8 Powerful Marketing OKR Examples + How To Track Them

Leila Cruz

Content Partnership Specialist

October 31, 2022

Max 10min read

The marketing process is full of unknowns.

Initially, you might now know who your ideal customers are, what they like, and which strategies work. But that can always change over time!

On the other hand, here’s something we do know:

Marketing OKRs can give a clear picture of where your team should direct their marketing efforts.

In this article, we’ll highlight what marketing OKRs are, eight great OKR examples, and the best tool to help you manage every company’s OKR.

Let’s jump right into it:

What Is a Marketing OKR?

Marketing OKRs are a goal-setting framework that help your business set, track, and achieves all its marketing goals.

What does OKR stand for?

Let’s break it down into its components:

• O (Objectives): a specific company goal you want the marketing team to achieve
• KR (Key result): ‘targets’ or metrics that your team needs to meet to achieve these objectives

Objectives are ‘what’ we want to achieve, and Key Results are ‘how’ we can do it.

How do you write a marketing OKR?

Get your brushes ready (or, in this case, pens) because we’ll show you the not-so-secret formula of creating a really effective OKR:

‘I will: (team or individual objective)

As measured by: (a bunch of key results)’

Whether your measurable goal or objective is for the long term, quarter, or even for the next month, this formula will help you make it happen.

Marketing OKR Examples

Your initial team OKRs might not be perfect.

But don’t worry! 

We’ll showcase eight OKRs for marketing that can inspire you to write better ones.

Here are the different types of marketing OKRs:

• Product marketing OKRs 
• Inbound marketing OKRs
• Content marketing OKRs  
• Social media marketing OKRs

Now, let’s take a closer look at every OKR example:

Product marketing OKRs

A product marketing OKR is used to track the success and growth of your product or service. 

While it’s the responsibility of your SaaS marketing team to set and create these measurable milestones, they shouldn’t self-isolate themselves from other departments.

They’ll have to share them with the other digital marketing teams so that they can create their own team OKRs that can align and contribute to this main OKR.

Let’s take a look at a few of these product marketing OKR examples:

(Note: We’ll be specifically talking about SaaS (Software as a service) products in this article.)

1. Get more paying customers

You might have a lot of happy free users. 

However, they might not directly contribute to your company’s sales goals.

Your product marketing team should try to persuade them to switch to paid plans.

Give them a valuable reason why they should choose you.

You can offer more customer support or release one feature every week!

Whichever incentive you choose, this product marketing OKR can help you boost your paid plan conversion rate:

Here’s what the OKR looks like:

I will: Get more paying customers for FY 2021-22

As measured by:

• Converting 1000 free plan users to the premium plan
• Getting 5000 free users to sign up for a premium trial with their credit card
• Asking 100 paying customers to sign up for the referral program

2. Increase user engagement

The most important love story of all time isn’t Romeo and Juliet (that would be a close second…) it’s that of the customer and your product!

The longer your customers are happy with your product, the longer they’ll stick with you.

And how can you keep them together forever? ❤️

Create digital marketing campaigns that show users how your product can provide value (or light up their life.) 

This way, they might be compelled to engage with it every day or make it a part of their daily routine.

Here’s an OKR goal you can strive to achieve:

I will: Drive up customer engagement in 2021

As measured by:

• Increasing by return users 10% 
• Decreasing churn rate from 10% to 5%
• Increasing net promoter score from 5.0 to 9.0

Inbound marketing OKRs

Inbound marketing is the marketing version of a UNO reverse card!

Instead of actively seeking out potential leads, let them come to you (or, more specifically, your website.)

Here are a few tactical OKRS that can help do just that:

3. Gain more inbound leads

Offering free stuff is priceless for your brand’s reputation.

You can give away whitepapers, ebooks, and other stuff that you think your potential customers will find useful.

All they have to do is sign up for it with their email address. 

This way, they get their stuff, and you gain a lead.

