How do you develop quarterly/annual demand gen OKRs and tie those to individual projects?

Quarterly/annual OKRs: In an ideal world, you have a joint financial planning process between demand gen + Sales that outlines the sales bookings targets you need to hit for the year, and then broken down by quarter. From there, say your quarterly sales bookings plan is $5M. The finance and sales operations team (sometimes it is finance, sometimes it is sales strategy/operations, sometimes it is a revenue operations function), should then have a good sense of where that booking needs to come fro ...Read More

The main OKR for demand gen will always be growing qualified pipeline and revenue so we know going into any given quarter what our targets are. To connect targets to campaigns or tactics we go through a lead forecasting process. We have historical benchmarks on how marketing channels or tactics perform and can estimate based on the marketing mix planned in a quarter if we are on track to hit our number or if we need to bulk up our campaigns. If any one of those tactics doesn’t perform as expecte ...Read More

Start by aligning Demand Generation’s OKRs with the company’s main pillars so that every internal stakeholder can understand your goals. For each theme, define 2-3 highly measurable KRs (key results), then tie each KR to specific activities, campaigns, or initiatives to achieve those results. For example: Company Goal: Become the leader in the Enterprise segment. DG Matching Goal: Drive demand for the Enterprise segment. DG OKRs: Increase Enterprise ARR by X%; acquire X% more new Enterprise logo ...Read More

The goals are always tied to revenue goals. What is the company's revenue goal for the Q and year? What % of that needs to come from marketing? From that %, what % comes from inbound vs upsell? From there, you work up the funnel based on each stage's conversion rate to get to a lead goal. That massive lead goal is then sliced and diced into smaller chunks (ie. if we need 100,000 leads, we will run 10 major campaigns this year, and generate 1,000 leads per campaign). Then you factor in seasonal u ...Read More

To develop annual DG OKRs and tie them to individual projects, I take a working backwards approach. If my ultimate goal is pipeline, I can make an impact by increasing top of funnel leads/demand or improving conversion rates. With focus on conversion rate, I’d understand where the gaps are, get baselines, and set goals of what good looks like. Then identify activities that can help close the gaps. For example, if analysis shows that the biggest gap is within early-stage conversion rates in my mi ...Read More

OKRs or Objectives and Key Results are important business tools. They help forge alignment cross-functionally and give purpose to day-to-day work. For goal setting, my preference is to work backward from the goal. What are your overarching company goals or desired outcomes? Armed with this information, you can then develop quarterly and annual demand gen OKRs. Based on the company goals, what does this look like for demand gen for the year? For example, this could look like an attributed pipelin ...Read More

OKRs or Objectives and Key Results are important business tools. They help forge alignment cross-functionally and give purpose to day-to-day work. For goal setting, my preference is to work backward from the goal. What are your overarching company goals or desired outcomes? Armed with this information, you can then develop quarterly and annual demand gen OKRs. Based on the company goals, what does this look like for demand gen for the year? For example, this could look like an attributed pipelin ...Read More

Our foundational measures of success for our teams, channels, and campaigns are built out in a measurement plan. The duration of the OKR depends on how long it will take to get to the impact/goal of the work. The biggest strategic likely last more than one quarter. I think it can be beneficial have some of those foundational measures as OKRs that are consistent quarter over quarter, so you're not constantly changing the core focus of the team QoQ. During our quarterly planning process we tie the ...Read More