Key Success Outcomes

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

What does success look like?

It’s important at the very start to actually understand what success really is to you. It is a number of KPIs that will become a marker for success. So you should be creating a rough list of all the possible success outcomes that you have that are listed in your brief, and then using the SMART system that we’ve all learned from a very young age to identify the list of potential goals that are going to be within your key success outcomes.

• Specific: Is the goal clear and singular? So really try to avoid, “I want more site traffic and more sentiment and more video views.” Try to be more singular. Try to figure out exactly what it is you want to achieve.
• Measurable: How are you collecting data that can actually be used to measure this? If you say, “Well, it’s about sales,” and then you don’t sell online or there’s no way to track the influence of social as a sale, well, then it’s into measurable. You can’t do it.
• Achievable: Can you actually do it? You know, be really hard on yourself here because sometimes we set our goals too high and then actually we get knocked back quite a lot and then it can really be difficult to get social media further down the line to actually be used because your superiors or the organization hasn’t got as much trust in it.
• Realistic: Is it something your business can actually achieve? Try to ignore people that say, “Our goal is to go viral.” That is never the goal because it’s not realistic. You cannot guarantee it. There’s no way to make sure that it happens. A lot of that has to do with circumstance and luck.
• Timely: Can you achieve results within the timeframe that you’ve allocated?

So within this, there are three kind of levels of success.

• Low level: This is where your subordinates should be having low level success measures and success outcomes. This should be measured in monthly or weekly results that you want to have within your team.
• Mid level: There’s the mid-level goals for yourself. These are the things that you need to achieve within your own review period. So don’t forget that, like, if management perceives something as being important, then that’s your goal. That’s what you want to achieve because it’s part of your job. You might know that there’s another identifiable goal that they should be adhering to, but if they don’t agree to it, you should find what medium between what they want and what you want and that becomes your goal.
• High level: These are the things that you cannot measure monthly or weekly or sometimes even quarterly. These are the things that you’re going to bring to management that are going to get your social media budget doubled and tripled within the next five years. These are the things that you will bring them annually or even half yearly that tell them exactly how you’re performing. The reason that it’s important that your management receive the high-level annually or half yearly is because if they’re jumping in weekly or monthly, they’re never going to be happy. They’re never going to see the movement that they want to see. They’ll always expect more. Half year or annually, you’re going in with numbers that are going from point A to point B substantially. And that’s important because then it is easier to sell in the different things that you require as a result of this.