8 Marketing OKR Examples (Plus Why They’re Important)

Objective and key results (OKRS) are tools that a marketing department can use to guide its work. Developing and working toward achieving OKRs can help a team advertise content effectively, attract customers, and generate revenue for a business. Whether you’re already a sales or marketing professional or you want to become one, you could benefit from learning about this helpful business framework.

In this article, we discuss the definition of marketing OKRs, explain why they’re important, and provide eight marketing OKRs you could use to ensure success.

What are marketing OKRs?

Marketing OKRs are objectives and key results for marketing professionals. They’re tools to optimize a company’s efforts to raise awareness about and promote a product, service, or brand. Employees from entry-level marketers to C-level executives can use OKRs to guide workflow, monitor team performance, and accomplish goals.

Why are marketing OKRs important?

Here are several reasons why OKRs are important for a business’s success. Here are some of the other reasons this tool is important:

Unite teams under a shared aim

Creating goals and outlining the results toward which everyone is working can unite times under a shared mission and improve collaboration. It can also streamline and improve communication across the business, guiding team members in their correspondence with each other.

Enhance team motivation

Establishing OKRs can help create a culture where employees can work with enthusiasm and confidence, knowing their efforts have a purpose and long-term meaning. Developing schedules and deadlines can also increase a sense of accountability and urgency in a team, encouraging employees to work efficiently, think creatively, and take risks.

Track the progress of projects

OKRs are a great tool to guide data collection and management, as they allow you to determine which information to document and track. Teams and companies can revisit OKRs regularly, whether weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly, to ensure employees are prioritizing and completing tasks properly.

Evaluate the results of a project

After finishing a project and submitting work, some teams may find it challenging to evaluate the success of that project. OKRs provide a solution to this issue and enable business leaders to measure, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the extent to which a team reaches goals.

Overcome challenges

OKRs are an excellent opportunity for team leaders to use their imagination and create ambitious goals that may stretch a team’s capacities. These “stretch” goals can encourage a team to overcome challenges, improve outputs, and make lasting changes in a business.

8 marketing OKR examples

Here are several examples of marketing OKRs you can establish with your teams:

1. Increasing sales

Increasing sales is one of the top goals of any department of a company. This is because sales generate revenue and income, critical funds to help a business remain operational. Marketing teams often use their OKR objective to focus on increasing sales. Here are some examples within this category:

Objective statements:

• Increase sales by 25% over the next quarter

• Generate $50,000 in revenue in the next six months

• Meet yearly revenue targets exactly

Key results:

• Generate 50 leads in the next two-week period

• Make 100 sales calls this month

• Complete 75% of the lead research list

• Make five sales calls per day

• Test three new sales and marketing processes

• Increase the customer conversion rate by 10%

• Increase the customer retention rate to 90%

2. Reducing costs

Another essential factor in maintaining financial success for a business is keeping costs low. This can ensure that a company’s revenue outweighs its expenses and that it makes enough profits to continue functioning. Reducing costs involves being thoughtful and resourceful, and it requires innovative thinking by both marketing team members and top executives. Here are some examples within this category:

Objective statements:

• Reduce marketing costs by 25% this quarter

• Decrease the marketing budget to $50,000 per month

Key results:

• Reduce customer acquisition costs by 5% by the end of the month

• Reduce the cost per lead from $100 to $75

• Find the top three marketing channels providing low cost-per-impression

• Decrease customer churn rate by 20%

• Find five companies that offer logo services at a discounted rate

3. Marketing products

Marketing products involves showing potential customers the features, value and usefulness of a company’s product. Doing so successfully can have other positive effects like improving brand reputation, increasing brand awareness and attracting more customers to a business. Here are some examples within this category:

Objective statements:

• Finalize a promotional plan for the launch of our new product

• Raise awareness of our product by 50% by next quarter

• Gain a funding source for the product launch

Key results:

