Marketing OKRs should roll up to pipeline, revenue or contribution margin, not to the number of posts published or campaigns launched. Write one to three objectives that ladder from a company goal, give each objective one lagging key result plus a few leading indicators marketing can move, and put one name next to every key result. Below are example sets for B2B SaaS, ecommerce and service businesses, a scoring rhythm and a template you can copy.
Why most marketing OKRs measure activity, not outcomes
Look at a typical marketing OKR sheet and you’ll find “publish 12 blog posts,” “launch the new website” and “run four webinars.” Those are tasks. A quick test: if you hit the key result and revenue doesn’t move, did the team succeed? If the sheet says yes, the key result measures output.
It happens for an understandable reason. Marketing controls its activity, while revenue also depends on sales, product and pricing, so teams pick what they can guarantee. The fix isn’t to avoid shared outcomes. It’s to pair one shared outcome with leading indicators marketing does control, so the team is accountable for both the result and the drivers behind it.
The usual mistakes:
- Output key results. Counts of things shipped, which should live in the project plan.
- Too many objectives. Six objectives means six priorities, which means none.
- No single owner. “Marketing and sales” owning a key result means nobody does.
- Vanity metrics. Impressions, followers and traffic with no path to a buyer.
- Moving definitions. An MQL or “qualified” definition that changes mid-quarter makes the score meaningless.
- Set and forget. OKRs written in week one and read again in week thirteen.
Here’s what rewriting activity into outcomes looks like. The numbers are illustrative.
| Activity key result | Outcome rewrite |
|---|---|
| Publish 12 blog posts | Demo requests from comparison and pricing pages grow from 20 to 35 a month |
| Launch four paid campaigns | Paid-sourced pipeline reaches $400K at CAC payback under 18 months |
| Send two newsletters a week | Revenue from second orders within 90 days grows from $60K to $80K a month |
| Redesign the homepage | Homepage visit-to-demo rate rises from 1.2% to 2.0% |
Laddering from company goal to marketing objective
Start with the company goal in money, then work backward to what marketing must contribute. A hypothetical B2B example:
- Company goal: add $2M of new ARR over the next four quarters, or $500K a quarter.
- Deals needed: at a $25K average contract, that’s 20 new customers a quarter.
- Opportunities needed: at a 25% win rate on sales-accepted opportunities, 80 opportunities.
- Marketing’s share: if marketing has historically sourced about 60% of opportunities, that’s 48 a quarter, or roughly $1.2M of marketing-sourced pipeline.
That $1.2M becomes the lagging key result. The objective comes from asking where the funnel is weakest. If traffic is fine but few visitors request demos, the objective is about conversion. If demos come in but sales rejects half of them, it’s about lead quality.
Write the objective as one qualitative sentence that names the change, such as “Make inbound our most dependable source of qualified pipeline.” If the company hasn’t agreed on the metric it steers by, settle that first; choosing a north star metric covers how.
Writing key results with leading and lagging indicators
Lagging indicators confirm the result: pipeline, closed revenue, new customers, contribution after marketing. They move slowly and depend on other teams.
Leading indicators predict it: conversion rates between funnel stages, qualified meetings booked, trial activation, 60-day repeat purchase rate. They move within weeks, and marketing has more direct control over them.
The structure I use: each objective gets exactly one lagging key result and one to three leading ones. The lagging result keeps the team honest about business impact. The leading results give it something to steer by in week four, when the lagging number hasn’t moved yet.
Every key result needs five things: a metric, a baseline, a target, one owner and a named data source. “From 60 to 90 demo requests a month, owned by the content lead, measured in HubSpot” is a key result. “Increase demo requests” is a wish.
Example OKRs for B2B SaaS
Every number in the three example sets below is hypothetical. Replace them with your own baselines.
Objective 1: Make inbound our most dependable source of qualified pipeline.
- KR1 (lagging): Marketing-sourced, sales-accepted pipeline from $900K to $1.2M this quarter. Owner: head of growth.
- KR2 (leading): Demo-to-sales-accepted rate from 40% to 55%. Owner: marketing ops.
- KR3 (leading): Demo requests from pricing, comparison and integration pages from 60 to 90 a month. Owner: content lead.
Objective 2: Lower what it costs to win a customer through paid.
- KR1 (lagging): Paid-sourced CAC payback from 22 to 16 months. Owner: paid lead.
- KR2 (leading): Cost per sales-accepted opportunity from paid search from $2,400 to $1,800. Owner: paid lead.
Notice what’s missing: blog post counts, webinar counts and ad launches. Those are initiatives underneath the key results.
Example OKRs for ecommerce and DTC
For DTC, anchor the lagging result on contribution rather than revenue. A revenue key result can be hit with a sitewide discount that erases the margin.
