Marketing moves fast - and gets messy even faster. Between launches, campaigns, content calendars, and shifting KPIs, it’s easy for teams to stay busy but lose sight of what really matters. Deadlines get hit. Dashboards light up.
But progress? That’s harder to prove.
OKRs change that.
They give marketing teams a shared direction and a smarter way to prioritize. Instead of reacting to noise, you define outcomes - and align your efforts around them. No more guessing which campaign matters or debating which metric wins.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to write high-impact marketing OKRs that do more than track activity - they drive results.
Why Marketing Teams Struggle Without OKRs
Marketing teams juggle a unique mix of creative work, metrics, and cross-functional pressure. Without clear OKRs, most teams run into at least one of these common traps:
- Too many disconnected goals: One person’s optimizing paid ads while another’s focused on SEO - but there’s no unifying focus.
- Activity over outcomes: Teams celebrate publishing 10 blog posts, even if none of them rank or convert.
- Reporting overload: So many metrics, yet no one knows which ones actually matter for business growth.
- Lack of cross-functional alignment: Growth, product, and sales aren’t working toward the same goals.
- Reactive work culture: Marketing gets stuck responding to internal requests instead of driving strategy.
OKRs create a single source of truth. They help your team work toward outcomes - not just output.
How to Set Effective Marketing OKRs
Here’s a quick guide to getting started with strong marketing OKRs:
- Start with focus areas
- Choose 1–3 strategic priorities (e.g. increase brand awareness, improve conversion, launch new product)
- Avoid setting goals for every marketing function at once
- Choose 1–3 strategic priorities (e.g. increase brand awareness, improve conversion, launch new product)
- Write clear Objectives
- Objectives should be inspiring but focused, like “Grow top-of-funnel awareness” or “Improve lead-to-customer conversion rate”
- They are qualitative - no numbers here
- Objectives should be inspiring but focused, like “Grow top-of-funnel awareness” or “Improve lead-to-customer conversion rate”
- Attach 2–4 measurable Key Results
- Key Results are how you’ll measure success - think outcomes, not tasks
- Example: “Increase organic traffic from 10K to 15K/month,” not “Publish 4 blog posts”
- Key Results are how you’ll measure success - think outcomes, not tasks
- Check for alignment
- Your team’s OKRs should map to company or department-wide goals
- Avoid silos - every OKR should support a bigger story
- Your team’s OKRs should map to company or department-wide goals
- Make it time-bound
- Most OKRs run quarterly. Scope your Key Results accordingly.
- Most OKRs run quarterly. Scope your Key Results accordingly.
- Review progress weekly
- OKRs aren’t set-and-forget. Use them to guide standups, 1:1s, and retros.
Marketing-Specific Tips for Writing OKRs
Writing great marketing OKRs isn’t just about hitting numbers - it’s about driving impact across the entire customer journey. Here’s how to make your OKRs more strategic, actionable, and aligned:
1. Anchor Objectives to the Funnel
Start by mapping your goals to key stages of the funnel: awareness, acquisition, conversion, and retention. This ensures your team is solving for the right part of the growth equation—not just spinning on tactics. For example:
- Awareness → “Increase brand recall in our target market”
- Acquisition → “Grow inbound demo requests from paid channels”
- Retention → “Improve weekly product engagement among new users”
2. Avoid Tasks in Disguise
Don’t confuse output with outcomes. “Launch 3 email campaigns” or “Post 5 LinkedIn updates” might feel productive, but they don’t measure actual results. A strong key result shows progress toward an outcome, like:
- ❌ Task: “Run 3 webinars”
- ✅ Result: “Generate 150 qualified leads from webinars”
The difference? One gets done. The other moves the needle.
3. Mix Lead and Lag Indicators
Great marketing OKRs balance short-term signals with long-term impact. Lead indicators (like click-through rate or open rate) tell you if you’re on the right track. Lag indicators (like pipeline generated or revenue influenced) show whether you actually delivered. Use both to measure effort and impact.
4. Think Cross-Functionally
Marketing doesn’t operate in a silo. Your goals should align with product, sales, and customer success. That might mean collaborating on a launch, improving sales enablement, or influencing NPS. The strongest marketing OKRs often reflect joint ownership—and shared success.
18 Real OKR Examples for Marketing Teams
Whether you're leading brand, performance, content, or lifecycle, marketing OKRs work best when they’re laser-focused on outcomes - not activity.
Below are 18 field-tested OKRs written for real teams: specific, measurable, and ready to plug into your next planning cycle. We’ve grouped them by focus area so you can find what fits fast. Use them as-is, or tweak to match your stage and strategy.
Final thoughts
Marketing is always moving - but without direction, speed just creates noise. OKRs give you a way to channel momentum into outcomes, helping your team focus on what matters, measure what works, and drop what doesn’t.
Start with one strong Objective. Build measurable Key Results underneath. Then use that OKR as a north star to guide everything else.
Over time, OKRs will sharpen your planning, improve cross-functional collaboration, and make every campaign more strategic.
