Do you ever wonder how some people just seem to rock at getting things accomplished, while others seem to dream big but never really get anywhere? It’s not luck and it’s no accident. Successful entrepreneurs know the secret to setting goals and making their dreams come true – they know about SMART goal setting.

You may be thinking, "Well, I’m smart…why aren’t my dreams coming true with my existing goals?" The trouble is not your I.Q. The trouble is likely with your goals. Successful entrepreneurs set goals with 5 key factors. Their goals are:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Timely

Let’s break down what all that means…

Specific Goals
Goals that are specific address the what, why, and how of the goal. An example might look something like this: "Increase our Facebook followers to reach more clients by implementing a Facebook advertising campaign." Breaking that down further, the "what" of this goal is increasing your Facebook followers. The "why" is to reach more clients. The "how" is by implementing a Facebook advertising campaign.

Measurable Goals
Goals should be measurable so that you can have real evidence of whether you’ve accomplished your goal. To build on our prior goal, we could add the following: "Increase our Facebook followers by 50% to reach more clients by implementing a Facebook advertising campaign." This way we know where we started and where we want to go, and can also gauge our progress based on interim numbers.

Achievable Goals
We’ve all made goals in our lives that have been clearly unachievable, like losing 50 pounds in 10 days. There’s just no way that’s going to happen without us hacking off a leg, right? On the other hand, we don’t want to limit ourselves. So, it’s best to find a balance as to what will stretch your company a bit while still being achievable so you don’t give up. You want to keep yourself and your employees and partners motivated.

Realistic Goals
In setting goals, we want the focus to be realistic or results-focused goals. That means focusing on the results of our efforts, not necessarily the activities we undertake to get there.

Timely Goals
Finally, you want your goal to be fulfilled in a discrete period of time. Goals without deadlines just turn into dreams if you keep pushing things off until tomorrow. So, let’s go ahead and bring this all together. Let’s say you’ve got 5,000 Facebook followers and it took you 1 year to get that many followers. Now, you want to increase that by 50%. Applying the above, our SMART Goal is now:

"Increase our Facebook followers by 50% in 6 months to reach more clients by implementing a Facebook advertising campaign."

You’ve now put an achievable deadline for this goal of 6 months, which seems reasonable given the time it took you to get the first 5,000 followers and the fact that you’ve got some traction now to build on.

Try this technique with the rest of your goals, no matter how small they may be, and you can start tracking and achieving your business goals like a pro.

One of the primary objectives of any marketing campaign you run has nothing to do with selling your product or service. While these will always be important, equally necessary is your ability to sell yourself as a company. People want to know more about the people who work in your business and the values and ideals that you have. They want to be able to look at you as an authority. Pulling back the curtain and providing a "backstage" glimpse into your product or service is one of the single, best ways to accomplish both of these things at the same time.

The Benefits of the Backstage Approach

One of the major benefits of this type of "backstage" approach is that it helps position you as a true authority on a particular topic. It’s one thing for you to SAY that a product performs X, Y, and Z functions – it’s another thing entirely to prove it by providing an unprecedented look into the design and development process. You can shed insight on your decision-making process, for example, helping them to not only SEE what your product does but WHY.

Taking a "backstage" approach to marketing also helps to strengthen the intimate, organic connection you’re able to create with your target audience – thus helping to build brand loyalty. Think about it from the perspective of the entertainment industry, as celebrities, in particular, are masters at this. DVDs are filled with hours of special features outlining how a scene was shot, how a script was written, how a special effect was pulled off and more. This instantly makes something that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make seem smaller and more intimate, while letting audiences take their experience to a whole new level at the same time. Providing a similar look into your own operation will have the same effect for you, too.

Pulling Back the Curtain

Unless you’re launching a product that is shrouded in complete secrecy, you can start pulling back the curtain pretty much right away. Even if it’s something as simple as updating a weekly blog post with sketches, schematics, and other materials from the research and development phase, this will go a long way towards increasing transparency across the board. Have employees talk about the specific work they’re doing on a daily basis and how even though they’re all working separately, they’re all contributing to a larger whole.

