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Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) help marketing teams collaborate on initiatives that drive the best results. By aligning with corporate strategy and shifting focus from numbers to impact, marketing OKRs bring measurability into the forefront of marketing strategy.
Each marketing OKR improves transparency in your teams, ensuring work isn't duplicated and resource efficiency is prioritized. This article explores the benefits of creating OKRs for marketing, how to set marketing OKRs, and over 30 OKR examples for marketing.
Learn more about what OKRs are and how to use them
Marketing is often misunderstood because it is about both science and art. While the desired outcomes are clear (pipeline, brand awareness, etc.), the methods for getting to the outcomes and measuring the effectiveness of those methods is difficult — this is where OKRs in marketing come in.
Marketing teams lose focus while trying to check all the boxes, leaving the team's process feeling like a chaotic whirlwind.
Prioritization is one of the biggest challenges your overall marketing OKR solves, helping teams unlock their full potential. Marketing OKRs are how you track progress and demonstrate the impact of your marketing efforts. By enabling marketing teams to focus, all marketing inputs can be linked to quantifiable outcomes.
Marketing OKR benefits
While marketing is metrics-driven by nature, results don't always come from boosting numbers. Setting OKRs for your marketing team helps its members identify metrics and key results that matter and shift focus to what’s working.
Your marketing objective, for example, aligns with the corporate strategy to outline desired outcomes. Corporate strategy guides the marketing OKR, with function-specific OKRs helping marketing teams focus among dozens of paths of influence. Using OKRs in marketing centers the question of “why” at the core of each effort, calming the at-times chaotic whirlwind of marketing operations.
Finally, in marketing, CMOs and VP-level leadership are vulnerable to overpromising expectations and overextending their teams. OKRs for marketing mitigate this risk by involving teams in the goal creation process, making outcome-setting a collaborative, transparent process.
Setting OKRs for marketing teams
Should marketing OKRs be set top-down from leadership, or bottom-up from teams?
Marketing functions are split between numerous focus areas, creating depth through specialization — we advise not cascading marketing OKRs to the department/function level. Trying to force limited-context goals onto each marketing function will limit the effectiveness of OKRs for marketing.
Our marketing OKR examples below are generated from a majority bottom-up perspective.
Leadership involvement in creating good marketing OKRs, however, is critical for ensuring each function-specific marketing OKR is relevant to the overall team goals.
The size and maturity of your organization play a large factor in focus. Let's explore some marketing objective examples:
- Customer churn rate is high — the marketing OKR needs to be brand or customer-focused to improve retention rates
- Pipeline is lagging — demand generation would be a priority for your marketing OKR
Collaborative OKRs between department/function-level leaders and marketing leaders are the best bet for most marketing teams.
Collaborative OKRs for marketing teams ensure a degree of decision-making autonomy, but with the guarantee of driving the higher level marketing objective.
Marketing OKR focus areas
The following marketing OKR examples are dedicated to different areas, depending on the strategic focus and needs of your organization:
- Demand generation OKRs
- Product marketing OKRs
- Inbound marketing OKRs
- Content marketing OKRs
- Social media marketing OKRs
- SEO marketing OKRs
- Public relations/brand marketing OKRs
- PPC marketing OKRs
- Community marketing OKRs
- Partner marketing OKRs
- Account-based marketing (ABM) OKRs
Check out all our marketing OKR examples below.
