As a marketing leader, it’s no secret that your success is closely tied to your team’s ability to set and achieve goals. Whether you’re responsible for a small marketing team in a startup (like us) or a large department in charge of a worldwide marketing strategy (think Google) — either way, goal-setting and tracking are essential to driving success and staying on track, and how you do it matters.

If you’re feeling stuck on how to best make your team’s goals a reality, we’re here to help. With our tried-and-true tips, you’ll learn how to master your team goal-setting and track your success in no time, below.

Remember: Everything starts with shared goals

It might seem like common knowledge, but it’s worth saying out loud: everything starts with shared goals. And if you’re looking to be highly successful as a marketing leader, it’s your job to make sure that everyone from the content manager to the product marketing specialist is on the same page.

Without common ground and shared goals between your marketing team and the entire organization, the chances of miscommunication are larger — leaving your chance of success at an all-time low. Hence the importance and necessity of having and communicating shared goals to everyone.

John Furneaux, the co-founder and CEO of Hive, describes it well in his weekly newsletter Better Together, “These two things in life are true. One: we accomplish more when we have a clear goal. Two: We accomplish more when we work together.”

And this is why Hive is making working together and accomplishing goals easier than ever with our newest (and perhaps best) feature: Goals. Built for accomplishing shared goals, visualizing progress, and keeping everyone aligned in one centralized dashboard, Goals is meant to bring teams ease, accountability and even joy in the process of hard work. Creating, setting and achieving your marketing goals doesn’t have to be daunting.

You can even learn more about Hive Goals in our upcoming webinar — you can check it out and sign up here. 

But before you sign on the dotted line, learn what it takes to make shared goals come to life, below.

How to make shared goals come to life

1. Identify your goals

The first step in mastering team goal-setting is identifying your goals. You should have clear, specific, and measurable goals that align with your team’s mission and vision. And you can’t do it without sitting down with your team to figure out what those actually are. Remember, your goals should be challenging but also achievable.

Set aside time for a marketing meeting to brainstorm ideas for top marketing goals — jotting down the main ideas in Hive Notes — and come up with a list of ideas that fit all of your potential goals for the quarter, month or year. As an example, it could look something like this:

After the brainstorming, you should narrow your list of goals down, and leave with a few key shared goals that your team can agree on. These larger omnichannel marketing goals can then be broken down into smaller actions over time, which you’ll see is a step on its own. No matter what your goals end up being, understanding your team’s (and your own) hand in achieving them is also important.

2. Choose a method

Once you’ve identified your marketing goals, the next step is to choose a method of goal-setting and achieving. According to Furneaux, picking your framework is an essential step in bringing your goals to life. “It doesn’t especially matter which one you go for,” he shared, “But here are some options I’ve used in the past.”

• SMART Goals: The SMART method is a widely-known way to achieve goals SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. When setting goals, you can use this method to achieve well-defined, actionable plans for how your team will achieve success over time.
• OKRs: You might have heard this one thrown around before — it stands for Objectives and Key Results. We (and many other teams) love this one.
• 4DX: Furneaux also mentions 4DX. This method of goal-setting was developed by Franklin Covey and is used by many organizations to help focus on the most important goals.
• Backward planning: (This isn’t our — or John’s — personal favorite.) Nonetheless, it is a common approach to setting goals and can be used in many different contexts.

Take your time choosing which method you end up going with — and once you decide, meet with your team to discuss how this method will work into your daily flow.

3. Break your goals down

Once you’ve identified your goals and method, it’s time to break them down into smaller, more manageable chunks. Doing this is an excellent way to track your progress. Luckily, Hive Goals make this process incredibly simple.

• Open up Apps in Hive
• Toggle on Goals
• Click ‘Create Goal’

• Write in your larger parent Goal at the top
• You can then create a time range within your Goal. Next, Assign tasks to team members and make sure everyone knows what they’re responsible for.
  

• By creating a parent goal, you can attach smaller goals to it, breaking down each. Then, anyone can see who’s responsible for what, and how it impacts the larger goal.

4. Celebrate Milestones

While completing an overall goal is important, don’t forget to celebrate milestones along the way. When you hit a key milestone, take a moment to recognize the achievement and acknowledge the team members who contributed to it. For example, maybe you can call out a team member’s hard work and achievement in a group message via Hive Chat.

Not only does it make the person contributing feel noticed and seen, but it’s also an excellent way to keep morale high and motivate the rest of the team, too. ????

5. Review and Adjust

Finally, it’s important to make sure to regularly review your progress and adjust your plan as needed. Sometimes things don’t go as planned, and you need to make changes to stay on track. Regularly reviewing your progress will help you identify areas where you’re falling behind and make adjustments to get back on track.

An easy way to do this is in Hive Goals. You can see the overall progress completion of a larger parent goal, what smaller actions need to be done to complete a goal and even who may need help in completing their part of the puzzle. It’s a great way to see where things are at a glance.

Are you ready to make shared goals a reality?

You’ve got this. With an open mind, communication, and staying focused, your marketing team will be well on its way to achieving success as a team. And now, with the help of Hive Goals, you can easily:

• Create one, ten, twenty, or more goals for your team, so everyone understands what they’re contributing to.
• Centralize and automate your goal tracking and reporting.
• Pull data from other systems into Hive to streamline operations and reporting.
• Share your goal or goals, assign the goal to relevant teammates, track activity, and give yourselves a deadline.
• Understand how your team and organization are pacing towards an individual goal or a set of goals.
• Color-coded designations allow an easy understanding of “on-track” items.
• When it’s time to review progress, accomplishments, and achievements, easily export all relevant information.

Get started for free, today!