This startlingly simple approach helps to close the gap in between business and customer, making a customer actually feel like they’re a natural part of the process. When you combine this with all of your other marketing techniques, you’re looking at a striking amount of loyalty built just from publicizing activities that were already going on behind closed doors anyway.

These are just a few of the many reasons why providing a "backstage" glimpse can help bring your product or service to life. Not only does it help provide a valuable context to the particular product or service that you’re trying to sell, but it also helps build a strong, positive impression of your company. People will stop seeing you as a faceless entity and will start looking at you more like the living, breathing, hardworking people that you really are. This will only deepen the connection that you have with your target audience and make interaction more meaningful in the future.

Every entrepreneur has had a taste of failure at one time or another. The slam-dunk business idea that landed flat. The star product that fizzled out. It happens more often than you really hear about, but to those individuals that it’s happening to, the "failures" can be seriously disheartening. If you’re feeling a bit down about a business venture that didn’t go as you planned, don’t lose hope. Countless well-known and successful individuals have achieved their dreams despite multiple setbacks. Their stories are sure to inspire you.

George Lucas
George Lucas…the man that brought us Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Darth Vader, and the Force, fueled every kids’ dream of being a fighter pilot in outer space. It’s hard to imagine that a franchise worth over $30 billion began with rejections from every studio in Hollywood before 20th Century Fox finally took a chance on it. We shudder to think what would have happened had he just given up and went home.

Here’s what George Lucas says about failure: "If you’re creating things, you’re doing things that have a high potential for failure, especially if you’re doing things that haven’t been done before. And you learn from those things. No matter how you cut it, you say, ‘Well, that didn’t work,’ or, ‘Well, this didn’t work,’ or ‘That was not the best idea.’ And you use that information that you’ve gotten, which is experience… Failure is another word for experience."

Walt Disney
Known for his fanciful theme parks and animated children’s tales, Walt Disney wasn’t always living in the lap of luxury. Countless instances of adversity rained down on Disney in his early years as an animator. After having to dissolve his company in 1921, he was unable to pay his rent and was living on dog food to survive. Later, after gaining some success with a cartoon character named Oswald the Rabbit, Universal obtained ownership of the character and hired all of Disney’s artists when Disney tried to negotiate with Universal Studios to increase his pay. Not surprisingly, Disney reportedly suffered from depression during his long career. The suffering and perseverance paid off, as assets of the Walt Disney Company are currently in excess of $89 billion in 2015.

Dr. Seuss
Who would have thought that one of the most well-known and revered children’s book authors had trouble getting his writing career off of the ground? The crafty "Cat in the Hat" creator was reportedly rejected by 27 publishers for his first book "And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street." The 28th publisher, Vanguard Press, took a chance on the young author, ultimately selling over 6 million copies of that first book. Since then, Dr. Suess has published over 40 books and sold over 600 million copies. The best part is how he made a positive impact on the lives of millions of kids around the world.

Remember, you write your own stories, so you are in control of writing your ending. Will those "failures" become opportunities or excuses to quit?

A few months ago, Mark Zuckerberg treated his staff to the movie Inside Out. A few staff members voiced what everyone else was thinking…wouldn’t it be great if Facebook allowed people to have more than one possible emotional reaction to the things they see and read? Of course!

Now we have the choice to not just like something, but to LOVE something, laugh at something, or express shock, sadness and anger. To express our new emotions, all we have to do is hover over the traditional blue and white thumb and six new emojis emerge. For mobile users, simply hold down the thumb and your new emojis will appear.

From a social standpoint, we are all feeling liberated at our ability to express more than one emotion without the necessity of typing out a complete thought. But what does this mean for businesses and people marketing on Facebook? Quite a bit actually…

Aside from the obvious point that you can now identify and quantify how many people feel about your post, there are some handy things you can now do as a business owner that may give you an upper hand with your competition. Because these emotional responses are public, you can do some recon work and check out how people are reacting to your competitors’ content as well. Based on your gathered intel, you can now customize your content to better reflect what people are interested in.

This new functionality can also enable you to get more bang for your buck while advertising on Facebook. If you go to your Insights page on Facebook, you can access data on people’s reactions to each post. If one or more posts are engaging more individuals or are loved by more individuals, you can choose to boost that post for a fee. This takes the guesswork out of deciding where to spend your advertising dollars.

