How short term goals lead to long term success

Every business wants to be noticed.

If you have a vision for your business, you likely plan on growing it, establishing yourself as an expert in your field and making a profit, am I right?

These are long-term goals.

If all you have is a long term plan, it may be easy to lose focus after a while as that plan may feel so far out of your reach.

So what do you do in the short term?

Setting short terms goals that lead to your long term plan are helpful as they keep you focused on the now and give you an opportunity to celebrate the small wins.

In order to make your long-term vision a reality, you need to have a short-term plan and implement strategies that will help you now to start working towards your end goal.

My clients are often new entrepreneurs and are usually feeling the pressure to start making money by the time they see me.

They come to me wanting to discuss how to make money quickly and when I ask them what they’ve tried they say they’ve been blogging to grow their email list and building their social media following as they believe once they have a captive audience it will be easier to sell.

These are valid and necessary tactics, but sometimes these strategies can take time.

So I ask them, how will this help them get a sale tomorrow and make money immediately?

Often it won’t.

Short-term goals are actionable and can be flexible, so if a strategy isn’t working, you could tweak it or try something new and see more results.

A couple of examples of short-term business goals and strategies can include signing up X no of clients each week or hosting an event to promote your services.

It takes time to build that captive audience, so a short-term strategy is making very clear offers on your own social media platform and in other groups that already have a large audience.

Whether you are a start-up or a more established entrepreneur looking to successfully launch a new product or service, short-term success is necessary for long-term growth.

Here are a few tactics to achieve short-term marketing success:

• Early Bird Promotions – for a limited time you may offer a reduced price to encourage the customer to act. This offer may be the incentive that someone needs to purchase.
• Group offers – you may target members of a particular organisation or who belong to a particular Facebook group and offer them a promotion which entitles them to a reduced price if they sign up for your offer.
• Facebook paid promotions or Pay per click advertising – effective implementation of this strategy is a very quick way to drive significant targeted traffic to your website or Facebook Page.

“You have to believe in the long term plan you have but you need the short term goals to motivate and inspire you.” – Roger Federer

Own Your Goal!

p.s I’d love to hear your take on this topic. What short term plan or tactic do you have in place to achieve your long term goal?

If you know someone who will benefit from reading this, share this post now. It might be the spark they need to give their goal a real go.

THANKS FOR READING & SHARING!