Some of our most popular blogs in 2020 were about OKRs. Objectives and Key Results are a way to set goals and measure progress.
As a quick reminder, if you are new to the concept of OKRs. The Objective is what you want to achieve and the Key Result is how you plan to measure what success looks like. Objectives should be qualitative (they shouldn’t contain numbers). Key Results on the other hand should always be quantitative and able to be measured.
An example for B2B Marketing might be.
- Objective – Generate more leads from non-paid marketing.
- Key Result – Write 1 blog per week
- Key Result – Increase email to blog click-throughs by 10%
OKRs, CX and other B2B Marketing Trends
The events of the year 2020 forced many companies to change the way they do business. Digital Transformation programs were disrupted and accelerated by changing customer behaviour.
OKRs can help B2B Marketing teams with focus, alignment, engagement, transparency and accountability. All things that help growth for a customer-centric business.
One of the biggest changes to B2B Marketing in 2020 was the cancelation of events. Conferences, Trade Shows and Exhibitions have been an integral part of the B2B marketing mix, and companies had to change. This fundamental shift in the way business to business promotion and lead development is done can be assisted through an OKR framework.
For example…
- Objective – Replace Event Leads with Digital Leads
- Key Result – Increase Webinar attendance by 50%
- Key Result – Increase YouTube Channel views by 10%
- Key Result – Increase Company Linkedin page follows by 25%
The great thing about OKRs is that they can affect people and practices that are across the company. Marketing is not just promotion. (Remember there used to be 4 Ps..) So OKRs for B2B Marketing will include objectives for the Product team, the finance team and the operations team.
B2B Product OKR example
- Objective – Be the best product on the market
- Key Result – Release 5 new features per quarter
- Key Result – Reduce onboarding time from 1 hour to 10 minutes
- Key Result – Increase average customer rating score to 8/10
B2B Finance OKR related to marketing might be
- Objective – Have the highest margin in the market
- Key Result – Increase customer frequency from 2 times a year to 3
- Key Result – Adopt customer based pricing.
- Key Result – Reduce discounts by 20%
A Key Result with a yes or no outcome can still be quantitative. So for the customer pricing example above, if the process is implemented the score is 1 and if it is not then the score is 0.
You can see from the examples above that all parts of the company can have marketing related OKRs, not just the marketing team. Similarly, marketers could have OKRs that impact other parts of the business.
Want to know more about how we can help you implement an OKR based marketing strategy? Talk to us.