Set goals for your business

Still don't know where you want to go with your digital product? Get our tips and learn how to set the right goals for your business.

Knowing how to set goals and having an achievable objective is the beginning of a path to both personal and professional success. This is due, in short, to the fact that when we have a defined goal, it is easier to notice what actions we must take to achieve what we want.

That is why, when starting a business, be it digital or physical, you need to have an idea of ​​what you intend to achieve with your venture:

Where do you want to go with your business? In how much time?

Surely you have already asked yourself one of these questions or even both, at some point in your life as an entrepreneur.

Regardless of whether you have just started or have been in the market for several years, believe me: you have to set short, medium and long-term goals for your business.

Only then will you have the necessary information to improve your processes and thereby maximize your ROI (Return on Investment).

Of course, goal setting is not an easy task and requires a lot of research and direction, especially if you are entering the market as an entrepreneur now. But don't despair!

If you haven't set your goals yet, you're in the right place!

Keep reading this post to know some tips on how to do it.

understand your business

Understanding your business is the key to setting attainable goals.

It is clear that it is much easier to measure what is good and what can still be improved after you have started your journey, because you will have numbers to compare. However, from the beginning you can already define some objectives.

In any case, let's think about the aspects that most impact your business:

• Expected expenses, such as marketing, location (if you set up an office away from home), employee, stock ( in the case of an e-commerce , for example), etc.;
• Techniques necessary to obtain clients;
• Online disclosure, such as ads on Google;
• Website and blog creation .

In truth, you have to know your business and then think about where you want to go.

Understand what you can improve

Even before you set your goals, you need to know what areas you need to improve on.

Even when you have an idea of ​​the aspects that affect your business, take some time to do an analysis of your sales page and your dissemination strategy.

We present a list of some tools that can help you in this task:

• SWOT or SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) – It serves to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of your company.
• Benchmarking – Research what companies in your niche are doing. That can help you identify opportunities for improvement in your business. Search engines are your greatest allies to carry out these searches (we will talk a little more about benchmarking in this text).
• Market survey: In addition to analyzing the competition , you must be aware of the trends in your market to know how to best serve the interests of your buyer person . A good way to do this is by conducting satisfaction surveys with your users.

Trace your goals

When you are going to define your goals, you need to focus on the destination you want to go to, not on the means to achieve them.

1. Objective (what you want to achieve)
2. What actions will you take to reach your goal?
3. Expected financial benefit

Some Silicon Valley companies, such as Google, for example, use the OKR model (Objectives and Key Results, in Spanish):

1. Objective (result that you hope to achieve with the actions): it is generally qualitative and motivational.
2. Key Results: set of two to five indicators that show that you are reaching your goal.

Imagine a digital producer whose goal is to increase conversion rates for their business on the weekends. He can define as key results:

• Increase traffic on your page from Friday to Sunday
• Reduce cart abandonment rate
• Increase engagement with posts on weekends

Do not cling to financial results

When we talk about goals, the first thing that comes to mind is financial profitability, right?

But in the case of digital products there are many variables that influence the success of the business.

If you want more people to know about your brand, increasing the number of LIKES on your fan page or the number of subscribers on your page are also important goals.

Not because the lead did not buy your product immediately you have to think that you have lost that conversion.

Once you integrate your email base , you have more time to build a relationship with those potential customers in order to convince them of the benefits of your offer.

And you can do it in a number of ways, including by delivering quality content and having a good email marketing strategy .

Remember: your goal is to give the user the best possible experience and, as a result, increase your ROI.

It may be that at first you do not earn much money with your venture. But if you invest in continuous process improvement, the financial return will come over time, and it will come in a sustainable way.

Learn to set real goals

When setting goals for your business remember to ask these three questions:

• Is growth possible within the time I have stipulated?
• Is there a market to achieve it?
• Is my page ready to receive so many hits?

If your answer is “no” or “maybe” to any of these questions, review your goals, as they can (and should!) be bold, but it's important that they follow the maturity curve of your business.

A mature enterprise is one that, in addition to being an authority in its niche, manages to understand the market and uses all the information acquired in its research in its area of ​​activity to grow internally and externally.

That is why the maturity curve of your business does not depend on the lifetime of your company, your profit and the number of clients you have, but on how much you manage to stand out in the market, learn with each new challenge and change according to whatever it takes to grow and prosper.

After understanding what stage your business is in, you need to think about goals that you can achieve at that time.

Setting unattainable goals will only serve to lose motivation when you fail to exceed them, while goals that are too modest can put you in a comfort zone and prevent you from seeing the growth potential of your product.

To find out what stage your business is in, you have to be aware of all its “numbers”, from the first sale until now.

