Third in our trio of strategic marketing planning is a brief look at goal clarification. What do you expect to get out of your e-business this year? Or over the next several years?
Your goals, of course, are intimately related to every other aspect of your business plan. You'll want to massage your goals again and again as you research various aspects of your marketing plan. But let's start somewhere.
Goals ought to be both financial and non-financial and be related to the length of your marketing plan's timeline. Let me illustrate:
Non-financial goals:
To grow steadily in marketshare each year from our current 13% to 32% over five years.
To grow the percentage of sales from our store's website from 5% to 45% over five years.
Using cultural and language translations of our website, open up markets for our line of men's polo shirts in the major European languages and in 12 countries in Western Europe. Beginning with Spanish in year one and Portuguese in year two, followed French, Italian, German, Portuguese, and others.
Use cultural adaptations of our Spanish language site in year two to open markets in Mexico, Central America, and key South American countries. In year three adapt our European Portuguese site to penetrate Brazil.
To introduce our polo shirt line in the four major Western US department store chains, two of the chains in the first 18 months.
Financial goals:
To grow annual sales from $2.3 million in 2000 to $6.8 million by 2004.
To get a first round of venture capital investment in 18 months in the range of $2 million.
Just because your business is much smaller than our polo shirt example doesn't mean you shouldn't be setting measurable goals. Your goals will be much more modest, but no less important.
Move from hobby site to a profit center within two years. Year one add e-commerce capability. Year two develop advertising revenue from both website and e-mail newsletter.
Increase the number of visitors and page views from 6,000 and 18,000 per month, respectively, to 20,000 and 60,000 respectively over a period of six months using a combination of traffic-producing strategies.
Redesign the site using professional graphics, e-commerce, and webmaster contractors to make the site visually attractive and easy to maintain, over the next 8 months.
Build gross site revenue to $7500 by June of 2001, and to $47,000 by June of 2002.
Goals have a way of stretching us, giving us direction when we've lost perspective, and driving us to do our best. They're a vital part of your Internet marketing plan.
Exercise: Develop at least 5 non-financial and financial goals for your business. Expect to change them several times over the next several weeks. But put SOMETHING on paper this week.
