How to create SMART goals to ensure your credit union’s marketing success!

One of the services we provide clients is to help their staff craft SMART goals to measure our marketing campaign efforts. That is, goals that are:

Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely.

So let’s break this down in a real world scenario… Let’s say your CU is trying to grow total loan dollars. This is a pretty BIG goal, not what I would consider Specific at all.

However, we know that sales qualified leads are truly what a CU’s loan sales staff needs to grow total loan dollars, so why not start there? Instead of a general loan growth number perhaps set a more specific goal of 25-30 loan sales qualified leads during the quarter?

This kind of more Specific goal is a much better way to begin. And it’s also more Measureable. At the end of the quarter if you don’t hit your loan goals your CEO will invariably want to know why. And there might be a lot of possible reasons that you would need to investigate.

BUT, if you successfully sent 30 loan sales qualified leads to your lending department sales staff and they failed to close these leads, it will be much easier to assess where the process broke down. Maybe you need to further qualify leads before sending them to sales? Maybe sales failed to follow up enough times? Maybe the time frame for closing these leads was too tight? These factors can be better assessed with this more Specific goal in mind.

Attainable goals are a trickier characteristic. Often we have to pull goals out of thin air (so to speak) with new clients, because they haven’t been tracking any lead conversion progress prior to working with us. This is OK. We recommend starting at a manageable place and then working up from there. Walk before you run.

So in the example above we wouldn’t recommend 100 sales qualified leads right off the bat. Instead set a goal that might be more easily reached. Then you can build on that success in future quarters.

Relevant goals are a bit easier, but again these will often shift over time depending on past successes or failures. So, if you miss a goal due to the time frame being a bit tight for converting new leads you might consider goals that allow for future follow ups. So if you send 30 sales qualified leads to the lending staff then you could track their follow ups and give a conversion percentage over time, say 50% over 6 weeks time.

Or if your marketing staff failed to send 30 leads you would need to assess your marketing workflows and figure out where you need to change tactics to move these leads through their buyer journey and turn them into leads that will be likely to convert.

Timely (also referred to as Time Bound) just means that having goals that stretch out for periods of time that are too long often makes them either not really specific enough or perhaps not likely to be successful unless they aren’t measured in smaller increments of time for progress toward the larger revenue goal.

So in the scenario we’ve been discussing, it would be fine to have a larger loan growth goal for the entire year. BUT it’s likely that this larger goal won’t be achieved without smaller progressive goals along the way, which would need to be evaluated throughout the year as your Credit Union strives to grow total loan revenue.

If you keep these tips in mind when setting your marketing and sales goals you will find much better progress and have a greater grasp on what works and where improvement is needed!

Good Luck and we’d love to hear your own goal examples in the comments below, or please contact us today at www.socialstairway.com for help meeting your Credit Union’s growth goals!

Meredith Olmstead

Meredith Olmstead

Meredith Olmstead is the CEO and Founder of FI GROW Solutions, which provides Digital Marketing & Sales services to Community Financial Institutions. With experience working with FIs in markets of ... Web: www.figrow.com Details