• Conduct 10 user-testing sessions this week

• Research seven new options for successful marketing channels

• Run three advertisements per day and measure their performance

• Develop the new product presentation for investors by the end of the week

• Meet with five possible investors for the product

4. Supporting the customer experience examples

A positive customer experience is important to the success of any business, marketing team, product or service. If customers enjoy interacting with a business and have a simple time buying a product or procuring a service, they’re more likely to return to support the business in the future. This can lead to high customer retention and loyalty rates, supporting the financial stability of a business. It’s part of many business mission statements to help customers effectively and provide for customer satisfaction. Marketing teams can use OKRs to measure the success of their customer interactions.

Here are some examples within this category:

Objective statements:

• Achieve 100% customer satisfaction in business interactions

• Attract 50 new customers by the end of the quarter

• Gain more positive customer reviews on our products

Key results:

• Distribute 100 customer surveys per week

• Install an automatic customer satisfaction poll after purchases

• Conduct 50 customer interviews per quarter

• Establish the primary target audience for our product

• Map the customer journey by the end of the month

• Implement three customer suggestions in our business process

• Decrease the average time in the queue by 50%

5. Marketing website content

Many businesses use websites for a variety of purposes, including promoting business histories and missions, distributing content, selling products and services and engaging with consumers. Websites are an excellent tool for marketing teams to make a company accessible to the average person. For example, restaurants often provide menus online and allow customers to make online pickup or delivery orders. Websites make the customer experience more efficient, convenient and enjoyable. Here are some examples within this category:

Objective statements:

• Increase visitors to the website by 80% by the end of the year

• Enable the website to manage sales transactions

• Increase the amount of helpful content on our website

Key results:

• Build a functional website e-commerce system

• Increase our domain rating score to 80

• Publish engaging newsletters every week

• Increase trial sign-ups by 30%

• Gain 50 new subscribers by the end of the month

• Launch the company blog by the end of the quarter

• Decrease the bounce rate from the website to 0%

• Increase the monthly active users by 20%

• Increase the watch rate of an explainer video to 70%

• Conduct A/B testing on three types of website content

• Increase the average time on the website to 10 minutes

• Increase the number of pages viewed per session to three

• Improve the customer conversion rate by 5%

6. Marketing social media content

Along with websites, social media is also an excellent tool for businesses to perform digital content marketing. Many consumers visit social media every day, so it’s a great space to promote products and services. It’s even possible for users to shop and make purchases through social media platforms, so marketing teams can use social media to help a business’ sales department. Here are some examples within this category:

Objective statements:

• Market our new product using social media

• Increase customer engagement on our social media platforms

• Publish an extensive amount of social content this month

Key results:

• Increase the number of social media followers to 10,000

• Increase the number of subscribers by 10%

• Publish five posts every week

• Increase page views by 30%

• Increase likes, comments, shares, and saves by 10%

7. Improving search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is the process of improving your website so that more people can find it when using search engines. A high SEO ranking means that your website is one of the first options when a user searches for a term. This can encourage users to visit your site, explore the business, and maybe even buy products and services.

Objective statements:

• Become the highest-ranking option for a keyword

• Rank higher than our primary competitor on search engines

• Increase traffic to our website

Key results:

• Improve the SEO score by 30%

• Find five good SEO agencies by the end of the month

• Add 10 new referral links per day

• Increase referral traffic by 50%

8. Marketing a brand

A brand involves a business’s identity, and a marketing team can use a brand to capture the attention of audiences and gain customers. High brand awareness typically leads to an increase in sales and revenue. Here are some examples within this category:

Objective statements:

• Increase brand awareness by 60%

• Develop our brand by the end of the quarter

• Use branding to reflect the values of our company

Key results:

• Find five options for branding consultation agencies

• Launch five brand ad campaigns this quarter

• Finalize the logo design by the end of the week

• Have 10 meetings with key influencers this month

• Launch our brand book by the end of the year