Short Term Business and Marketing Goals Short Term Business Goals

Looking into the future of your business you likely envision growing it, establishing yourself as a respected entrepreneur and turning a profit. These are your long term goals. So, what do you do in the meantime? In order to reach those long term goals of success, you must first build a marketing plan and establish short term business and marketing goals.

 Here are some examples to get you started.Short term business goals and marketing strategies range from increasing sales by 20% a month to hosting events to successfully advertising a promotion. Short term goals are the ones that you want to accomplish in 6 months or less. These goals generally make it from start to finish in a matter of days, weeks, or months.

Short term goals for a business are actionable and have the advantage of being flexible. If one short term goal isn’t working, you can change or tweak your strategy to try something new and see more results. You can more easily judge the success of your short term marketing objectives with things like email reports or tracking results through tracked links.

To get a head start on your short term planning, here are some examples below of short term goals for a business and how you can implement them.

Growing Social Media Presence

Having a healthy number of followers on various social media platforms supports a myriad of business initiatives and is an easy metric to quantify.

Start optimizing your posts by using keywords related to your business and be sure you’re using each social media platform in a unique way. Posting identical information on your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram will get old, fast.
Designating each platform to a specific objective will help with this. For instance, use Facebook to promote events and promotions, Instagram to showcase your product and the people who use it and Twitter to connect on a personal level with your followers (Twitter is much better at fostering direct interaction).

Promoting an Event

Another short term business goal would be to successfully host and promote an event. This could be measured in a few ways, depending on what you’re wanting to get out of it.

• How many people attended the event?
• How many net new customers provided you with contact information after the event?
• Did you see a clear return on your investment from your promotion efforts?

Knowing even only these three things after an event will clue you in as to whether or not people are perceiving any value in attending or if you’re new promoting technique is either lackluster or killing it!

Social Media Contests and Giveaways

Running a contest via social media helps your customer feel like they have direct contact with your business and can bring in new customers and clients. Social media contests are a very short term business goal because most contests run for just a week. If growing your client base or social media presence is on your radar, social media contests, like Facebook contests and Instagram giveaways, can help you get there.

Organizing a Facebook or Instagram giveaway for your social media followers creates additional interaction with the consumer and allows you to flex a little extra marketing muscle. A social media contest can help you promote a sale, build your email database or just earn your brand some extra “cool-company” points!

Sending Email Blasts or Newsletters

Steadily providing your customers with valuable insider information can be significant in how they perceive your value as a business. Choosing to implement regular email blasts or newsletters is one of the most popular short term goals because email marketing works well for small businesses.

Whatever you do, make sure you’re consistent with your email marketing. Set a regular cadence and be consistent. Don’t overwhelm yourself, but try setting a goal of one email per week or month or whatever is going to work best for you—just keep consistent. If you’re looking to get into email marketing, here are someemail newsletter topics to give you inspiration.

Posting More on Social Media

The method behind an effective email blast or newsletter holds true for social media posting. Creating a schedule for yourself will help you meet this short term marketing objective.

Keeping a regular presence on social media gives the impression to your followers that you’re an active business. Interacting with your followers and encouraging consumer generated content allows you to stay relevant as well as save yourself time and money. If your followers see that you have a strong presence on social media, they’re more likely to engage with your business and become customers.

Hashtag Marketing to Engage with Customers

Another example of a short term business goal is connecting and engaging with your customers. Connecting with your customers and influencing them to reciprocate can be tough, especially for a budding business. Springboard over this hurdle and encourage people to be a part of a larger conversation by using hashtags for your business.

In addition to using hashtag marketing, you should create your own business hashtag to encourage users to engage and follow along. Business hashtags are unique and a fun and easy way to get customers engaged. Creating your own hashtag makes it easy to organize and find customer photos related to your business as well.

Make it a short term goal to create a hashtag that’s exclusive to your business as a whole and see how well it helps increase your social media following. Or, tack one on to a promotion and find out if it makes a difference in your sales. If it does, consider creating a unique hashtag for future promotions and events!

Increase Brand Awareness

Increasing brand awareness typically falls under a long term goal but we mention it here because there are so many small, attainable goals within this initiative. Creating awareness doesn’t take a big budget a crazy marketing—you create awareness by being consistent with small marketing efforts.

A few ways to increase brand awareness and name recognition include:

• Creating a mobile friendly website,
• Having a recognizable and unique logo,
• Establishing a brand presence at local events, or
• Sponsoring local charities.

Each of these items can be added to your small business’s marketing plan as individual short term endeavors.

Related: 6 Example Marketing Plans

Promoting a New Product or Service

This particular short term goal pops up organically. You’re only going to promote a new product or serviceonce you have something new to promote! This is a short term goal that creeps up on most business owners.

If you’re thinking about launching something new, it’s important to have a clear objective in mind. That could mean selling a particular amount of the new offering within the first month of launch or hosting an event to introduce the new product to customers.

Choosing your short term goals will not look the same for every business. When deciding which route to take, be sure to keep your long term goals in mind. Your short term business and marketing strategy should sync up to and support the big picture. Always keep your marketing plan in mind when planning activities otherwise you run the risk of wasting time and money. What are your short term business and marketing goals? Let us know in the comments below!

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