Rolling Out Effective OKRs In Business For Marketing Teams

Marketers are usually under a lot of pressure as the competition is fierce and expectations are high. Often, it takes more than a quarter to see an increase in conversion rates, ROI, and marketing strategy efficiency.

This in no way means OKR business for marketing teams is not useful. Instead, the Objectives and Key Results framework is extremely valuable for marketing teams as it helps them structure marketing goals and makes sure that various parts of the marketing team (like PR, SEO, social media, content and so on) take ownership of delivering impactful results.

Business OKRs help transform your marketing values into business values by creating a results-focused culture, enabling autonomous self-organizing teams, adopting value-based ceremonies and fostering agile marketing transformations.

Business OKRs help transform your marketing values into business values by creating a results-focused culture. Using the OKR methodology, you can see how daily efforts connect to the company’s purpose and vision, which applies even to marketing teams.

Let’s run through the benefits of OKR business for marketing teams, best practices on setting marketing OKRs, preparation steps and marketing OKR examples.

Business OKRs for marketing teams empower everyone to understand how their work will add value to the business’s goals. It also increases the team’s overall engagement as Objectives and Key Results allow individuals to prioritize better and achieve their goals in the order of importance and impact.

Read more: OKRs for cross-functional teams: 7 Best practices

What are the best practices for setting business OKRs for marketing teams?

Here’s how you can create marketing OKRs for your business.

Let’s take a marketing OKR example:

Objective – Improve our SaaS tool’s presence on review websites, forums and groups that our target audience with high buying intent refers to.
KR1 – Increase the number of positive brand mentions from 2,000 to 4,000 in 30 days.
If we start creating engaging discussions on the web, people will pick them up and the volume of brand mentions will increase.
KR2 – Increase the reviews published on Capterra from 20 to 60.
We’ll reach out to existing customers, asking them to publish reviews as they have more credibility than messaging on our own website.
KR3 – Achieve 40+ demos from relevant discussion forums and groups.
Generating positive reviews and discussions is useless if they fail to guide potential users to the next step in the funnel.

Another example could be inbound marketing OKRs.

Objective – Get more inbound leads.
KR1 – Increase the number of ebooks from 2 to 5.
KR2 – Increase the whitepaper downloads by 30%.
KR3 – Boost the landing page submission form rate by 35%.

Content marketing and SEO example.

Objective – Boost organic traffic to your website.
KR1 – Execute a keyword strategy for the next 3 months.
KR2 – Increase the number of articles for the top-ranking keywords from 5 to 20.
KR3 – Secure 30 do-follow backlinks in the next 3 months.

Read more: Why do companies use OKR goal-setting framework?

How does Unlock OKR help with marketing OKRs for business?

One of the quickest ways to implement marketing OKRs for business is by using OKR software such as Unlock OKR.

Using Unlock OKR, you can set Objectives and Key Results on the company, team and individual levels, so that everyone can understand how goals are aligned and structured.

Additionally, OKRs keep everyone focused on what matters the most. They give everyone the right scope to aim for the bull’s eye. Each individual is motivated to create meaning through their work.

If you haven’t already set marketing OKRs for your business, now is the time to get started with Objectives and Key Results to run better marketing campaigns and increase your brand’s reach.