OKR marketing examples
OKRs for demand generation
Marketing OKR example 1
- Objective: Ensure the company meets the revenue targets
- Key result 1: Increase new inbound sales from $25k to $50k per month
- Key result 2: Attract 500 new marketing qualified leads
- Key result 3: Attract 100 new marketing qualified leads from EMEA
- Key result 4: Generate >$30M in new qualified pipeline from marketing sourced leads
- Key result 5: Document and implement the new account based marketing (ABM) process
OKRs for product marketing
Marketing OKR example 1
- Objective: Clarify our product messaging for the release of the new product
- Key result 1: Conduct 10 on-site user-testing sessions to understand TA
- Key result 2: Research and implement 20 new channels where to distribute our content
- Key result 3: Run 20 different ads on Facebook and measure performance
- Key result 4: Prepare the presentation of the new product and test it with 5 users
Marketing OKR example 2
- Objective: Create extensive and accurate buyer personas
- Key result 1: Survey 150 customers on their purchase motivators
- Key result 2: Aggregate customer data across channels to create customer journeys
- Key result 3: Analyze and implement 3 sales feedback points on MQLs
Marketing OKR example 3
- Objective: Understand and document our customer journey map
- Key result 1: Conduct 10 user interviews with the target audience
- Key result 2: Create the CJM and map the product features to the customer journey
- Key result 3: Validate the CJM with 5 new customers
- Key result 4: Increase the website conversion rate from 6% to 10% based on the research
OKRs for inbound marketing
Inbound marketing OKR example 1
- Objective: Bring new inbound sales qualified leads to the website
- Key result 1: Increase the monthly visitors to the website from 12k to 20k
- Key result 2: Increase DR score from 35 to 45 on Ahrefs
- Key result 3: Decrease homepage bounce rate from 62% to 40
Marketing OKR example 2
- Objective: Boost customer acquisition on the website
- Key result 1: Improve the recommendation engine items CTR from 23% to 40%
- Key result 2: Decrease tip to end funnel drop off (churn) rate from 63% to 50%
- Key result 3: Improve net promoter score from 8.1 to 9.5 points
Marketing OKR example 3
- Objective: Achieve record acquisition metrics
- Key result 1: Increase the MAU from 12k to 20k
- Key result 2: Increase the trial signups from 700 to 1500
- Key result 3: Increase the new paid customers from 90 to 150
- Key result 4: Reduce customer acquisition costs by 20%
Marketing OKR example 4
- Objective: Reduce the bounce rate of the website
- Key result 1: Increase the CTR from 3% to 6% on the main call-to-action button
- Key result 2: Increase the watch rate of an explainer video from 2% to 5%
- Key result 3: Conduct 10 A/B experiments on the landing page
OKRs for content marketing
Marketing OKR example 1
- Objective: Attract new visitors with the weekly newsletter
- Key result 1: Create the content strategy and the topics for the next 4 months
- Key result 2: Increase the number of subscribers from 2,000 to 3,000
- Key result 3: Increase the open rate of the newsletter from 25% to 35%
- Key result 4: Increase the CTR to >7%
Marketing OKR example 2
- Objective: Relaunch the company blog
- Key result 1: Double Twitter engagements
- Key result 2: Release 3 content articles in the leading industry online publications
- Key result 3: Double blog subscribers from 1,000 to 2,000
- Key result 4: Publish 10 new blog posts focused on long-tail keywords
OKRs for social media marketing
Marketing OKR example 1
- Objective: Increase social media audience
- Key result 1: Increase the number of subscribers on FB/Insta/YouTube from 14k to 25k
- Key result 2: Increase the number monthly of views on Quora from 3k to 5k
- Key result 3: Increase the number of monthly leads from social media sources from 750 to 1500
Marketing OKR example 2
- Objective: Boost quality traffic to our blog’s valuable content
- Key result 1: Increase the number of unique page views by 30%
- Key result 2: Increase session duration to 3:50
- Key result 3: Triple pages per session to 3.
Marketing OKR example 3
- Objective: Cultivate a more engaged social media audience
- Key result 1: Double the number of Twitter engagements to 10k
- Key result 2: Grow social media conversion rates to 0.71%
- Key result 3: Increase LinkedIn engagement rate by 5%
- Key result 4: Increase posting frequency to 5x daily on Twitter and 3x on LinkedIn
OKRs for SEO (search engine optimization)
Marketing OKR example 1
- Objective: Improve the SEO rating of the website
- Key result 1: Achieve #1 place for top 5 relevant keywords
- Key result 2: Add 100 new referral links
- Key result 3: Increase DR score from 42 to 60 on Ahrefs
- Key result 4: Increase the referral traffic from 7,300 to 10,000 visitors
Marketing OKR example 2
- Objective: Enhance traffic quality by improving SERP position
- Key result 1: Improve domain authority with 45 high-quality backlinks
- Key result 2: Decrease page loading speed from 4.3 to 2.5 seconds
- Key result 3: Rank on page one for three transactional keywords
Marketing OKR example 3
- Objective: Increase engagement on the website
- Key result 1: Reduce the bounce rate from 46% to 30%
- Key result 2: Increase the average time on the website from 2.4 to 5.0 minutes
