A marketing OKR is at its best when it is clear, focused and the key results really focus on outcomes.
In marketing teams, it is easy to slide into listing activities for key results and miss the opportunity to really identify core outcomes that the team is trying to push for. Most of the time, the outcomes are there, but not clearly articulated and the discussion that leads to real outcome focused OKRs is really what a good marketing strategy meeting is all about.
Objective: Turn organic traffic into organic signups
Level: Team Team: SEO Team: Marketing
Measurable ★★★★★
Outcome-based ★★★★★
Focused ★★★★★
Niklas Olsson · OKR coach
Objective: Increase brand awareness
Coach’s score ★★★★★
Measurable ★★★★★
Outcome-based ★★★★★
Focused ★★★★★
Niklas Olsson · OKR coach
This is an example of a problematic OKR, but also of what an OKR can look like for many teams starting out with the framework. In many cases it can be worthwhile to run a quarter with something like this, to learn and understand what the issues really are with this kind of OKR. Overall we are lacking on most parameters here. There is no why or inspiration in the objective, and the key results are not outcomes or results. These are pure tasks to complete, or ambitions without measurability, like grow social media followers.
An improved OKR would have an objective more like: penetrate our core market with increased brand awareness. Then a key result that actually measures brand awareness, maybe one that measures direct traffic to the website, and another that sets a target for how many large publications or search PRs should generate, for example.
Marketing teams can be very data driven and numbers focused, those teams seldom have issues in finding good key results. Where they fail is instead in getting to clear strategy in their objectives. The opposite is true for marketing teams that focus on brand or projects where it is easy to set great objectives but harder to find the right outcomes to target. The best marketing teams manage to combine these two into great OKRs.
Great marketing OKRs are focused enough to drive real change. They cover several skills in the team to build towards a common effort to reach results together.
Key results in a team should be owned by the team in a way that they have real and direct impact on them. Most marketing teams can't fully drive revenue why a revenue number is not always right. It can however be part of an OKR to be able to track the final outcome and build understanding towards what the team is actually pushing for.
OKRnest gives your team the structure these examples are built on, and a weekly check-in habit that keeps them alive. Free for up to 3 users.
This is a very strong OKR. Clear focus on a clear outcome, a clear change the team wants to achieve. The minor issue is key result two: raising organic visitors reaching a signup surface. I don't think anyone outside the team would really understand what that means. It is a little technical, but not complex enough to be a problem with the OKR. And on high-intent organic landing pages, hopefully the team already has a clear definition of which pages count. That is not something to invent as you start measuring. It is just for clarity, so you know what you set out to achieve and what actually matters.
Looking at the numbers, this is very ambitious for a team OKR, especially if it sits on a quarter. To move the needle this far you would need quite a few people on it, or a lot of SEO resources. You will also not make this kind of shift every quarter. This is a one-time real bump, so it sits a little on the too-ambitious side.