S.M.A.R.T. Goal

Description

The purpose of a Content Mindmap is to identify potential content opportunities based on the editorial strategy for your brand. As marketers continue to embrace content marketing, there is a growing need to publish even more posts, articles, and podcasts. It is easy to find yourself creating content that feels stale or unfocused. The Content Mindmap help marketers to stay focused on the core topics, while also exploring new tangents and adjacencies. The Mindmap is commonly used as a facilitation tool with a group to brainstorm new ideas within a construct that reflects the editorial strategy. The radial nature of the framework visualizes how close or far away a new idea may be to a core topic of your editorial strategy.

‍Question

What topics make up our content marketing strategy and what might we publish?

Steps

Determine the scope of your marketing initiative. The scope needs to be tight enough that it aligns with a single business objective and single marketing goal. Large, complex initiatives require sets of S.M.A.R.T. goals.
Identify the larger business objective that your marketing initiative supports. This objective is what impacts your bottom line (e.g., increase market share) and necessitates marketing investment.
Identify the marketing goal that supports your larger business objective. This is a goal that can be accomplished by marketing (e.g., acquire new customers) and is the focal point for your marketing plan.
Determine the metrics that you can use to measure your progress toward your stated marketing goal. These metrics need to be as accurate, timely, and precise as possible to report on your performance.
Identify the date that you need to accomplish your marketing goal to support your larger business objective. This date can be used to establish interim performance targets throughout your initiative.

Considerations

Use S.M.A.R.T. goals to calculate your anticipated return, which can be used to determine your budget.
Include S.M.A.R.T. goals within your marketing briefs and within your performance reviews where possible.
Request that business stakeholders identify their own S.M.A.R.T. goals upstream, prior to marketing planning. ‍