Marketing teams often shoot themselves in the feet by setting the wrong performance expectations. It goes both ways: you can aim too high too soon or too low for too long.

Eventually, marketing needs to be sourcing qualified pipeline, new sales and customer retention – but being held accountable for downstream metrics isn’t realistic when you’re just starting from scratch.

If you’re setting marketing OKRs, your key result should be in-line with the maturity of the program you’re working on.

The newer (or less developed) a marketing program, the more transactional/top of funnel your key result can be. As the program matures and picks up traction, your success metric should start to reflect more downstream/bottom of funnel metrics.

Three examples below (from newest program to oldest program):

Starting a podcast from scratch

KR: Ship one new episode per week for 12 straight weeks.

This holds your team accountable for getting off the ground and being consistent. At this point shipping is most important. This key result covers all of the “activities” your team needs to get going, including naming, hosting, competitive research, topic creation, recording & editing.

Optimizing (an existing) paid search program

KR: Drive 30 new MQLs (20% increase) through Google Ads

This is focused on driving real impact. It also gives the team multiple routes to achieve the goal. It could be achieved through more spend, more campaigns, better optimized landing pages, removal of non-converting keywords, or addition of more intent-based keywords. Since the program is already live with some momentum, your team should sign up for some downstream results now.

Use ABM to combine strong existing content with our verified ICP, personas, and quality account list

KR: Source $50,000 ACV of new qualified pipeline through ABM

This combines multiple strong in-motion programs and puts the focus on outcome delivery. Your actions need to be based around finding the best approach method, highest converting messages, and continuing conversations.