When it comes to setting goals, or working on a common project, it is critical for the team to both use and understand common terminology.
Goals and objectives are two commonly used terms when it comes to building strategies and plans for the organisation. Many teams tend to use them interchangeably as well, without recognising that they mean different things.
Additionally, an outcome – from a business or marketing perspective – is ultimately about achieving a desired change. A change is not necessarily a goal. In fact, these two terms should be used differently. An achievement starts with a goal and ends with an outcome. A goal is typically a beginning step in the plan, and the outcome a conclusion.
As your team goes about reviewing goals and building plans for the quarter and the year, it is important to begin from a defined list of terms.
- A goal is long-term, broad and represents a desired result or achievement the organisation is looking to secure.
- An objective is an action created in support a goal, and is specific and measurable.
- An outcome is the final result that happens as a result of accomplishing the multiple objectives and actions in the plan. It is also bounded by the parameters i.e. the objectives that led to the result.
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Let’s use an example to explore the terms further.
The organisation has set a goal for the marketing team to increase discovery and awareness about a specific product over the next 9 months.
By itself, the goal is broad and allows the marketing team to interpret how they are looking to achieve the goal.
The team decides to create a set of objectives that will guide and inform their upcoming marketing campaigns.
To do so, they apply the SMART methodology and come up with the following objectives:
- Run a content download campaign and increase the number of customers in the database as measured by the successful completion of a form
- Run a video campaign and increase the number of product inquiries by 10 percent
- Run a pre- and post-campaign survey to measure product name recognition by a random sample of customers
These objectives are specific and measurable while allowing a high degree of creatively and flexibility.
When the campaigns are completed, and the results are being measured and analysed, the organisation can look at the steps taken to determine whether the outcomes achieved have contributed to the goals.
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