- Key result 3: Increase the number of pages viewed from 3.5 to 5.0 per session
Marketing OKR example 4
- Objective: Improve our website and grow conversions
- Key result 1: Grow website visitors by 7% each month
- Key result 2: Improve conversions on Landing Pages by 10%
- Key result 3: Implement a long-tail keyword strategy
OKRs for PR/brand
Marketing OKR example 1
- Objective: Become a leading industry brand
- Key result 1: Hire a branding agency by Sep 1
- Key result 2: Reach 1M viewers with the new ad campaigns
- Key result 3: Get 20 media placements and speak/partner at 10 conferences
Marketing OKR example 2
- Objective: Improve product and brand communication
- Key result 1: Release 6 regular bi-weekly press-release publications
- Key result 2: Hold 5 webinars with 50+ participants about the new product features
- Key result 3: Create a brand book for internal and external usage, provide all design assets
Marketing OKR example 3
- Objective: Boost awareness with PR campaigns
- Key result 1: Publish 15 press pieces in the relevant publications
- Key result 2: Host 5 industry meetups with 100+ participants each
- Key result 3: Speak on 2 conferences
- Key result 4: Sponsor 3 events with 500+ visitors in the related industries
- Key result 5: Reach 500k viewers with PR activities
Marketing OKR example 4
- Objective: Increase our brand awareness
- Key result 1: Complete 30 media calls/meetings by end of Q1
- Key result 2: Complete 15 calls/meetings with key industry influencers
- Key result 3: Secure 2 speaking spots at the annual industry conference
Marketing OKR example 5
- Objective: Build strong relationships with Forrester and Gartner
- Key result 1: Complete 2 analyst briefings in Q1
- Key result 2: Submit 3 analyst report applications
- Key result 3: Feature 2 analysts on our webinars
OKRs for PPC marketing
Marketing OKR example 1
- Objective: Improve paid acquisition effectiveness
- Key result 1: Decrease the lead cost form $7 to $5
- Key result 2: Test 10 new PPC campaigns and measure impact
- Key result 3: Increase the CR of the PPC campaigns from 3% to 6%
Marketing OKR example 2
- Objective: Improve Our PPC Campaign
- Key result 1: Achieve >1500 MQLs from Google AdWords
- Key result 2: Achieve >150 MQLs from Twitter ads
- Key result 3: Achieve a Cost per Lead of <$4
- Key result 4: Achieve >2% CTR
Marketing OKR example 3
- Objective: PPC is a Stronger Lead Magnet
- Key result 1: #1 SERP position on 10 high-converting keywords
- Key result 2: Reduce cost per click by 18%
- Key result 3: Increase ad conversion rate by 3%
OKRs for community marketing
Marketing OKR example 1
- Objective: Create a community users love
- Key result 1: Successfully launch a new community with >500 community members registered
- Key result 2: Get 30% of our customers to participate in the community
- Key result 3: Community generates at least 5 UGC pieces
- Key result 4: Host 2 live events based on user interest
Marketing OKR example 2
- Objective: Make our community known by industry experts and thought leaders
- Key result 1: Engage 12 industry experts and thought leaders in Q1 demonstrated by registration and posts
- Key result 2: Publish 6 feature articles by industry experts
- Key result 3: Research and publish the industry report & infographics for the community
OKRs for partner marketing
Marketing OKR example 1
- Objective: Create a community for our partners/resellers (MQLs).
- Key result 1: Publish 5 new partner-focused white papers by Q1
- Key result 2: Launch 7 webinars to educate our partners
- Key result 3: Complete a 5-city lunch & learn event for partners
Marketing OKR example 2
- Objective: Partners Make an Impact
- Key result 1: 5 strategic partners engaged with ABX
- Key result 2: 3x community partners engaged with partner marketing programs
- Key result 3: 25 partners have activated a free customer account
Marketing OKR example 3
- Objective: Better quality, higher quantity
- Key result 1: 25 enterprise delivery partners
- Key result 2: 20% of partners upgrade status
- Key result 3: $5M of PGO (partner generated opportunities)
OKRs for account-based marketing (ABM)
Marketing OKR example 1
- Objective: Win our strategic customers and drive increased order size
- Key result 1: Generate $10M in qualified pipeline from ABM campaign
- Key result 2: Generate 20% of closed-won sales via ABM efforts in Q4
- Key result 3: Generate 150 MQLs from LinkedIn Ad campaigns
Marketing OKR example 2
- Objective: Get ABM Over the Sustainability Gap in Q3
- Key result 1: Generate $100,000 in ARR from ABM efforts
- Key result 2: Close 20 customers from ABM efforts
- Key result 3: 25 discovery meetings come from ABM efforts
Creating marketing OKRs using OKR software
To optimize your marketing OKR implementation, seek an OKR software solution enabling scalable and adaptable OKR deployment.
The ideal OKR software should support transparent goal-setting, real-time OKR tracking, and flexibility for adjusting marketing objectives based on evolving strategies or conditions. This capability allows for the data-driven, agile creation of marketing OKRs, fostering dynamic decision-making.
To give you a preview of how your marketing OKRs would look like using OKR software, let's look at how these would look in Quantive's OKR software:
How Quantive simplifies OKRs for marketing teams
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