Marketers work under a lot of pressure. Competition is fierce, expectations are high, and it may take a lot longer than a quarter to see any impact on conversion numbers, ad ROI, and marketing strategy efficiency.
So how can quarterly OKRs help a marketing team keep their sanity and stay focused?
There are a few preparation steps the team needs to take to answer that question:
- Write down your learnings from the previous quarter, and try to make predictions for the future: what will work and what won’t (based on what worked before). Having a wrong hypothesis is better than having none at all.
- Look at your data, and understand which metrics are performing well and which ones might need attention. If you are not tracking your data, you need to fix that first. Take a course on Google Analytics, and learn how to read reports.
- Did you spot a lagging Key Performance Indicator? Any metrics that could use some improvement? In 99% cases the answer will always be “yes”.
- So, now, do you have any ideas on how to fix that?
A proper discussion might take a week or two but you should put all of your ideas in writing, ask each other clarifying questions, and try to agree on a hypothesis that your entire team believes to be the most promising one.
Now let’s say, we’ve had a run at those questions, and here are the answers:
- Our UTM tags weren’t working so our data on lead sources wasn’t accurate. We have fixed it now and created a process for keeping URLs in good shape.
- When we were fixing the issues with reports in Google Analytics, we also noticed that our blog has a low visitor-to-signup conversion rate. Currently, it’s 4% less than the lowest industry average.
- We think that our potential clients are not likely to make decisions while reading our blog. So we need to understand their decision-making process better and provide answers to their questions. If our leads feel like we can anticipate their requests, they will be more likely to trust our expertise.
- This quarter, we’d like to focus on understanding our clients’ decision-making process, communicating our expertise through relevant software review websites (like Capterra), and building up our credibility online.
When you are drafting an Objective, start by defining a problem you want to solve, and then try to phrase your highest impact idea.
Below is an OKR example to address the conclusions that came out of the discussion above.
Objective: Improve our presence on relevant review websites, forums, and groups to nurture leads with high buying intent
Comment:
We will explore the websites and forums where decision-makers are asking questions and discussing the pros and cons of different tools/services. Our hypothesis is that by growing good reviews and active commenting, we can make our voice heard and showcase our expertise to potential new clients. Plus, we will understand our clients’ decision-making process much better.
KR1: Increase the number of positive brand mentions on the web from 3000 to 6000 (30-days average)
Comment:
If we manage to start engaging discussions anywhere on the web, people should pick them up, and the volume of brand mentions would increase. This is how we will know if the angle we chose and the pitch we present are the right ones to spark interest.
KR2: Increase the number of published reviews from 10 to 50 on Capterra
Comment:
Third-party reviews have more credibility than our own website messaging. We will try reaching out to our existing clients and asking them to publish reviews. We need to figure out how to motivate them better.
KR3: Achieve 60+ demo requests from discussion forums & groups
Comment:
This is the main outcome we should drive and our primary focus because generating discussions is useless without guiding potential clients to the next steps of the funnel.
KR4: Make sure 80+% of demo requests are further qualified as good leads
Comment:
People requesting meetings with our salespeople doesn’t mean that they will show up or turn out to be good potential customers. We need to make sure that the leads we provide are of good quality so that the Sales team has a chance to close those deals.
To drive the progress on these OKRs, the team will need to consider which initiatives they will prioritize and complete first.
Initiatives:
- Create a list of potential websites, groups, and forums where we can start discussions
- Decide on 5-7 different pitch stories to connect with different audiences
- Create a new GA report to track conversion on the core pages
- Reach out to 100 good customers to ask for reviews
Apart from the quarterly OKRs, the team will continue monitoring their Key Performance Indicators.
Related performance metrics (KPIs to monitor):
- Website traffic from different sources
- Visitor-to-signup conversion rate
Learn more about writing good Objectives and Key Results in our Learning Center.