Why should your Marketing team use OKRs?

OKR is a framework that helps you navigate uncertainty and make decisions in complex environments. Objectives and key results help your company align its vision, strategies, and business goals. Marketing teams are frequently challenged with too many projects that could be tackled at any given time. OKRs help keep focus and concentrate on the initiatives that are most important.

How to write OKRs: The basics

When you want some inspiration or at least a frame of reference for setting your OKRs (objectives and key results), it's normal to look for examples. The actual formula for writing OKRs is pretty straightforward: objectives are goals and intents, while key results are time-bound and measurable milestones under these objectives.

Objective: The outcome we want to achieve with our time & energy.

KR1: The measurable outputs we want to achieve the objective.

If you want to know more about OKRs, you can read this article: OKR Explained.

Marketing OKR examples

Let's make it more tangible with these marketing OKRs examples for your team.

Social Media Marketing

KR1: Increase engagement rate to over 15%

KR2: Increase social organic traffic by 50%

KR3: Increase leads from social media from 500 to 1,500 per month

KR1: 2% average engagement rate on all posts

KR2: Hit 20k followers by the end of Q4

KR3: Increase brand mentions by 15%

SEO Marketing

KR1: Increase domain authority (DA) from 20 to 35

KR2: Increase the number of backlinks from 500 to 750

KR3: Increase monthly organic traffic by 35%

KR1: Achieve a top-3 position on Google for 5 main keywords

KR2: Decrease organic bounce rate from 70% to 60%

KR3: Increase organic traffic for 3 main keywords from 5,000 to 10,000 by the end of Q4

PR/Brand Marketing

KR1: Get published in 3 mainstream new work media channels

KR2: Increase brand searches by 30% by the end of Q4

KR3: Rank in the top 5 positions for competitive industry keywords

KR4: Increase direct traffic by 15%

KR1: 85% of people can clearly identify our brand in blind tests

KR2: 100% of our public-facing assets are covered

Product Marketing OKR examples

KR1: Conduct 10 on-site user-testing sessions

KR2: Implement 5 new channels where to distribute our content

KR3: Test the presentation of the new release with 5 users

KR1: Run 10 user interviews with the target audience

KR2: Increase visitor to trial conversion rate from 3% to 7%

KR3: Increase trial to paid conversion from 20% to 40%

Content Marketing

KR1: Create long-term partnerships with the top 5 writers

KR2: Increase blog CTR from 3.5% to 5%

KR3: Publish 3 own content articles in the leading industry online publications

KR1: Double newsletter subscribers

KR2: Increase referral traffic on the blog from industry partnership by 10%

KR3: Increase CTR by 15% on industry blog articles

Influencer Marketing

KR1: Get product reviews from 10 industry experts

KR2: Increase influencer’s referral traffic from 500 to 2,000 per month

KR3: Increase the average brand mentions on Linkedin from 10 to 20 per month

Teams generally need a few cycles to learn how to construct effective OKRs. Iterating patiently will reveal how OKRs can optimize your team's engagement, motivation, and performance. Use these examples for inspiration when creating your own marketing OKRs.