The Essentials:
Setting Your Goals
Content Strategy Framework Lesson
3/6
This module teaches you how to establish clear, measurable objectives to ensure your digital efforts move from aimless posting to purposeful ministry. You’ll learn how to set SMART goals and identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that effectively measure your audience’s spiritual movement.
Goals
Welcome to the second component of the Content Strategy Framework! In the last module, we talked about understanding your Audience — who they are, where they are spiritually, and what they need most. Now you’re ready to set your Goal.
Remember: We don’t want to add to digital noise; we want to make a spiritual impact online. To keep ourselves from creating aimless digital content, we set goals to center on the audience and journey alongside them as they take their next steps toward Jesus.
What is a goal?
A goal is the clear purpose or desired outcome for a specific digital campaign or user journey. It’s a way to clarify what we’re hoping God will do through our work. It’s the fruit we long to see. In our ministry context, a goal answers the question: “How do you plan to serve your defined audience, and what are you trying to achieve?” This step moves digital activity from aimless posting to purposeful ministry.
If you don’t resonate with the word “goals,” think of this step instead as another act of stewardship and love. This is not about achievement or performance, but rather about clarifying our intentions so that we know if we’re honoring the time, people and resources God has entrusted to us. Clarity helps us create more intentionally for the audiences we aim to love and serve.
Again, think of a map. You need to determine your destination before deciding which route to take. Goals anchor your ministry efforts, ensuring that every piece of content and every interaction is designed to help your audience move closer to Jesus or deeper into mission.
Reminder: A user journey without a goal is just aimless content.
Using the acronym SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound) can be an effective way to clarify what you’re trying to help your audience do.
From these goals, we derive Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), the specific numbers that show if the strategy is succeeding. KPIs often tell us how people are taking the next step. For example, a KPI might be the number of people who sign up for a small group or request prayer.
How Do Goals Connect to the Content Strategy Framework?
Audience
Goals and audiences depend on each other, as you cannot set an effective ministry goal without first defining your audience and considering what will bring them value. By keeping the audience at the center of your strategy, your goals remain focused on serving real spiritual needs rather than simply pursuing metrics.
Content
Your goal determines what type of content you need to create. It ensures that every piece of content, from the initial hook to the call-to-action, is purposefully designed to guide the audience toward the intended destination.
Distribution (Sharing Methods)
The goals help you choose which distribution platforms and channels you will use to reach your audience. Because platforms offer different functions and advantages, your choice of where to share your content must consistently align with the objectives of your user journey.
Analysis
Analyzing your data must begin by returning to your goals, which provide necessary context for your analytics. Setting a clear goal allows you to identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and determine what data you need to measure to accurately evaluate your success.
Let’s look at an example of how goals and audience are interdependent.
If your audience is “Uninterested” students dealing with anxiety, your goal shouldn’t be to immediately get them to join a Bible study. Instead, offer them a safe space to talk or request prayer. Or if your audience is “Grounded” churchgoers who think that sharing the gospel is the job of the pastor alone, your goal shouldn’t be to immediately get them to go on an international mission trip. Instead, you may want to help them take a step toward sharing their own personal testimony with a friend.
Effective digital strategy happens in the “sweet spot” where your audience’s felt needs overlap with what your ministry has to offer.
Why do we set goals?
To avoid aimless activity. Without goals, you may have a lot of digital activity (posting, liking, sharing), but no real progress toward winning, building and sending.
To cut through the noise. There are countless digital tools and approaches. Without a clear goal, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and hard to know where to start, especially if you’re working solo or with a small team.
To measure real impact. Setting goals prevents us from slipping into measuring “vanity metrics” (such as simple views or likes) and helps us evaluate spiritual impact.
To steward resources well. Ministry takes capacity, whether it’s people or financial. Setting goals helps you steward your time, energy and resources well because the process provides focus and clarity.
To help make decisions. Setting goals helps you determine what kind of content you need to create, which distribution channels you’ll use to reach your audience, and what analytics you’ll measure to determine success.
Setting goals can be the hardest part of using the Content Strategy Framework, but overall it saves you time, energy and resources.
The following examples show different types of goals to get you started with your brainstorming:
Example 1. Finding New Followers on Instagram
- General Idea: We want to help more Open people engage with gospel content on Instagram during the holiday season.
- The SMART Goal: During the 12 days leading up to Christmas (Time-bound), we will run a targeted digital Christmas campaign (user journey) to see 20 new people engage with us (Measurable), staying within our set ad budget (Specific/Attainable) on the most popular social media platform in our country (Relevant).
Example 2. Launching a New Ministry
- General Idea: We want to start a new campus movement and we need volunteers.
- The SMART Goal: Before the month ends (Time-bound), we will run a targeted digital campaign (user journey) to collect contact information (Measurable) from 5-10 interested Christian students (Specific/Attainable) who want to help launch a new ministry on their campus (Relevant).
