Setting Goals

Thursday, May 12, 2011

I couldn’t have said it better myself, so I’m quoting the CopyBlogger article here:-

1. Can you please define your project? You might imagine a company that’s called in a copywriter has an idea what they want. Much of the time, you would be wrong. They’re hoping you can help them figure out whether their best new piece of content would be a white paper, a revised landing page , or eight blog posts a month. If they can’t figure it out even with your help, try to find a small initial project they’re willing to greenlight to get things moving.

My first question to every client is “What is your Goal?”

Note that it has to be THEIR goal, and that it is singular, not plural.

If they start rabbiting on about plural goals, they are really giving you a list of objectives; write them down and then continue probing to see if all the objectives are sub-goals of a larger goal.

If the objectives are unrelated, or form into several groups, then you have a list of objectives that belong (separately) to different goals, that is, you now know that your client has several goals.

Identify the major goal (if this is your first dealing with this new client then you probably should define “major” as “maximize measurable results for minimal measurable effort”) and work on that.

If the client baulks and (with much hand-waving) says that ALL the goals are major, then the goals are themselves sub-goals of a larger goal. Great. You’re in there for the long haul.

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