Progress toward your industrial marketing goals shows you what’s working – and what isn’t.

So you’re ready to review progress, be it monthly, quarterly, or at year-end. What do you focus on?

Let’s take a moment to look at reviewing your progress by walking through the SMART system – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-Framed. How are you doing on each element of the system?

Specific

Were you clear about your goals? Looking back, was there any ambiguity about what you wanted to achieve?

If you look back at the goals you laid out and you’re scratching your head thinking, “What were we thinking?” it’s probably a good idea to be a little more direct as to what your goals are.

Measurable

If you were able to measure your progress toward goals, how did you do? Did you reach 1,000 followers on Twitter? Is your lead conversion rate where you want it to be?

Are there goals that you’re having difficulty measuring? If so, it might be time to take a look at what metrics are available and how you can compile them into a dashboard.

Achievable

When putting together your SMART goals, you should have asked yourself, “Are these achievable?” You should have answered “Yes!” Now is a good time to take a look at just how realistic you were.

If you smashed your goal, it might be time to challenge yourself a bit more. Turn it up a notch.

If you missed the mark sorely, ask yourself if what you had hoped to accomplish was really achievable – or if it was achievable, what happened that prevented success?

Relevant

What was relevant 6 months ago may not be relevant now. With technology changing all the time, it may not be smart to pursue certain goals. Take a close look. You may find yourself asking, “Do we really need to pay attention to this anymore?”

All of your goals should be relevant to your business’ future success.

Time-Framed

Your industrial marketing goals and objectives should have had a deadline attached. Did you meet your deadlines? If your goal was to complete a website makeover in 3 months, how far along did you get?

If you wanted to grow your email list to 2,000 members by the end of the year, did you get there?

This is one reason why measurement is so key. It’s ok to come up short sometimes, but imperative to know just how close (or far away) you are.

If you use the same SMART process you used in creating your goals when it comes time to review progress, you’ll have a standard against which you can measure your industrial marketing progress.

photo credit: Nina Matthews Photography via photopincc