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SMART Goals: understand how to apply them to your business

Gustavo Goncalves
Gustavo Goncalves

Aug 9, 2023

The life of a manager who wants to prospect customers without a marketing and analysis strategy is not easy. The chances of your efforts being in vain are high. It's important to be pretty sure what to do to get to your goals, and SMART goals will help you in this process.

In this post, we will explain what SMART goals are, what they are for and how to use them for customer prospecting, as well as in measuring and analyzing results, data and implemented strategies.

What you'll see in this content:

Good reading!

What are SMART goals?

the SMART goals bases of data analysis, more specifically of data related to goals that the company intends to achieve. They help in evaluating the objective, if it really matters at that moment or for that organization.

SMART is an acronym for:

  • S: Specific;
  • M: Measurable;
  • A: Attainable;
  • A: Relevant (relevant);
  • T: Time based.

Let's understand each of these points better:

Specific: evaluates whether the goal has a specific and clear objective. For example: having a goal to increase customer prospecting does not fit here, as it is too vague. The idea is to further develop this objective, such as “increasing the enrollment rate by 20%”.

Measurable: responsible for identifying whether a goal can be measured, after all, as important as creating a good objective is to analyze whether the institution is really achieving it or whether justice in the strategy needs to be done.

Attainable: It doesn't make much sense to invest in a goal that can't be reached, does it? And this is also considered in SMART goals.are used KPIs, which we will talk about throughout the post.

Relevant: goals. real effect on the institution.

Time based: another necessary point to consider when creating a goal is that it needs a predetermined time to be reached. It is important that the institution, especially the responsible team, knows when to start and finish working on top of the strategy that will help achieve this objective.

What are SMART goals for?

The main objective of SMART goals is to make the institution focus its resources on smart goals, in addition to facilitating its elaboration process, so that the execution part is also facilitated.

SMART goals make you have a clear, analyzable, achievable objective with a deadline to be achieved. With this information in hand, it will be much easier to develop a strategy and it would be efficient.

Another objective of applying SMART goals in management is that they allow the whole team to feel more motivated to reach that goal, as it makes it easier to understand its purpose and what must be done to get there.

And most crucially, it is possible to monitor its development very closely and, if a problem occurs, it is possible to quickly identify it and put other strategies to work around the situation.

What are your benefits?

Adopting SMART goals can offer a number of benefits to institutions. See some of them below:

Make the institution focus

By better selecting which goals to work on, the institution is able to focus on what will really have positive effects on its development, while saving several resources.

Increases team productivity

have SMART goals that are productivity optimized, because, in addition to having fewer goals to work on, you will also have detailed information on what to do to achieve them.

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Facilitates feedback

Another interesting advantage of this methodology is that it facilitates the culture of feedback in the business. The manager is able to evaluate the team's performance in achieving the goal and better guide his team in this regard.

What are KPIs?

Earlier, we explained that the analysis of goals is done through KPI (Key Performance Indicator). Basically, it allows the institution to monitor, through numbers and data, the results of the goals and objectives listed.

In this way, it is possible to understand if the team is managing to develop as expected or if it is necessary to make some adjustment to the strategy so that the goal is reached within the expected period.

How to create a good KPI?

As with goals, KPIs also need to be well thought out. First of all, a good indicator needs to be simple, making it easy for everyone to understand what it is all about.

And, of course, this indicator also needs to be measured: instead of defining a KPI as “increase in subscriptions”, choose to leave that same targeting more quantitative, such as “conversion rate into leads”.

How can SMART goals help with customer prospecting?

One of the questions that may arise is whether these SMART goals really have any effect on customer prospecting, and the answer could not be different: yes, this methodology considerably helps in capturing leads, your future customers.

This is precisely because SMART goals make the lead capture strategy more structured and targeted. The institution spends less time with unnecessary details and information, focusing on those that will really bring more people.

How to use SMART goals in customer prospecting?

Let's say you are a college manager and you want to increase the number of enrollments. To be able to list the best goals, aiming at this objective, try to ask some questions, such as:

  • What are the courses that currently have the greatest number of students?
  • What was your educational institution's conversion rate during period X? What can be done to improve this result?
  • How far have we achieved the goals we already have today?
  • How is student satisfaction? Were there students who recommended the institution to other people?

With the answers to these questions in mind, it is now possible to work to adapt existing goals to the SMART model, as well as list those that will make the most sense with this main objective.

How to use SMART goals for the analysis and measurement of results?

So far, you've learned a little more about what SMART goals, what KPIs are and how they can help with customer prospecting, but you need to know how to efficiently follow up on defined strategies and objectives.

To analyze the KPIs you defined earlier, it is worth investing in some tools that make this analysis process easier. In this way, data is collected in real time.

How to choose the best tools for KPI analysis?

The choice of tool may vary depending on the KPI you want to analyze. To manage people who turned leads through a landing page, for example, you can bet on tools like WooRank, OptinMonster or Hubspot.

It is important that the KPIs are analyzed with some frequency, because, in this way, it will be faster to find problems and put into practice strategies that can change the situation in time for the institution to reach its goals in the stipulated time.

In short: SMART goals should be applied by creating goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and have a time frame for reaching them. The analysis of its results is done through KPIs.

Thus, by understanding what SMART goals are and how to apply them in your business, it will be much easier to direct your institution's efforts towards the strategies and objectives you want to achieve. 

But for your business to fly higher, check out our other post with tips to start working on the internet!

Check out the 7 tips to work on the internet with your business!

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