Producers and Affiliates who use Hotmart as a sales platform have access to a very complete sales report , with all the information related to the balance, such as the income generated per day or month.

In this report you can also find out which form of payment has been used in each sale.

Real goals vs. unattainable goals

Do you have doubts if your goal is possible or not?

The method that we show you now can help you to be more assertive in this process: it is about SMART goals.

Basically, this method classifies the goal as specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and temporary.

Specific : Does the goal make clear what you want to achieve?

Measurable : Will you be able to measure if your goal has been achieved?

Achievable : Do you have the necessary resources to put your idea into practice?

Relevant: Will this objective contribute to the growth of my business?

Temporary : Is the term I have enough to generate the results I need?

Example

General objective : I want to increase the conversion rate of my online course next month.

Specific: I want to attract at least twenty new users.

Measurable: I will measure my progress by the number of accesses to the platform where my course is hosted.

Achievable: I have money available to create ads for my course.

Relevant: Attracting new customers will help popularize my product.

Temporary: I will increase my outreach strategy in the next two weeks.

Have you defined your goals? Here is a list of what you need to document about your goal:

Deadline: include a start date and an end date to reach your goal

Actions: describe the actions you will put into practice

Resources: Detail your budget and what else you need to put your idea into practice.

Learn with your experiences

Obviously, setting goals is not enough, because you need to monitor the performance of each implemented action.

Only then can you conclude if the promoted change had any results, or if your action is harming your business. (That's why it's so important to keep processes well documented!)

If you can't get the expected results, don't despair! For long-term goals, you'll have time to review your strategies and find new directions within your own business plan .

In sum:

• Set challenging but achievable goals.
• Constantly evaluate the goals set and change your strategy as necessary.
• Goals should have a certain preset time to start and finish.
• It is important that the goals have in mind the user experience, the number of potential customers won and not just financial profitability.
• Document your progress… and your failures too.

have a good business plan

If you have had a digital business for a long time, it is very likely that you have gone through this stage. If you intend to start now, then the first step is to create a business plan!

But… what is a business plan?

Neither more nor less, a business plan is an organized and written document that will help you better understand your market, your product and the actions you have to take as an entrepreneur. In this way you will be able to organize your ideas and, consequently, have a more palpable orientation of the path you must take to achieve your goals.

To create your business plan you need:

1. Analyze your market and competitors: at this stage you need to define who you will talk to , that is, who your customers will be and what you will talk about;
2. Understand the ratio between quality and cost-benefit of your product: with the target audience in hand, try to see if your product will be well received in the market, which may already have something similar to what you want to offer;
3. Prepare the operational and financial plan: think about how your business will be structured, if it is at home or if you are going to rent an office. Also, make an estimate of your initial investments.

Of course you can and should put more information in your business plan. However, with these three points defined, you can start thinking better about your actions to improve your business.

In addition, a well-founded business plan is an essential tool for you to achieve your long-term goals since:

• Show that you are serious about your business;
• Help sell your idea to potential investors if you want to expand the reach of your company in the future;
• It is a parameter so you know if you are getting the expected results.

Drawing up a business plan will help you not only set your goals, but also identify the best strategies to achieve them. This means that you will be able to focus your energy and resources on what you really need to do, instead of wasting effort on actions that will not produce results for your business.

Analyze your long-term performance

Trend analysis is the process of comparing data over time in order to identify any consistent results.

Through this analysis it is possible to understand the main KPIs (key performance indicators, in Spanish) of your business, and "predict" which actions can help you achieve the best results.

Focusing on the analysis of your results will be of the utmost importance because it will allow you to have insights that will help you improve sales performance permanently, in addition to:

• Identify areas where you are doing well, or strategies that can be replicated.
• Detect the points that must be optimized.
• Provide key information for decision making.

Benchmark whenever possible

Benchmarking is a way to compare your performance with producers or affiliates that operate in the same niche as you.

When done right, it gives you a clear view of what you need to improve in your business to increase conversion rate.

Suppose you have accessed the site of a leading company in the segment in which you operate, what can you see?

Focus on the type of content they produce, the type of image they use, and the way they describe the product/solution itself.

Here, on the blog, we have already made a post about what a good sales page should contain. It's a good starting point for you to assess your competition!

By benchmarking you may discover that:

• You can improve the copy of your page
• You don't use the right images in your ads
• You have to offer your potential customer more valuable content
• Inter alia

Once you understand where improvements can be made, you're ready to develop an action plan to make the changes take effect.

But beware! Benchmarking does not mean copying what others do, but understanding what strategies work best for your market and then adapting them to your business.