Here’s a good OKR that can help you aim for more leads:

I will: Drive inbound marketing leads

As measured by:

• Increasing number of free ebooks from 3 to 5
• Increasing whitepaper downloads by 20%
• Boost landing page form submissions by 30%

4. Boost influencer marketing efforts

Inbound marketing is all about attracting the right audience to your brand and building meaningful relationships with them.

And who’s a better cupid for your business than an influencer? 💘

They usually are trusted industry experts and have a large audience that seeks out their opinions and recommendations.

Wouldn’t it be cool if they recommend your brand?

Here is an example OKR to motivate your team to build relationships with influencers:

 I will: Boost our influencer marketing efforts

As measured by:

• Getting product reviews from 15 industry leaders
• Creating 30 on-demand webinars with influencers
• Increasing total influencer referral traffic from 4000 to 6000 per month

Content Marketing OKRs

Another way of attracting an audience to your website is by SEO (Search Engine optimization.)

No matter what they search for on Google, your website should have helpful content (blog, ebook, etc.) that pops up on the front page. 

That’s not all.

It should pique their interest so they click on it and learn more about your brand. 

Bonus: Brand Management Software

Let’s take a look at two content marketing OKR examples to help you out here:

5. Boost organic traffic

How can you get more people to visit your wonderful website?

This OKR example can give you some ideas:

I will: Increase my Agile blog’s organic traffic to 10,000 daily visitors

As measured by:

• Executing a keyword strategy for the next three months
• Increasing the number of top 10 ranking articles from 10 to 20
• Securing 45 do-follow backlinks from blogs of industry leaders

6. Improve On-Page SEO

Search engines are constantly looking at the web page’s quality and relevance to the customer. 

You’ll have to optimize your blogs and web pages so your brand’s site is constantly #1 on the front page.

Here’s an OKR that can show how you can do that:

I will: improve on-page SEO for my digital marketing blog

As measured by:

• Including >= 4  internal links per post
• Identifying and fixing 100% of broken links by July
• Add alt text for 50% of images in the media library by first quarter

Social media marketing OKRs

An average person spends almost a month each year browsing through social media news, ads, and, more importantly, memes!

That’s why you must supercharge your social media marketing strategies to meet your audience on every social media platform.

Here are a few digital marketing OKRs to help grow your social media presence:

7. Increase social media followers

The more that people follow your page, the more they’ll be able to be aware of your brand’s existence. And greater awareness means more people will be checking out your products.

So here’s a relevant OKR example your team should follow so that your brand becomes (Instagram) famous:

I will: Increase my social media followers in 2021

As measured by:

• Increasing Twitter followers from 8k to 20k
• Boosting Youtube subscribers from 10k to 40k
• Create 10 marketing partnerships with popular brands
• Creating a new brand handle for the social media platform: Snapchat

8. Increase social media engagement

While it’s nice to have tons of followers on every social media platform, that’s not enough to smash your marketing goals.

Let’s imagine you own a store, and 100,000 potential customers come rushing in.

Chaotic but profitable, right?

Not really. 

What if only ten customers look at your products, only one buys something, and thousands just leave without even saying ‘Hi?’

That’s what happens if your social media page has a low engagement rate.

Instead of getting only more followers, you should try to get quality followers that interact (like, comment, and share) with your brand on every social media platform.

A large number of engaged users results in an increased chance that your post will show up on your followers’ social media feeds. 

Let’s take a look at a marketing OKR example to create an engaged audience:

I will: Boost social media engagement

As measured by:

• Increasing the number of daily Instagram comments from 40 to 80
• Boosting the number of Facebook shares from 50 to 100
• Increasing posting frequency by 5x on Twitter

How Do You Track Marketing OKRs Effectively?

Turns out there are only two steps to setting up a useful OKR framework.

Let’s take a look at them:

1. Follow the right OKRs

Let’s suppose you’re following a random treasure map. 🏴‍☠️

After reaching the ❌ indicated on the map, you dig it up, and you find…nothing!

This is what happens when you follow an ineffective OKR that doesn’t align with your overall goals.

