, that fixes a problem, like a specific need, like addresses a specific need. I found that in cases like this, that is gonna give you the most success. All right. If you’re feeling overwhelmed or you need that system, or you need accountability, find that specific thing. I am not a fan of like broad, you know, here’s how to start a business kind of courses. I think that just doesn’t apply to everybody, but like, I’m really a huge fan of like, I’m gonna hire a business strategist or I’m gonna hire a marketing coach, or I’m going to hire a sales coach right now.

Tiffany Barry (19:06):
There’s three big mistakes that people make. Right? First thing that I see a lot of people doing, especially with marketing goals is they don’t set realistic or tangible goals. So their goals are often so outrageous that they’re never gonna make them, or they’re really vague and unclear. The second big mistake I see is people focus on the big overarching goal, but they miss the milestones, they set a big goal, and then they don’t set smaller achievable milestones. So this all too often leads to, you know, motivation, fatigue, or, you know, just the, the energy to consistently work toward that goal. Just kind of fizzles out. And that’s unfortunate. And now the third and final mistake that I see not final, but I guess the third big mistake that I see is, um, people don’t really set them up, set themselves up for success and they go it alone.

Tiffany Barry (20:07):
Your chances of success are, are really in the single digit. This is data scientific. I need to go find the, the article where I read this stat, um, because they had an education, um, source like a, a paper where, you know, these scientists had sat down and done this math, but your chances of success are in the single digits, but they vault over 90% when you join some kind of a program or you have a mentor or accountability. So that’s where something like my skyrockets, a profit marketing program, um, there’s a few networking groups that I’ve been a part of as well. That’s where those kind of community those learning communities really, really come into play and can really help you avoid those big pitfalls and really set yourself up for success. So you’re not going it alone. All right. Okay.

Tiffany Barry (21:08):
So that’s all I wanna talk about today. um, like I said, if you are in that space where you’re creating your marketing goal and you are, um, you know, trying to create the action plan, uh, download the free goal cheat sheet, um, like I said, it’s to help you skip the hassle of trying to create your own goal planner, download the free cheat sheet, fill in your answers, and you’ll be well on your way to creating the ultimate goal action plan. So you can actually achieve even your biggest marketing goal. Thank you for joining me this week and I will see you soon. That’s it for this episode of passion to profit, if you found it helpful, insightful, or just entertaining subscribe, wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. And if you’re ready to scale your business from passion to six figure profits, don’t forget to watch the free masterclass tiffanyebarry.com/masterclass/.