We are all well aware of the reality that it’s just not realistic that you’re going to “like” every post that makes it into your feed because sooner or later the content will be about some atrocity that’s being committed that you want to stop. So, instead of liking the post, you, like most people, just keep scrolling. It’s not that the post was not engaging, it’s just that people don’t want to “like” the content. With the new reactions, people can express sadness or anger at the content of the post, letting them know that it was read and stirred some emotion. The upside for your business is that you can post more meaningful content about issues that are important to them and not worry about losing points for attention because all of the reactions count as “likes” on your page.

Have you ever had one of those days when your server goes down or your payment processing company is having issues? It can really derail your day and cause some ruffled feathers with your customers. People love to go negative on social media if they feel they’re not being heard. The reaction emojis can now help you avoid negative comments in your feed if something is not going quite right with your company. Next time this happens, try pinning a post to the top of your page explaining the situation and perhaps offering a discount to anyone who was inconvenienced by the event. Ask them to show some love to your company by clicking the heart emoji and watch a potentially negative experience turn into an opportunity to engage in a positive way with your customers.

As these reactions catch on, you can be sure more creative ideas will begin to flow on using them to benefit your company. You may even try holding a competition for a free giveaway while also showing people how to use the new reaction emojis. Ask people to show some love in exchange for a free product or service that you offer. Not only will you boost your likes, you will also make people loyal fans. Get creative and have fun. After all, it’s what the new emojis are all about.

“The way we measure productivity is flawed. People checking their BlackBerry over dinner is not the measure of productivity.” – Timothy Ferriss

At the end of each day, do you take stock of what you’ve done and feel as though you were constantly busy, but you can’t for the life of you figure out how your time was spent? As days turn into week and weeks into months…we often feel exhausted, but with no real accomplishments to show for our efforts.

The problem is, most people see time as an infinite resource. They approach life like they’re driving down the street and miss a Starbucks, but happy in their knowledge that there’s another one a mile down the road. Likewise, we alway think “tomorrow is another day” and promise ourselves we’ll keep track of our time and use it wisely then. This mindset is the best way to never accomplish what you want in life.

When we think of money, though, our mindset is a bit different. Our society encourages you to work hard when you’re young and invest your money so that when you retire and no longer make money, you’ll have that nest egg to spend. If you invest in your time, though, really spectacular things can happen.

Understand your productivity cycles.

Ernest Hemingway wrote in the morning because that was his most creative time of the day. Former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, on the other hand, reportedly didn’t get out of bed before 11:00 am, preferring to work late into the night. Having a solid understanding and respect for when you are at your most productive will enable you to reserve your most important work for when you’re at your mental best.

Make a list of the most important things you want to accomplish.

Making a list of the things you need to accomplish can help us overcome what’s called the Zeigarnik Effect. No, it’s not a mosquito-borne virus. You’ve experienced the Zeigarnik Effect on those nights you can’t sleep because you’re endlessly trying to remember everything you need to do and keep it organized in your mind. This happens during the day as well, when you’re trying to concentrate on the task at hand, but your mind is still whirring in the background keeping your list organized. Give your brain a break and write it all down. Take a few minutes to prioritize those items for better efficiency.

Personally, I use workflowy.com and it has changed my life! It keeps my “to do” lists in front of me no matter where I am, on my phone, tablet, desktop, or laptop.

Do the most important things first each day.

By doing the most important things first, you can always be assured that something important is done each day. Night owls, fret not, you can still save the most brain-intensive or creativity-intensive items for those 2:00 am writing sessions, just make sure that if something absolutely needs to be done in the morning, it gets done.

Don’t discount small blocks of time.

As a society, we’ve taken to killing time on our phones during those periods of time when standing in line, or commuting on a bus or train. Time is too valuable to kill! Instead of checking Facebook while waiting for your coffee, identify things on your (workflow.com) list that take up small amounts of time and get those done while you’re waiting instead.

Finally, schedule in some down time for yourself. Nothing kills productivity more than a burned-out mind. Take a look at how you’re spending your time and see how you can better spend it using these easy tips.