Fortunately, here’s a checklist that can be your compass to finding an effective OKR:

• The objective should be ambitious and inspire your team
• Each objective should have 2-5 key results
• The key result should be measurable and specific (numbers, currency, etc.)
• Avoid vanity metrics that just make the marketing team look good (likes, page views, etc.)

Whether you’ll be using an OKR template or creating one from scratch, you’re sure to sail to success if you follow this checklist.

2. Use an OKR tool 

You can’t sculpt a masterpiece without using the right equipment, right?

To craft the perfect OKR, you must have the right tools.

With an OKR tool like ClickUp, you can set goals, track your progress and gain insight into the overall performance of your business.

Here’s how ClickUp can help:

A. Setting Goals (Objectives)

Goals are high-level containers that can be broken down into smaller, measurable Targets.

Basically, this means that:

• Your objectives = ClickUp Goals
• Your key results = ClickUp Targets

B. Setting Targets (Key Results)

To set your key results, all you need to do is click on the “Add Target” button. Once that’s done, you’ll find our Target underneath your Goal.

And you can edit your Targets too.

You can change:

• Your Target’s name
• Who’s responsible for it
• Target type (number, true/false, currency, tasks)

C. Track your progress

Now that your Goals (objectives) and Targets (key results) are ready and set, you can begin tracking your Goal progress!

You can track:

1. Your progress for each Target (key result)

For example, if your Target is to sell seven paintings by the 1st of March 2021, you can track how many you’ve sold so far.

Okay, but are you buying it, Homer?

We’ve got a Target to reach! 🎯

2. How your Target progress has contributed to your Goal’s (objective) progress
For example, if you’ve completed almost half of all your Targets so far, your OKR Goal progress will be 48%. This way, you’ll always know how close you are to achieving your OKRs.

D. Use Dashboards to track OKRs

So you now have a list of effective OKRs.

But how do you track them?

Dashboards give you a high-level overview of your workspace so you can see how well your company is doing in just a (tiny) glance.

Marketing Dashboards help you with your marketing planning, tracking and assessing your Goal and OKR progress through completed Targets, Tasks, and other metrics.

E. Widgets

Paint your marketing Dashboard the way you want by adding Custom Widgets to them. 

This way, you’ll get detailed insight into Tasks, Sprints, People, and Projects.

Here’s just a few colorful Widgets you can choose from:

• Time Tracking: track time spent on chasing every company goal
• Sprints: track the performance of your Agile marketing team
• Table: track how well each individual marketing team member is doing

Bonus: Check out this guide for examples of product OKRs!

FAQs About OKRs 

Still confused about how OKRs work?

Here are a few things you must know:

1. What’s the difference between a smart goal, OKR, and KPI?

Here’s a table of differences between SMART goals, OKRs, and KPIs to settle this debate:

Want the long version? Check our detailed guide on OKR vs. KPI.

2. What are the different types of OKRs?

Here are the three main different types of OKRs:

1. Aspirational OKR

An aspirational OKR is a “reach for the moon” type of goal you want to achieve, but you know you might not get there completely. 🌑

These are the grand goals that need to be there to lead us to a higher level of performance.

2. Committed OKR

A committed OKR is a reasonable target that you’re expected to reach. These are the OKRs that your team or company has agreed on achieving, and your company resources should be allocated to such a goal.

3. Personal OKR

Unlike the two OKRs above, Personal OKRs can be used to set and track life goals. This individual OKR a great way to ensure that you stick to your new year resolutions…maybe at least longer than you did last year. 😛

Start Tracking Your Marketing OKRs with ClickUP

While there are tons of different marketing OKRs, they all have all one thing in common. 

They show you exactly how your marketing team can set and crush goals.

All they have to do is focus on getting key results, and in no time, they’ll be able to reach their destination.

However, you’ll need a trusty marketing management software like ClickUp that reminds you of your Objectives and Key Results and shows you how you’re progressing towards them.

Get ClickUp for free, and take the first step towards marketing success!