Setting goals is integral to business and marketing success. As the end of the year approaches, it’s time to look over the goals from this year and set your goals for the new year!
Why Setting Goals is Important
In order to make any forward progress as a business, you must have a vision for the future. Then that vision should be broken down into specific goals and steps to achieve these goals. This creates a roadmap for you.
Goals not only help you work toward your dream, but they also help align your internal team and can help you get other stakeholders to invest in you and your business.
Accounting to North Dakota State University, “Owners who have specified their personal and business goals find themselves better able to explain their objectives to others. Discussions and documents that indicate where the business is headed allow others, including lenders, investors, purchases of output, input suppliers, and possibly regulators, to decide whether they want to be part of the future of the business.”
Now that we’ve established goals are imperative to your success, let’s explore how to craft meaningful goals that will guide your marketing efforts throughout the year!
Start with Your Intentions
Remember why you are farming when you are setting goals.
Your reasons may be to improve the land, to care for animals, or to provide healthy, whole foods for consumers. Maybe it is all three!
Your motivation guides many of your operational goals.
But your reason can also be to make money. It is okay to want to make an income from your farm, and you should!
I believe farmers often feel guilty about making money from selling food because we believe everyone should have access to healthy food. Unfortunately, we often feel guilt about raising prices even when abstaining from doing so would put us at a net loss.
But the reality is that farming can’t be charity work.
In You Can Farm by Joel Salatin writes: “Dad’s famous phrase, ‘You might as well do nothing for nothing as something for nothing’ is certainly true. If I’m not going to be decently compensated, I may as well take a no-risk job in town that I can leave any time I want… If I’m going to take the responsibility for a piece of ground and a small business, then I do not think it arrogant to seek professional-status compensation.”
You deserve to make a living and you deserve to be able to take care of yourself and your family.
Your hard work produces a product far superior to that in the grocery story, so don’t be afraid to price accordingly!
Set financial goals, including product quantity, business revenue, and personal net income goals.
Writing Meaningful Goals
The first rule of goal setting: Write your goals down!
Writing goals down serves several purposes.
First, physically writing goals forces you to stop and take time to write the goals. This is an intentional time of reflection and planning.
And don’t worry, this time will be worth your while.
Second, having goals written down and displayed serves as a motivation and reminder to you as you go about your daily business. Place goals in a prominent location.
Finally, you simply won’t remember your goals if you don’t write them down! Schedule time throughout the year to revisit your goals. During this time you can refine them, if needed.
Meaningful goals are SMART. You’ve probably heard this acronym before: specific, measurable, achievable (some say actionable), realistic (some say relevant), and time-bound. I internally roll my eyes at this every time I read it because I’ve seen it so much and have been told to write SMART goals since high school.
Regardless, this acronym is useful!
Since you’ve probably read about SMART goals before, I’ll keep my remarks short. (If you haven’t seen the acronym before, a quick Google search will give you a plethora of explanations).
Goals must absolutely be measurable. This usually manifests as a metric, whether that is a specific number or a percentage is up to you.
Goals must have a time frame. For your 2023 goals, your time frame may just be the calendar year or you can break down goals by seasons or months.
It is also important to make goals challenging, but realistic. If your goals are too difficult, you may be overwhelmed to the point where you won’t even try. But on the other hand, like Michelangelo said “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”
So make your goals challenging but realistic.
Types of Goals
You can also break goals into categories. One idea is personal goals, production or output goals, and operational goals.
If you have employees, you can also work with them to set goals in their departments.
You may also have long term and short term goals. In business, short-term goals are under one year and long-term goals are one or more years.
Personally, I keep life goals, ten year business goals, and annual goals for life and business. Each month I break down my annual goals into monthly steps.
Where to Start When Writing Goals
One of the first steps you should take as a business is analyzing your financial situation.
Start on a high level. The very, very first step is calculating how much you need to live. How much would you like to net? How much does that mean you must gross?
From there you must get more granular with your data and work backwards.
How much did you gross this year? How much did you net? What was your COGS (cost of goods sold) of each of your products? What was your best seller? What is the profit margin for each product/service? What has the best margin? Etc.
With this information, you will be able to have a target for your marketing efforts.
Marketing Efforts Guided by Goals
Marketing is about establishing a brand and selling products. (There are many different facets and benefits of marketing, but we’ll confine it to this purpose to keep it simple.)
How many of each product would you like to sell? Which products do you want to sell more of this year? Which products do you need to move quickly (i.e., products that aren’t shelf stable or that have a lot of money tied up in them)?
These are some of the questions you want to ask yourself.
Let’s say you grow vegetables and herbs. This last year you developed some salves from your herbs. These were profitable value-add products for you with the highest profit margins! As a result, you want to sell more this year.
From this you may set this goal: “Sell 160 2oz tins of salves at the farmers market (average of 8 tins per Saturday market) and 100 2oz tins online in 2023”.
From here you can set up marketing efforts to support these goals. To make more people aware of your salves and boost orders both in-person and online, you plan two giveaways on social media for the year. During the holiday season at the end of the year, you plan to create a gift bundle with your salves, another farmer’s all-natural soy candles and goat milk soaps, and another gardener’s home-grown loofahs.
Tip: Don’t forget to set some goals that you can control!
With marketing online, we often set metric goals that we can’t control. This is particularly true with social media were there are endless algorithm updates and trend changes throughout the year. When we don’t reach the goals we set, it can be disheartening and we may be so discouraged that we don’t want to put any effort in at all.
For these types of initiatives, set goals that you can control!
Instead of “Reach 500 followers on Instagram”, it’s better to set the goal of “Post 2 times per week on Instagram for the entire year, including at least 3 reels per month.”
This goal will give you a steady presence on Instagram throughout the year and help you foster (and most likely grow) your community.
“Having repeated base hits on the marketing side is oftentimes preferred to a single home run.” ~Unknown
Follow Through With Your Goals
Throughout the year, hold yourself accountable.
Remember to work toward your goals! This is your livelihood and your passion, so act on your goals and remember to track your progress and revisit them throughout the year.
When you accomplish a goal, celebrate your success!
Did you reach a goal? Congratulations! Take a moment to step back and admire your work. Have a nice dinner out with your spouse or go out with friends for a celebratory drink. Not only should you feel proud of yourself at this time, but it also conditions your brain to link your hard work with a satisfying reward.
Conclusion
Setting business goals is integral to your success as a farm! Not only will they help you work toward your vision and your dream, but they will also align your team and prove your credibility to both current and potential stakeholders.
So, write down your goals and make them SMART. Start with your overall financial goals and work backwards to a very granular level. Think about personal, production, and operation goals both in the short term and long term.
Once you have your goals, you can map out your marketing efforts and initiatives for the year.
As the year progresses, hold yourself accountable to your goals and celebrate your successes!
Most importantly, remember that you are not alone! You have a lot on your plate. It can be overwhelming to plan marketing efforts for the whole year and you may be tempted to dial back some of your plans and eliminate some of your ideas, anticipating the busy seasons to come. Don’t! I offer marketing services to farmers to help you reach your goals. Let me take the marketing off your plate! It’s the best of both worlds! You can continue farming and scaling your business while outsourcing your marketing efforts to me.
Let’s tackle 2023 together!