Here is my personal invitation link to workflowy.com where I get bonus credits if you create an account:
https://workflowy.com/invite/2c2e2b5e

If you’ve ever worked a boring booth at a trade show, you’ve most likely been the victim of the "avoiders." Those passers-by who liken you to Medusa and refuse to look your way for fear of being turned to stone. You notice them by the way they engage actively with booth 1145, take a quick glance at your booth with that lonely poster and brochure, and then, hurriedly walk past you with their eyes carefully averted. After enough of these avoiders, you may start to wish you had some of those smiley-faced, squishy stress-balls to throw at them.

This year, with some careful planning and a little creativity, you may be able to grab people’s attention and keep them engaged without resorting to assault and battery. Obviously, the lengths that you go to create interest at your booth may be limited by your budget, so it’s important to think about what this trade show means to your business and how engaging 10, 50, or even 1000 target individuals may bring more work your way in the coming months. Once you’ve got your budget ironed out, you can start getting those creative juices flowing.

Get Out Your Lasso

You know from experience that the hardest part of working a trade show booth is getting people to look at you, right? Being active and/or unconventional is key to attracting attention. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination, and here are some favorites to get your mind flowing:

o Superhero or celebrity photo ops. Invent a superhero to represent your company and have him or her available for photo opportunities with booth guests. It may seem a bit corny, but it works. The same is true for celebrity look-alikes. Be sure to get their card so you can send them the pic after the show.

o Wheel of Fortune. Nothing screams "come here now" than the chance to win fabulous and exciting merchandise (or your services).

o Create a treasure map leading to your booth. This may require some cooperation on the part of the venue, but placing arrows or words on the floor that lead people to your booth can create intrigue and bring people in.

Whatever you decide, make it fun and interactive. Think Disneyland for adults.

Build Excitement in Advance of the Show

Regardless of what genius idea has emerged from your mind, it’s important to create a sense of anticipation among your clients and prospects. Sending out formal printed invites or periodic emails revealing a little something more about what’s in store for them when they visit will get them chomping at the bit to visit your booth.

Have Quality Informational Products to Hand Out

You get very few chances to make an impression once you get people into your booth. Once they’re there, make your efforts count by providing them with unique, high-quality informational products that will not just stay in the bag in the closet when they get home.

Follow-up After the Show with Everyone

Hopefully, your venue will provide a mailing list of all of the participants so you can send out follow-up correspondence to those you saw and those you missed. If no list is provided, be absolutely sure you get business cards from the people you talk to and connect with them ASAP! The more opportunities you have to make an impression, the better.

If you are already heavily into online marketing analytics, this may rapidly become one of your more valuable marketing analysis tools. If you are a newbie to marketing analysis and are not yet familiar with Google’s new tool, here is some help in understanding what it is all about.

First of all, cohort analysis is not new. It is Google’s tool that is new. A dictionary definition of a cohort is simply a group or band of people. That notion is at least as old as Ancient Rome, where a legion of soldiers was broken down into ten cohorts. In its more current usage, cohort analysis has been performed for many years. Insurance companies, for example, have used this idea to create data for actuarial tables, mortality rates, etc.

Simply put, cohort analysis is the breakdown of populations into smaller, easily definable groups. The purpose of analyzing the characteristics of these sub-categories is to determine common behaviors usually specified in relation to a time period in the buying cycle or a specific date. The patterns discerned can show a business how its customers relate to the product in the early stages of experience with it, as opposed to how customers relate to it later in the buying process.

Cohort analysis provides the ability to tailor marketing to these specific sub-groups. There could be a cohort of customers at the time of checkout, for example. Another cohort might describe the behaviors of customers who responded to a specific advertising channel that was presented over a short period of time. Common metrics that can be revealed include the date your customers first clicked on your link. Others are when they bought from you the first time, or the second, or third time.

If a cohort reveals, for example, the trends common to your higher-paying customers, you can then tailor your next marketing channel to their specific interests and needs, thus encouraging more higher-paying sales.

