Sometimes it’s difficult to get specific campaign goals out of a client, and it’s easier to execute campaigns without setting clear goals or expectations for the outcome. Then when it comes time to measure success, any improvement looks great, right? Here are three reasons why taking the time to establish at least one specific goal will improve the way your agency handles a campaign and what your client takes away from it.

1. Discussing goals can help everyone understand business objectives.

You are the marketing agency. Sometimes clients have a hard time communicating goals because they need you to help them decide what they should be working toward, and you can’t just set goals for them because they know their business better than you do. By talking through campaign goals, you could both gain a better understanding of overall business objectives.

Some common types of goals you can throw around with your client, according to Web Savvy Marketing, include:

• Increasing revenue

• Improving brand recognition

• Generating leads

• Making sales

• Converting website visitors

• Engaging their audience

Once you decide on one or more of these goals, make sure you know what success means in those areas. For example, if your client wants to generate leads, you need to know how many leads would satisfy them in what amount of time. More tips along these lines will be covered in the next two sections.

2. Establishing goals helps create a clear vision.

If you approach a campaign without knowing what you want to accomplish, you will probably be very confused. It’s much better to have a goal you can look at and think, “Is what I’m doing right now getting me closer to my final goal?” Every element of your work should align with your campaign goals.

Make sure that you are setting appropriate goals when you begin your campaign. This will help you think through the types of goals listed above. Make every goal a SMART goal:

• S –  Be Specific. This is knowing how much/how many of a certain outcome the client wants. Think quantitative.

• M – Goals need to be Measurable. There is no reason to have a goal if you can’t prove that you reached it.

• A –  Set Attainable goals. You want something that is a challenge, but not impossible.

• R – Be Realistic. Don’t start something you know your team can’t accomplish.

• T – Be Time specific. Find out how much time you have to achieve results for your client.

Once you have a goal that is SMART specific, you can easily focus your efforts on accomplishing that goal! It’s fine to have more than one goal in a campaign, but be careful not to have so many that a clear purpose cannot be achieved.

3. Having goals in place helps determine success.

This is all about measuring your results. Did your campaign accomplish what your client wanted it to? How do you know unless you have data and real results? When you align all of your efforts to accomplish a campaign goal, it’s much easier to refer to those campaign tactics for measurements.

Determining success is also useful to your agency’s learning and growth. Some questions HubSpot suggests asking following a campaign include:

• What part of the campaign was most successful?

• How does this campaign compare to other campaigns?

If you can find data to support answers for those two questions and you can measure your tactics, a campaign will benefit both the agency’s growth and the client’s goals!

Start today by making a goal to improve your goal-making strategy with clients.