Objective 1: Grow new customers without buying unprofitable ones.
- KR1 (lagging): Monthly contribution after marketing from $70K to $90K. Owner: growth lead.
- KR2 (leading): New customers from 2,000 to 2,600 a month with new-customer CAC at or below $55. Owner: paid lead.
- KR3 (leading): Add-to-cart rate on the top 20 product pages from 6% to 8%. Owner: CRO lead.
Objective 2: Make the second purchase the norm.
- KR1 (lagging): 90-day repeat purchase rate for new cohorts from 18% to 23%. Owner: retention lead.
- KR2 (leading): Post-purchase flow revenue per recipient from $0.40 to $0.50. Owner: email lead.
The 90-day cohort result lags by definition, so score it on cohorts acquired early in the quarter.
Example OKRs for service businesses
Service firms often have long, lumpy sales cycles, so a single quarter may close only a few deals. Use signed revenue as the lagging result where volume allows, and qualified pipeline value where it doesn’t.
Objective 1: Reduce our dependence on referrals.
- KR1 (lagging): Signed revenue from non-referral sources from $150K to $250K this quarter. Owner: managing partner.
- KR2 (leading): Qualified discovery calls from inbound and outbound from 12 to 25 a month. Owner: marketing lead.
- KR3 (leading): Proposal win rate on non-referral leads from 20% to 30%. Owner: business development lead.
Objective 2: Win larger first engagements.
- KR1 (lagging): Average first-engagement value from $18K to $25K. Owner: managing partner.
- KR2 (leading): Share of proposals that open with a paid diagnostic phase from 10% to 50%. Owner: business development lead.
Quarterly scoring and review cadence
Score each key result from 0.0 to 1.0 by progress from baseline to target. If demo requests started at 60, the target was 90 and you reached 81, the score is (81 - 60) / (90 - 60) = 0.7.
A common convention is that around 0.7 on a stretch target is a good quarter. Scoring 1.0 every time means targets were too safe; scoring below 0.3 means either the target or the plan was wrong. Mark guardrail key results, like a CAC ceiling, as committed rather than stretch: those should land at 1.0.
| When | What happens | Who | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly, 15 minutes | Update leading indicators; each owner rates confidence green, yellow or red | Key result owners | Blockers raised, one decision |
| Monthly, 45-60 minutes | Score to date; change initiatives, not targets | Marketing lead, sales lead | Revised plan |
| Quarter end, 90 minutes | Final scores and what the team learned | Marketing, CEO, sales | Grades, carry-over decisions |
| Quarter start | Draft next quarter’s OKRs from company goals | Marketing lead, with sales and finance | Approved OKR set |
Two rules keep the cadence honest. Targets stay fixed through the quarter unless the company goal itself changes. And definitions, such as what counts as sales-accepted, are agreed with sales before the quarter starts and frozen until it ends.
When I step in as a fractional CMO, OKRs are usually the second thing we write, right after the audit, because they turn the diagnosis into commitments the CEO can hold marketing to. The fractional CMO 90-day plan shows where they fit in the first quarter.
Copyable OKR template
Paste this into a doc or spreadsheet and fill one block per objective.
QUARTER: ____ COMPANY GOAL: [in money, e.g. new ARR or contribution]
OBJECTIVE 1: [one qualitative sentence naming the change]
Why this quarter: [the funnel constraint it addresses]
KR 1.1 (lagging): [metric] from [baseline] to [target]
Owner: [one name] | Source: [system/report] | Type: stretch / committed
KR 1.2 (leading): [metric] from [baseline] to [target]
Owner: [one name] | Source: [system/report] | Type: stretch / committed
KR 1.3 (leading): [metric] from [baseline] to [target]
Owner: [one name] | Source: [system/report] | Type: stretch / committed
Initiatives (not scored):
- [project] | owner | due date
Weekly confidence (G/Y/R): KR 1.1 __ | KR 1.2 __ | KR 1.3 __
Quarter-end score (0.0-1.0): KR 1.1 __ | KR 1.2 __ | KR 1.3 __
What we learned:Before you approve the set, check:
- Every objective traces to a company goal stated in money
- Three objectives or fewer
- Each objective has exactly one lagging key result
- Every key result has a baseline, a target, one owner and a data source
- No key result is a task or a count of things shipped
- Sales or finance has signed off on the definitions
- Weekly, monthly and quarter-end reviews are on the calendar
Get it built
If your marketing plan is a list of activities and the leadership team keeps asking what it adds up to, I can write the OKRs with you and then run the work against them. Start with a Growth Audit, $1,500 fixed and credited if we continue. See pricing or get in touch.