Marketing teams are rarely short of things to measure. The problem is the opposite: too many metrics, not enough clarity about which ones actually matter. OKRs — Objectives and Key Results — were developed at Intel by Andy Grove and popularised at Google by John Doerr, whose book Measure What Matters brought the method to a global business audience. Applied well, OKRs cut through the noise: they force a team to name the two or three outcomes that matter most in a given quarter, define exactly what "success" looks like in numerical terms, and create a shared language between marketing and the rest of the organisation.
What are OKRs?
An OKR has two components. The Objective is a qualitative, motivating statement of what you want to achieve. The Key Results are two to five quantitative measures that define what achieving that Objective actually looks like. Key Results are not tasks or activities — they are outcomes. "Publish 12 blog posts" is a task. "Increase organic traffic to the blog from 8,000 to 14,000 monthly sessions" is a Key Result.
OKRs sit naturally inside larger planning frameworks. In a SOSTAC plan, they live in the Objectives stage. In a RACE framework, you can set one Objective per RACE stage and use Key Results to define what progress through each stage looks like. If you are building a full marketing plan, OKRs are the mechanism that makes your objectives measurable and reviewable.
Anatomy of a marketing OKR
| Element | What it does | Good example | Common mistake |
|---|---|---|---|
| Objective | Sets the qualitative ambition for the quarter | "Establish the brand as the go-to resource for mid-market CFOs evaluating ERP solutions" | "Improve our marketing" — too vague to be motivating or measurable |
| Key Result 1 | Measures a leading indicator of progress | Increase organic sessions to /resources/ from 3,200 to 7,000/month | "Publish 20 articles" — a task, not an outcome |
| Key Result 2 | Measures a mid-funnel outcome | Generate 80 guide downloads per month from CFO job title | "More leads" — not specific or time-bound |
| Key Result 3 | Measures a commercial outcome | Contribute 15 marketing-sourced SQLs to Q3 pipeline | Measuring only activities within marketing's direct control while ignoring commercial impact |
How to write marketing OKRs that work
Start from the company OKR, not the channel plan
The most common OKR failure mode in marketing is writing OKRs that reflect the team's existing activities rather than the company's strategic priorities. Before drafting a single Objective, ask: what is the company trying to achieve this quarter? If the company OKR is "Enter the mid-market segment in Germany," marketing's OKRs should directly serve that goal — not recycle last quarter's brand awareness targets.
Limit to three to five Objectives per quarter
OKRs are a prioritisation tool. A marketing team with twelve Objectives has not prioritised; it has listed everything it is doing. Three to five Objectives per quarter — each with two to four Key Results — is a practical upper limit for a team of any size. If everything is a priority, nothing is.
Make Key Results outcomes, not outputs
The most important distinction in OKR writing is between outputs (things the team produces) and outcomes (changes in the world that result from those outputs). Outputs include: articles published, campaigns launched, events attended, emails sent. Outcomes include: organic traffic growth, lead volume, pipeline contribution, NPS improvement, customer retention rate. Key Results must be outcomes. If your Key Results are all outputs, you have written a task list, not an OKR.
Set aspirational targets, not guaranteed ones
Andy Grove and John Doerr both emphasise that OKR targets should be ambitious enough that achieving 70% of a Key Result represents strong performance. If your team consistently hits 100% of every Key Result, the targets are too conservative. The discomfort of a genuinely stretching goal is a feature of the OKR system, not a flaw. Calibrate your targets so that achieving them fully would require something to go meaningfully right — a new tactic working, a channel performing above expectation, a team collaboration succeeding.
Assign a single owner per Key Result
Every Key Result needs one named owner — not a team, not a department. The owner is responsible for tracking progress and raising the alarm early if the Key Result is at risk. Shared ownership diffuses accountability and is the primary reason OKRs fail in practice.
Worked B2B example: SaaS cybersecurity platform
A B2B cybersecurity SaaS company is entering Q3 with the company goal of accelerating pipeline generation from the financial services vertical. Here are two marketing OKRs supporting that goal:
Objective 1: Become the most trusted cybersecurity voice for financial services compliance teams
- KR1: Increase organic traffic to /financial-services/ content hub from 1,800 to 4,500 monthly sessions by end of Q3.
