Why setting goals is an important step in building a website
Have you spent time creating a business plan and outlining your goals? Or (and be honest) are you flying by the seat of your pants?
Goal setting is a necessary part of DIYing a website, yet it’s one people often forget about. It’s also one of those things that people either love or hate. If you’re the latter, this next section is for you.
The harsh reality is that without clearly articulated goals, you have no idea where you’re going or what you should be doing. It’s like you’re walking through a maze blindfolded.
Let’s start with the basics
Can you build a website that will grow with your business if you don’t even know where your business is going? That’s rhetorical. The answer is no.
Without having clear goals, you’re only building for your immediate needs and neglecting your long-term ones. Once you’ve outgrown your website, you’ll be forced to redo the entire thing or risk being held back by an outdated site. And believe me, the latter is a nightmare. I worked with a company that had to rebuild their website twice in eighteen months because of lack of forethought. (Full disclosure, I didn’t build either of them.)
Let’s go through some rapid-fire ways to structure your goals so they actually work for you:
- Focus on your vision first. What’s your vision for your business? What do you want to accomplish? How do you want to impact your clients? What change are you trying to create? Go big and let your mind go wild!
- Outline Your Future Accomplishments. What do you want to accomplish in 3-5 years? What do you want to accomplish in 1 – 3 years? What do you want to accomplish in the next year?
- Establish Measures for Success. For each accomplishment you wrote down, outline how you will determine success and make it quantifiable.
- Anticipate Obstacles. Write down possible roadblocks and how they can be managed.
Building goals this way should remove some of the overwhelm that comes with starting your goals from scratch. Dare I say, maybe it will even be…enjoyable?
Want to see my step-by-step process help my clients create successful goals? Grab a copy of my FREE eBook – Facing your Website Fears – here.
Goals and marketing – what’s the connection?
Now that we’ve established how important goals are for your business, let’s dissect how those goals impact your marketing.
Marketing, in short, is how you promote or sell your products or services. It includes the strategy you use to promote yourself, your branding, your website, and any printed or digital items like brochures and decks. For simplicity’s sake, let’s call all of this stuff “creative materials”.
Setting goals creates a domino effect. Once you know what you’re trying to accomplish as a business, you can focus on how you get from point A to B. Your strategy starts to take shape and you can decide what creative materials will help you accomplish your goals. You become more proactive than reactive. You start making informed decisions and use your budget wisely. This is when you make your creative materials work for you.
Imagine you want to construct a building. When you know it’s an office building, you can plan out appropriate materials to use. If it’s a house, you’re going to use completely different materials. Knowing this in advance means you can do two really important things: source the correct materials and create a reasonable budget.
Alternatively, if you’re flying by the seat of your pants, creative materials become nothing more than an annoying expense.
Knowing what you want to accomplish as a business enables you to think big picture with your creative materials. It makes it easier to build your brand, and to gain trust within your community. And if nothing else, it’ll cut down on the time you spend banging your head against the wall!
Okay, part 1 of this series is done. Now go read the other 5 and start building that website! And if you’re ready to dive in head first, purchase the Fierce Website Workbook here for even more education, tips, and encouragement.
