You are 4 times more likely to achieve your goals by clearly defining them, according to CoSchedule’s 2022 trend report for Marketing strategy. You can find several goal-setting frameworks out there to help you organize what you want to achieve. But one such framework that can really make you dig your heels at the planning stages is Objectives and Key Results or OKRs. This can be applied effectively to marketing specifically or to the organization/brand as a whole.
In this blog post, you will understand what OKRs are, when they can be used and how to use them in your marketing strategy. You will be provided with a few examples to understand the application of OKRs to make this easily digestible.
Where and When can you use OKRs?
The short and right answers here are: EVERYWHERE and ALL THE TIME
Trying to track progress? OKRs can help
Attempting to create alignment internally? Use OKRs
Want to encourage engagement around measurable goals? That’s what OKRs are for!
OKRs are popularly attributed to John Doerr’s 2017 book “Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs”. But the origins of the model were in place by the 1970s at Intel by Andy Grove and documented in his 1983 book: “High Output Management”
Time to dig into the core topic with…
What are OKRs?
The definition of OKRs Objectives and Key Results is fairly straightforward. Koan.co has a great encompassing definition as “a collaborative goal-setting tool used by marketing teams and other departments to set and achieve challenging, ambitious goals through identifiable and measurable results.”
But let’s dig a little deeper into the 2 stages of it::
Objectives
I can’t say this enough. You need to get used to setting SMARTER goals and objectives. Getting specific about your goals and tying them to a time constraint can significantly increase your chances of achieving them. If you want to learn more about setting SMARTER goals, check out this blog post that provides several examples.
Your goals or objectives provide a broad direction for the brand or organization to follow. You may find it easier to keep your objectives qualitative and then get specific and quantitative with the key results. However, you can actually dig into a lot more detail if your objectives are quantitative and indicative of a broad goal based on a large key performance indicator (KPI).
Key Results
You will find that most guides only ask you to get specific in how you are going to attain your objective under key results. You may note that key results are quantitative and measurable. But if you have already outlined a KPI in your specific objective, then how do you determine a key result separately from this.
Break it down into further detail. How?
By using related metrics that directly and indirectly affect your KPI. Or, you can split the key results into time stages that build a roadmap to achieving the broader goal. You will see this and other ways to capitalize on key results in the examples coming up..
Examples of OKRs
| Example | Objective – SMARTER | Key Results |
| 1. Social Media growth for your brand | Increase organic engagement interactions on Instagram to 20,000 per month by Q3 2022. Review bi-weekly to adjust. | – Likes to 12,000 – Comments to 5,000 – Shares + Saves to 3,000 – Impressions to 300,000 – Engagement rate – 6.5% |
| 2. Email lead generation for B2B | Increase to an average of 20 qualified leads per month via email marketing, over the next 6 months. Monthly review of objective. | – Identify top 10 segments – Average CTR to 5.5% – Average CTOR to 10% – At least 80,000 delivered emails per month |
| 3. Revenue-focused goal | Achieve 1 million USD of net revenue in 2022. Quarterly review of objective. | – Peak monthly target 120K – Non peak target = 80K – Quarterly Target = 250K – Revenue by product line split A: 450K | B: 300K | C: 250K |
| 4. Conversions goal for e-commerce | 50K USD monthly revenue from e-commerce through the website. Weekly review of the goal. | – User Traffic goal: 10,000 – Sign Up goal: 1250 – Add to Cart stage: 750 – Average cart value: 100 USD – Total transactions goal: 500 |
| 5. Customer retention and care goal | Improve revenue from customer retention by 8% in 2022. Review goal every month. | – Improve NPS score to +65 – Improve CSAT score to 80% – Increase CLV by 5% – Reduce time between purchases to every 6 weeks. |
Example 1
For your business, social media growth planning is essential. You can showcase your products, share stories, connect with your audience and organic engagement is a great KPI to determine that. You can see the SMARTER objective is based on it for this purpose.
The key results have split up the larger KPI into its components: likes, comments, saves, and shares. So you can specifically plan content to meet each individual goal. You can also aim for overall impressions and the engagement rate that can indirectly dictate your overall engagement based on historical data, which is why you see them as key results.
Example 2
For most B2B brands, lead generation is a primary goal connected to success. The SMARTER objective is set at 20 qualified leads per month. In this instance, you can see that I use email marketing as the specific channel to achieve the goal.
You can see how key results include common and effective metrics such as click-through-rate (CTR) and click-to-open-rate (CTOR). But, you also need to set the total emails that need to be sent out as a parameter (based on historical data). Choosing your top 10 segments can improve your CTR and CTOR and indirectly affect conversions and leads generated.
Example 3
For a more generic revenue-focused goal, this fits best. An annual revenue goal is already part of your business and strategic plans. When you make this your objective, your key results can just be a simple breakdown by monthly, quarterly, or product-line splits, so you can create tactics for each time period to fit the targets.
Example 4
Let’s say you run an e-commerce business. You need to increase monthly revenue through the website and set that as your objective. Choosing a specific amount and review cycle makes it SMARTER, but your key results give you clarity in the steps to achieve your objective.
You can split your funnel stage goals as key results to you know much your traffic goal should be for awareness; and what your sign-up and cart targets have to be. You can also split it the goal into target purchases and average purchase value, so you can generate tactics that increase both to a benchmark.
Example 5
Customer retention is every business’s dream. The more loyal your customers, the better your word-of-mouth perception and the higher the frequency of purchases. So if you set a customer retention goal as your objective, what will your key results be?
Similar to example 2, we focus on the supporting metrics that directly affect retention revenue. You notice customer lifetime value (CLV) and time between purchases to this effect. You can also see indirect metrics that affect how happy your customers are with the Net Promoter Score (NPS) or the measure of your customer satisfaction reviews (CSAT)
There are endless examples in marketing that can benefit from the use of OKRs. The focus of the examples above is mostly on digital marketing. But you need to remember that OKRs were developed before digital marketing really even took off. You can apply the principle to all your goals and even to other functions like IT, Finance, or Sales.
Conclusion
The application of OKRs being endless make it a versatile and effective framework to implement. You can see from the 5 examples how it could be used for marketing goals and objectives. You would find that using SMARTER goals along with OKRs will help you in your marketing planning with SOSTAC, or planning your communications with STDC.
The OKRs you create will ultimately help you focus on your tactics and implementation of marketing strategies like the Mckinsey 7S framework or the ever-popular 7P Marketing Mix.
The implementation of OKRs is a collaborative exercise, giving everyone within the organization a say in how they can contribute to the main objectives and also holding them accountable for their part in it. So use it and use it often! And you can get up to 4 times the success too!
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