Google is still tweaking their cohort analysis tool, so more options for its use are likely to appear in the near future. For the time being, you can access the tool and use it to familiarize yourself with how it works. Here is how to do that:

If you do not already have an analytics account, sign up for one at Google.com/analytics. Once you have an account, sign in and click YOUR VIEW. From there, select REPORTING, then AUDIENCE, then COHORT ANALYSIS. From here, you can tailor your forthcoming report options.

At this stage of tool development, your choices include the acquisition date, cohort size, and date range, for example.

o Acquisition date can refer to the first time your customer does whatever it is you are exploring, such as first visit, first purchase, etc.

o Cohort size permits you to select day, week, month, quarter, or year, for example, to find out how many users did something during that period.

o The metric refers to the data you see, such as the number of page views, purchases, etc.

o The date range, obviously, is the period you are exploring. If your cohort size was designated as a day, you get information for each day in your selected date range.

Play around with Google’s new tool for a while to get used to what it can show you. As is the case with all good tools, practice with it now will make using it easier when its functionality is increased as more options are added.

Using the cohort analysis report is an option that can improve business performance through better understanding of your customers and their patterns of behavior. The more you know about your customers, the better you can meet their needs and increase your bottom line.

Recently, a prospective client said they wanted to get customers’ attention through non-traditional marketing using printed products. Who knew that in 2016, the printed word would be considered “non-traditional?” Non-traditional? We’re saying this about a medium that was developed back in the 1400’s by Johannes Gutenberg!

For the past two decades, digital media has been rapidly replacing many of our formerly traditional ways of doing things, from watching television, reading the newspaper, to yes…print marketing. With the democratization of information that the internet has brought, more and more people are consuming this information digitally. Social media and search engine algorithms target our interests and bombard us with advertisements directed at those interests, to the point that we’ve become immune to the ancillary advertising “noise” that surrounds the article that we are reading online. Ad-ridden blogs and online media are now considered traditional.

Getting Attention With Quality Print Marketing Materials

A well-designed print marketing device can effectively break through the noise and grab your customers’ attention. Print marketing can take on many forms, including:

o Business Cards: Different shapes, sizes, die cuts, and formats grab people’s attention and make for some great talking points that help build relationships.
o Invitations: Having a grand opening or special occasion? Send out printed invitations and make people feel they are connected.
o Postcards: Whether for direct mail purposes or periodic sales or coupons, postcards can bring in a surprising amount of business.
o Menus of Services or Products: Printed on high-quality paper with excellent design and copy, these types of marketing products add personality to your business.

Poke Your Customers Periodically to Keep Yourself on Their Minds

Marketing doesn’t end when the sale is made. Customer retention is a key part of a successful marketing plan. Following up with the customer can increase retention and build loyalty. Sure, you could send them an email, but really, email is where messages come to die. Consider instead a few timed mailings to keep them engaged, such as:

o Thank You Cards: Sending out a card thanking them for their purchase and providing a time-limited discount on their next purchase makes customers feel appreciated and welcome.
o Seasonal Postcards: Consider seasonal postcards with loyalty discounts on relevant seasonal items.
o Referral Cards: Create loyalty and more business by sending out referral cards to encourage your customers to spread the word. You could also offer a discount to both the existing customer and the new customer they bring in.
o Stickers: Put your logo, tag line or a branded and relevant inspirational quote on a sticker to put on cars, computers, water bottles, and other personal gear.

Obtain Thought-Leader Status With Print Magazines or Newsletters

While many of the more traditional news magazines are transitioning to digital-only formats, the fact of the matter is, 80% of individuals who read newspapers read them in print. People actually trust written content more than they trust online content. This is true of both information and of advertising. So, depending on your industry, it may be a good idea to create a periodical print magazine or newsletter to give your customers or prospects informative and entertaining news and information that they will be excited to get each month, quarter or year.

Regardless of what type of print marketing you use, telling people a good story or giving them useful and entertaining information will make them loyal customers.

Entrepreneur and author Matthew Paulson has characterized entrepreneurship as an endurance sport. It is true that sometimes if you see you are on the wrong track, the best course of action is to abandon the original plan and start in a new direction. However more times than not, just sticking with it can often make all the difference between success and failure, winning and losing. Famed cinematic genius Walt Disney is quoted as saying, "The difference between winning and losing is most often …not quitting." and "It’s kind of fun to do the impossible."

