2 Detailed objectives

Structuring the detailed objectives

The detailed objectives are concrete shorter timescale objectives. They should be written according to the SMART criteria. SMART is a methodology to check objectives for validity. It will help to avoid an objective is formulated in an ambiguous way. 

For more reading about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria

 

Smart stands for Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic and Time-bound. (Depending on the author, sometimes different words are used for the "A" and "R". We will stick to this definition)
 

Let's build and example:

This objective is not a SMART one: An objective of 1000 customers buying from our webshop

And this one is already much more "SMART": An objective of 1000 unique customers a month buying from our webshop by Q1 2016

In the first example, it was not specific as the 1000 was not linked to any time period. This made the objective useless as it was likely to be misunderstood. Also the definition of "customer" was not clear. Adding "a month" makes the time period clear. What if one person did buy every day a couple of times. Should that count for 1 customers or many that month ? Adding "unique" helps here. 

 

Structure according to RACE

RACE is a structure intended to help digital marketers and e-commerce professionals to plan and manage their activities in a more structured way. 

We will structure our objectives according to the customer race cycle. This works especially well with the detailed objectives.

 

But let's first explain RACE:

 

 

RACE consists of four steps or online marketing activities designed to help brands engage their customers throughout the customer lifecycle.

1 Reach. Reach involves building awareness of a brand, its products and services on other websites and in offline media in order to build traffic by driving visits to different web presences like your main site, microsites or social media pages. It involves maximising reach over time to create multiple interactions using different paid, owned and earned media touchpoints.


2 Act. Act is short for Interact. It's a separate since encouraging interactions on websites and in social media to generate leads is a big challenge for online marketers.  It's about persuading site visitors or prospects take the next step, the next Action on their journey when they initially reach your site or social network presence. It may mean finding out more about a company or its products, searching to find a product or reading a blog post. You should define these actions as top-level goals of the funnel in analytics. Goals can include "Viewed product", "Added to Basket", "Registered as member" or "Signed up for an enewsletter.Act is also about encouraging participation. This can be sharing of content via social media or customer reviews (strictly, part of Engage).The specific goals and dashboard need to be defined for each business as explained in our Delivering results from digital marketing guide.  It's about engaging the audience through relevant, compelling content and clear navigation pathways so that they don't hit the back button. The bounce rates on many sites is greater than 50%, so getting the audience to act or participate is a major challenge which is why we have identified it separately.


3 Convert. This is conversion to sale. It involves getting your audience to take that vital next step which turns them into paying customers whether the payment is taken through online Ecommerce transactions, or offline channels.


4 Engage. This is long-term engagement that is, developing a long-term relationship with first-time buyers to build customer loyalty as repeat purchases using communications on your site, social presence, email and direct interactions  to boost customer lifetime value. It can be measured by repeat actions such as repeat sale and sharing content through social media.We also need to measure percentage of active customers (or email subscribers) and customer satisfaction and recommendation using other systems.

 
(source: https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/race-a-practical-framework-to-improve-your-digital-marketing/)

 

Mapping objectives on RACE

 
Many of above measurements can be output of tools such as Google Analytics. In objectives, you can set target values (goals) for those measurements. With analytical tools, you will be once your webshop is up an running be able to verify the goals are met. 
 
An examples of detailed objectives written out based upon above drawing:
 
  • (Reach) We have an objective of having 1000 unitique visitors a day to our website within one year of going life. 
 
Above is indeed SMART: Let's check: 
  • it is Specific (e.g. by adding the word "Unique" we have removed any doubt about excluding returning ones that day. 
  • It is Measurable, this is one of the typical measurements you can get out of Google Analytics. 
  • It is Acceptable (no issue with that there).
  • If it is Realistic depends on the business you have, the niche your are in. This can be realistic if your shop has the right potential.
  • Time-bound: We mention it needs to be within a year after starting the webshop
 
Some other valid ones:
 
  • 1000 unique customers a month  buy a product in the brick and mortar shop being reffered from the webshop in 2015
  • 5% of visitors to the webshop convert to buyers Q1 2015 (conversion rate)
  •