As a company, you have a long-term vision. In doing so, it can be difficult to outline concrete goals and actions to take in the short term. This is often the case with an online marketing strategy: you want to, but you don’t know how. To achieve structural online success, you need a plan. Get more out of the business and start working on a strategic business plan.
The OGSM method fits well within our Resultsmatter® approach. This is a method we like to use to constantly measure and improve a website. After all, a website is never finished: after a new website goes live, the real work begins. Site performance is measured and then optimized. In doing so, your (marketing) goals are an essential part of the process, just like OGSM.
What is the OGSM method?
The OGSM framework is a popular planning tool that helps both companies and teams map out the long-term vision. This is tied to short-term goals that are achievable for the organization or team. OGSM stands for Objective, Goals, Strategies and Measures. These four factors should reflect at a glance how your company’s goals are related and should achieve the end goal. It is therefore customary to write out the OGSM on a single A4 sheet. This way, you need to focus on the core values and goals and the plan remains short, clear and tangible.
The OGSM method is often used by company management to make organizational goals tangible to employees. In this way, you draw up a strategic business plan that is clear to everyone and in which concrete goals, objectives, strategies and KPIs (Critical Performance Indicators) emerge. This forces you as a company to make choices that are in the best interest of the long-term goal.
Objective
The OGSM method always starts with the end goal: the long-term vision. Where do you want to go as a company in a given period of time? This is the “objective” of the organization. The objective then guides the choices you make going forward. Therefore, it is important that all employees know, understand and acknowledge the vision. For each part of the method, we provide some fictitious examples.
Examples of objectives
- An airline’s ultimate goal is to become the market leader for travel to and from Greece.
- A supermarket chain’s ultimate goal is to have a branch in every municipality in the Netherlands.
- An Internet agency’s ultimate goal is to become the largest company in the Western Netherlands in this industry.
- An amusement park’s ultimate goal is to be the best visited amusement park in the Benelux.
Goals
The vision, the end goal, must be sharply formulated. Only then can you establish topics for quantitative goals (from the objective). You make these smaller objectives concrete and measurable in the “goals. For example, it is possible to use the SMART method of setting goals. This allows you to measure, evaluate and make adjustments in the interim. So the goals are the manageable objectives to reach the big end goal, the objective.
Examples of goals
- Over the next 12 months, our organic position increases by an average of 5% on the 10 most important keywords for us in Google.
- In the next 12 months, it will increase its market share in the Dutch industry by 10% over our biggest competitor.
- In the next 2 months, we will receive at least 50 applications for our online marketer vacancy.
- Over the next 6 months, we sold 20% more tickets compared to the same period last year.
Strategies
Through the “strategies” you describe how the company is going to achieve the goals and thus the objective. Again, the more concrete, the better. Often several strategies are possible to achieve a goal. So you have to choose which set of strategies best fits the set of goals and the objective. That’s how you maintain focus. We recommend choosing up to five strategies; after all, the entire model should fit on a single A4. Choose the minimum necessary strategies to finally arrive at the objective.
Examples of strategies
- Working on SEO optimizations and link building to improve our organic position in Google.
- Reviewing and expanding our store assortment to better align it with customer needs.
- Increasing our online advertising budget to reach more potential employees.
- Create a campaign in partnership with a supermarket to bring our business to a wider audience.
Measures
The ‘measures’ represent measurements in the OGSM. In this section, you determine what value each strategy must meet at any given time. In short, the measures are the dashboard on which you read whether the organization is on track (or not). It may be helpful here to include concrete actions. Think about what the action is, who performs it and when it must be performed. So the measures consist of a dashboard and a corresponding action plan. Name only actions specific to achieving strategies. Thus, these are not actions that are already standard within the job duties of a particular position.
Examples of measures
- Checking the organic position of the website with a 0 and 1 measurement.
- Conducting A/B testing to improve the customer experience of a website or physical store.
- Conduct consumer research among target audience.
- Conduct keyword research to ascertain online position relative to competitors.
OGSM as part of resultssmatter®.
A good OGSM lets your organization (re)manage as needed. The compact method keeps you sharp and focused on specific goals. Online success is therefore the result of persistence, consistency and focus. Something that, practice shows, is difficult for many organizations to sustain. Through our Resultsmatter® approach, you can count on advice, tips and ongoing attention from your strategic advisor. We not only solve problems, but also spot online opportunities. This results in concrete conclusions and recommendations.
Through attention and focus, we work together in monthly sprints. We do this through a constant process of research and optimization. The ultimate goal of a sprint is to produce specific conclusions and recommendations. Through the strip chart or in project form, the website is then optimized. Through specific research questions, we concretely map out our marketing efforts by period and what it has yielded. This allows us to combine the OGSM method well with the Resultsmatter® approach.