Example 3. Engaging “Professing” Young Professionals
- General Idea: We want to use a podcast about navigating faith in the workplace to help “Professing” young professionals move from nominal faith to actively growing in a spiritual community.
The SMART Goal: By the end of our 6-week “Faith at Work” podcast series (Time-bound), we want to have driven 50 young professionals (Attainable/Specific) to register for a live follow-up webinar (Measurable), where they’ll be invited to join an online discipleship community (Relevant).
Hopefully these examples help you see the value of this challenging step. Now it’s your turn.
Follow these steps to help you and your team set your goals.
- Make sure you have the audience worksheet you did in the last module open in front of you. This makes sure you are, from the beginning, keeping your audience and goals connected.
- What are some of the main priorities or goals on your national ministry’s strategic plan? Or your national strategy’s strategic plan? Understanding this can help you identify places where digital or hybrid (online-offline) user journeys could help accelerate your national ministry’s efforts. If you don’t have this or don’t have access to this, you can skip this step.
- Use the following questions to brainstorm your goal(s) for the user journey you want to create.
- What action do you want your audience to take? For example, do you want them to watch a video, start a conversation about Jesus, download a resource, share their contact information, attend an event, or take a next step in discipleship?
- Where are you stuck? Where does digital offer an opportunity to accelerate your mission or bridge a missional gap?
- What is your realistic capacity? How much time and budget and how many staff members can you invest in your goal right now?
- What is the “Work Backwards” math? If you want 20 people to sign up for a group, then realistically, how many people need to see your journey for that to happen?
- Now that you’ve spent time brainstorming, answer the questions below on paper or add them into the SMART Goals Worksheet (PDF). You’ll likely refine your work as you move through the Content Strategy Framework. Strive for progress, not perfection.
- Specific: What exactly do you want to accomplish, and why is it important
- Measurable: How will you know if you accomplished your goal? (This leads to your Key Performance Indicator, or KPI.)
- Attainable: Is this goal realistic considering the time, budget and capacity you (and your team) have
- Relevant: Does this goal fit into your bigger-picture national ministry priorities
- Time-bound: When do you want to accomplish the goal? What is the deadline?
- KPIs: Lastly, you may need to consider a few Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to add to your goal. Why? If goals are about the fruit you hope to see through your user journey, KPIs are the measurable data points that help you notice if the fruit is starting to grow. KPIs are not the goal itself, but rather indicators that you are on the right track in helping your audience.
Below are the examples we looked at earlier, but now with KPIs added in.
Example 1. Finding New Followers on Instagram
General Idea: We want to help more Open people engage with gospel content on Instagram during the holiday season.
The SMART Goal: During the 12 days leading up to Christmas (Time-bound), we will run a targeted digital Christmas campaign (user journey) to see 20 new people engage with us (Measurable), staying within our set ad budget (Specific/Attainable) on the most popular social media platform in our country (Relevant).
Possible KPIs:
- Number of post views and likes (Although you don’t want to only pay attention to this, post views and likes can help you know if people are even seeing your content)
- Number of comments or direct messages
- Number of new follows
Example 2. Launching a New Ministry
General Idea: We want to start a new campus movement in a new city and we need volunteers.
The SMART Goal: Before the month ends (Time-bound), we will run a targeted digital campaign (user journey) to collect contact information (Measurable) from 5-10 interested Christian students (Specific/Attainable) who want to help launch a new ministry on their campus (Relevant).
Possible KPIs:
- Number of direct messages received
- Number of contact form submissions
- Click-through rate (CTA) — helps you understand if your content is successfully driving students to the sign-up page
Example 3. Engaging “Professing” Young Professionals
General Idea: We want to use a podcast about navigating faith in the workplace to help “Professing” young professionals move from nominal faith to actively growing in a spiritual community.
The SMART Goal: By the end of our 6-week “Faith at Work” podcast series (Time-bound), we want to have driven 50 young professionals (Attainable/Specific) to register for a live follow-up webinar (Measurable), where they will be invited to join an online discipleship community (Relevant).
Possible KPIs:
- Number of webinar registration forms submitted
- Click-through rate (CTR) on the webinar link placed in the podcast show notes
- Number of listens/downloads for specific podcast episodes featuring the call to action (CTA)
- Click-through rate on ads, if applicable
We’ve provided a list of possible KPIs for digital campaigns.
*You may need to revisit your KPIs once you’ve worked through the next two sections — Content and Distribution. These two sections will help you better understand your specific user journey and where it will live, enabling you to set clearer KPIs.
A Final Thought:
Take 10 minutes now to write down a one-sentence SMART goal for your digital initiative. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but something is better than nothing.
Put this goal up next to your defined audience and ask yourself one last time, “Will working toward this goal help our audience take a relevant step on their spiritual journey?”
If the answer is yes, you are ready to move on to the Content section.
Feeling stuck or need help figuring out your goals?