CEO at Adventure Web Interactive
A strategic approach to setting marketing goals for your ecommerce website boils down to analyzing what you must do to help your clients. From this perspective, this means making the process of buying online easier or creating marketing goals that help your customers learn about your brand. At Adventure Web Interactive, we are always introducing our clients to the best ways to establish optimal marketing goals for their ecommerce business.
While it’s tempting to set goals based on what your competitors are doing, a more strategic approach is to set your marketing goals based on the unique objectives and goals of your online business. An online presence is key in succeeding in today’s business world.
Analyze the Bigger Picture. For goal-setting, think long-term. What do you want to accomplish in 6 months or 2 years from now? Once you set a timeline, it’s easier to set marketing goals for your ecommerce business. That’s why branding is the most critical goal that any ecommerce website must achieve. Try to land guest posts in blogs, leading industry websites, and news sites.
Achieve Milestones and Benchmarks for Large Goals. Most of your marketing goals will be significant and take weeks or years to come to fruition. One of the most effective methods to set marketing goals for your ecommerce business is to divide these lofty goals into smaller, achievable milestones. Most of the time, we view a goal as being only a purchase. It can be much more productive to set specific goals related to time on site, traffic, add to cart, viewed products, and repeat purchases. Every improvement in those metrics will add to your overall success and profit.
Create SMART Goals. Setting SMART goals is a practical framework for setting realistic ecommerce marketing goals. What are SMART goals? This acronym stands for:
- Specific: Avoid vague goal setting. For example, instead of saying “I want more visits to my site,” say “I want at least 500 more visitors per month.”
- Measurable: Create goals that can be measured through accessible data.
- Achievable: consider the logistics and practicalities of your business and what can be achieved on your timeline.
- Realistic: Set realistic goals so you don’t set yourself up for disappointment.
- Time-Bound: Give yourself a deadline to reach these specific goals. This will motivate you to focus on success.
Being “realistic” doesn’t mean keeping your goals small. Every business is continually expanding, and so are their goals. You create SMART goals one at a time, increasing your goal points with each new achievement.
Once you have determined your ecommerce marketing goals, you must find a way to monitor and constantly review your progress. You can utilize a spreadsheet, but someone has to pull it up and manually update the data.
At ADVP, we work with beloved Maryland ecommerce businesses including Wockenfuss Candies and Box Hill Crab Cakes to ensure that their online stores are easy for customers to access and use, and that their data is easily understandable. When they have a functional, accessible store for their customers to use they can begin to see positive results and notice opportunities for improvement or development that can further contribute to their ecommerce success.
Craig Kahl is the President and CEO of Adventure Web Interactive. AWI has been recognized as Baltimore’s Top Web Design Firm by The Daily Record and named one of Silicon Review Magazine’s Top 50 Most Admired Companies in the country. Before founding Adventure Web Interactive in 1997, he was VP of Operations for Campus Concepts, Inc., and the youngest division head in history for Pitney Bowes at age 24. He has a Bachelor of Science in Management Information Systems from the University of Maryland and a Master of Business Administration in Finance from Loyola University. Craig is a member of the International CEO Club and Rolling Road Golf Club and loves spending time outdoors with his wife and son.