- KR2: Achieve 120 whitepaper downloads per month from visitors with a financial services industry tag in our CRM.
- KR3: Secure placement in two tier-1 financial services trade publications (by-lined article or analyst mention).
Objective 2: Build a pipeline of qualified financial services opportunities for the sales team
- KR1: Generate 40 marketing-qualified leads from financial services accounts per month (up from 18 in Q2).
- KR2: Convert 25% of MQLs to sales-accepted leads within 14 days of handoff.
- KR3: Contribute £320,000 in marketing-sourced pipeline to the Q3 CRM by 30 September.
Note what these OKRs do not include: no output metrics (number of posts, emails sent, ads run), no vanity metrics (total impressions, follower counts), and no targets the marketing team cannot realistically influence. Every Key Result connects directly to the company's pipeline acceleration goal.
OKRs vs. KPIs: what is the difference?
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are ongoing health metrics that a team monitors continuously — things like monthly recurring revenue, cost per lead, email open rate, and website uptime. They tell you whether the business is running well. OKRs are time-bound goals that change each quarter as priorities shift. They tell you whether the business is moving in the right direction.
Both are necessary. KPIs without OKRs produce teams that maintain performance without making progress. OKRs without KPIs produce teams that chase quarterly goals while ignoring the foundational health of the channels and systems they depend on. A mature marketing operation uses KPIs for ongoing monitoring and OKRs for quarterly goal-setting — and keeps the two lists separate to avoid confusion.
Common OKR mistakes in marketing
- Writing activity-based Key Results. "Launch a LinkedIn campaign," "hire a content writer," "redesign the website" are projects, not Key Results. Reframe them as the outcome you expect those activities to produce.
- Setting too many OKRs. More than five Objectives in a quarter signals a team that has not made real choices. Cut ruthlessly: if an Objective does not directly serve a company-level priority this quarter, drop it or defer it.
- Treating OKRs as a performance management tool. OKRs should not be tied to individual bonuses or performance ratings — doing so incentivises teams to set conservative, easy-to-hit targets rather than genuinely ambitious ones. OKRs and performance reviews serve different purposes and should remain separate.
- Scoring OKRs without learning from them. The end-of-quarter scoring session is most valuable when the team asks "why did we score 0.4 on KR2?" and learns something that changes behaviour in Q4. Scoring without reflection is a missed opportunity.
- Ignoring cross-functional dependencies. Many marketing Key Results depend on sales, product, or engineering. If KR2 requires sales to accept and act on MQLs within 14 days, that dependency must be surfaced and agreed before the quarter begins — not discovered when the score falls short.
Frequently asked questions
How many Key Results should each Objective have?
Two to four Key Results per Objective is the widely recommended range. Fewer than two may not capture the full shape of success; more than four risks becoming a task list. Three is a good default: one leading indicator, one mid-funnel outcome, one commercial or revenue-connected outcome.
Should OKRs be set annually or quarterly?
Most marketing teams use a two-level system: annual company OKRs that set the strategic direction for the year, and quarterly team OKRs that define the specific outcomes the marketing team will drive in the next 90 days to contribute to those annual goals. The quarterly cadence is important because marketing's environment — algorithm updates, competitive moves, economic conditions — changes fast enough that annual targets alone become disconnected from reality.
What is a good OKR score?
On the standard 0–1 scale, 0.7 is the target for an aspirational OKR. Consistently scoring above 0.9 means targets are too conservative; consistently scoring below 0.5 means either the targets are unrealistic or there is a systemic problem that needs investigation. Score 0.7 is sometimes described as "the sweet spot of stretch."
Can OKRs work for small marketing teams?
Yes — in fact, OKRs are often easier to implement in small teams because there are fewer layers of alignment to manage. A team of two or three marketers can run effective OKRs with a shared document, a weekly 15-minute check-in, and a quarterly review. The mechanics do not require specialist software, though dedicated tools can help as teams grow.
Set your marketing OKRs in Hatch
The Hatch free plan tool includes an OKR builder that connects your Objectives to your channel plan, assigns Key Result owners, and tracks progress week by week — all in one shareable document.
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