How to Set the Right Kind of Goals

Happy New Year!

Every time I start working with new clients, I begin by trying to understand what their business goals are.

Not because I am following a business plan template, but because I am trying to understand if their business goals are aligned with all their marketing efforts.

Now, when it comes to setting marketing goals...

Most people like to skip setting marketing goals altogether and dive straight into promoting themselves. But marketing goals are important because they support your business goals. They are also important because without them you will be trying to do everything to promote yourself and your practice just to see what sticks.

You will end up wasting a lot of time and energy on doing things that might not even make sense for your business.

So focusing on the RIGHT goal is essential if you want to stay focused, conserve your energy and actually see results from marketing your private practice.

Listen to my quick marketing tip below on setting the right goals for your private practice.

Transcript

Hi, this is Avivit Fisher and you are tuning in to “Marketing Tips for Therapists”. 

Make sure you subscribe to my channel if you want to learn how to use marketing for growing your practice.

Today I will be talking about setting the right marketing goals for your business. 

In my previous video, I talked about the SMART goals and went through the process of analyzing the goals so they can be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound.

And today I want to talk to you about prioritizing and choosing the right goals that are relevant to the present and your reality.

You and I both know that Marketing can be very overwhelming if only for the many choices we have nowadays to promote and advertise ourselves. 

Different professionals assign their own priorities and weight to the marketing tactics that work for them. Some may say that growing your social media presence is the most important thing, others will show you how paid advertising will pay off in a big way.

Now, I am not going to argue because all the suggestions are valid. What I will say is that they are just means to an end. And it’s your job to figure out what outcome will be the most important for you.

And I’ll tell you, I have set many aspirational goals before, that were based on what I thought was important from my research and what I saw my competition doing. But, these goals were very hard to accomplish. Because they were not really relevant to my situation, my lifestyle, my resources. 

I have to say, it was pretty humbling to realize that. And it really didn’t go with the message that I had in my head to “think big”.

But then, I decided that I need to set more practical goals. I spent some time calculating the amount that I needed to earn. I also calculated the time I had to work with clients and on my business. And I figured out what I would need to do to make it happen. In my case, it was having a specific number of clients a month. In your case, it might be similar.

This information should be basic to setting your marketing goal. Because otherwise, you will be spinning your wheels focusing on the number of likes on social media without a concrete return.

So now you need to look at your current situation. If you have an established practice and you need to make sure that you don’t have gaps in your schedule when a client leaves your practice, your goal should be focused around consistency.

If you have a completely new practice and have very few clients or even none, your goal should be about creating awareness. And maybe counting likes on social media is extremely relevant to you.

So my tip to you for setting the right marketing goals for your practice is to assess how much you need to earn a week or a month, assess your time and availability and your current situation. And then set the most obvious goal for yourself. It might not be lofty or complex and glamorous, but it needs to be attainable and based in reality. Happy 2020!

Have a good rest of your day!