Developing the right goals for your organization is the key to a successful marketing and patient outreach campaign. Developing good goals for your campaign can help you to maximize your resources toward your effort, increase accountability, provide mission clarity, and boost motivation. A study at the University of Texas indicated that setting goals keeps you persistent in business success. The SMART Method is widely recognized as a best practice for successful goal setting. In fact, according to a Team Compass article, only 3% of adults use the SMART Method, but they achieve 10x the results of their counterparts who are not using the method. Below is a step-by-step guide to developing SMART Goals for your marketing and patient outreach campaign.
1. Frame of Reference
Start by developing a general goal. Don’t worry too much about the details as you create a baseline to be workshopped through the remaining steps to develop your goal. Your frame of reference is likely something along the lines of increasing visits or patients.
2. Specific
In the specific stage begin to dive deeper. Are you looking to increase screenings for colorectal or breast cancers? Are you looking to increase first-time patients or see more recurring patients? Maybe you want to see increased flu or COVID-19 vaccines. The specific stage helps you to narrow in on your goal and provide a clear direction for your team when they begin to execute it.
3. Measurable
The measurement stage of goal setting is one of the most important stages because it creates a specific metric to gauge success. Your goal should be quantifiable. Even if your goal is to make patients more comfortable during a vaccine or screening visit, consider ways you might measure this. You may create a post-survey to track a patients comfortability or evaluate the number of returning patients as an indicator of their comfort in their first visit.
4. Achievable
The achievement stage goes hand and hand with measurement. Your goal should be a healthy challenge, but not impossible. Consider your past growth and make sure your metric will help you to improve but is reasonable. If you chose a metric that is not achievable, your team is put at risk of becoming frustrated and discouraged. If you don’t think your goal is realistic, go back and revise your measurement. Additionally, use this space to identify ways to achieve your goal. What efforts are you going to take to ensure that you meet your goal?
5. Relevant
Evaluate your goal again. Is it relevant to your campaign? If you are running a display ad for colorectal screenings, your goal should not focus on vaccines. Consider your content and frame of reference and evaluate to make sure it is still relevant to your cause. Additionally, ensure that your goal aligns with the mission, vision, and values of your organization as a whole. If it does not, you should collaborate with your team to reevaluate. A Locke and Latham study indicated that 90% of people perform better when they have relevant and challenging goals.
6. Timely
Finally, attach a time frame to your goal. Consider the length of your outreach campaign and when you should expect to see the results. When you run your campaign, you will want to attach a time frame that allows you to retain attribution for your work.
Write out your final goal in 1-2 sentences by combining each detail you identified throughout the SMART Method.
Once you have written out your final goal, it is time to coordinate with your team and begin to work towards your goal! In addition, you may want to dedicate a date and time to follow up with your goal and see your progress. This is a great time to see if you are on track. If you are way ahead of your timeline, you may adjust your goal to be more challenging. If you are behind your expected timeline you may want to reevaluate if your goal was realistic and brainstorm some new ideas for what efforts you should take to achieve your goal. Gail Matthew’s Goal Research Summary found those who set actionable tasks for their goals and check in weekly tend to achieve 40% more than those who did not.
Goals are the way to go when it comes to developing a plan for patient outreach and marketing. Make sure to actually write out these steps; the same Matthew’s study found that people who physically write down their goals are 20% more successful in accomplishing their goals than those who did not. Download our free template below to help you workshop your goal using the SMART method or contact us to learn more about developing campaign goals!