He should know. Walt Disney achieved some of the most spectacular success anyone has ever reached in cinema, winning 22 Academy Awards and more awards and nominations than anyone else in history. He did so by overcoming rejection of his ideas and doing "the impossible."

Disney’s most profound idea, the notion of feature-length animated films when nothing but shorts had ever been done before, was widely criticized as foolish and destined for failure. He persisted, though, and we all know how that turned out. Disney’s endurance in the face of blanket rejection made the difference. By comparison, what a sterile and vacuous world we would have had if he would’ve listened to his detractors and bailed out on his plans.

Long before he was laughed at by Hollywood studios, he learned the value of endurance from other so-called failures that might have derailed an otherwise imaginative career. Early on he was fired from a newspaper for not having any original ideas and for lacking imagination, of all things. His first feature-length animation was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and it became the most successful film of 1938, earning the equivalent of 134 million in today’s dollars. That’s not too shabby for someone who lacks imagination. The world is far better off because he had the endurance to see the project through.

In business and in life, we can allow rejections and other circumstances to rule us, or we can take charge and continue unhindered by those circumstances. An anonymous line states that calm seas do not a skilled sailor make. The rougher the sea, the more practice you get at handling problems. Walt Disney, David Weber, and Kenny Lao stuck it out. The example provided by people like this is an inspiration for us all.

It is said of mountain climbers that they do what they do simply because the mountain is there. But, without endurance there would be no successful climb. In business, the best formula for success involves the endurance of a mountain climber–just because your goals and objectives "are there." Endurance can and frequently does make all the difference.

As a marketing professional, one of the core qualities that drives success in nearly everything that you do ultimately comes down to creativity. The employees that you’ve hired have to be free to let their creative juices run wild, turning in the types of materials that establish a direct link with your target audience in bold and innovative ways on a daily basis. Making sure that they have the tools necessary to unlock that underlying creativity is no doubt something that you think about daily. A related point that is just as pressing (if not more so), however, is just how engaged those employees are in the first place.

You could hire the most objectively creative or hard-working employee that you could find and it ultimately won’t make much of a difference if they are actively disengaged from the environment they’re working for in the first place. Employee engagement, in general, isn’t just one of the most important things to concern yourself with, but it’s arguably the MOST important thing for a number of fascinating reasons.

The Employee Engagement Problem

Many recent studies have been done that were designed to provide valuable insight into not only how important employee engagement is, but what happens if you’re a business owner with an uninterested workforce. According to a study that was completed by Dale Carnegie Training, only 29% of workers in the United States are actively engaged with their jobs. Roughly 45% are not engaged in any way and, to make matters worse, a full 26% are actively disengaged.

When you’re dealing with a disengaged workforce, you’re dealing with people who aren’t giving 100% of their time, energy, and creative effort to the task at hand. You’re dealing with people who aren’t doing their best because, to be quite frank, what’s the point? You’re also creating a situation where you can’t hope to accomplish your own goals and the goals of your business because the people you depend on don’t see the same value in moving your business forward. Rest assured, this is a problem that you need to address at all costs.

How to Fix Employee Engagement

According to another study that was conducted by Towers Watson, 79% of highly engaged employees also reported that they had both trust and confidence in the people who were leading them. A survey given out by the Psychologically Healthy Workplace Program (PHWP) indicated that employees who felt that their contributions were truly valued by their employers were 60% more likely to report that they were doing their very best inside and out of the office on a daily basis.

If you’re a business owner with an employee engagement problem, it stands to reason that the first step to take involves looking inward for the solution. Employee engagement is almost intimately tied to morale, so what is the true nature of the issue you’re dealing with, here? Is it that your employees feel like you don’t know what you’re doing? Do they feel like you have unreasonable expectations? Do they feel unappreciated?

These are the important questions that you’ll need to answer in order to drive employee engagement as high as it will go. Employee engagement is absolutely the key to unlocking the true productive workforce that you need and to create an environment where "creativity" is the name of the game, thus allowing you to create the best possible marketing materials and establish the best possible connection with your target audience moving forward.