How do you recommend setting targets for KPIs?

I ran a training for my team on this earlier this year! Here's an abridged version (feel free to reach out to me via LinkedIn if you want the full deck): What do we mean when we say “project-specific KPI”? As we develop quarterly plans, or kick off specific strategies, we look for folks to outline a few things: Context: What’s true today, or what got us here Objective: What we are trying to achieve. Usually no more than 1-3. Strategies: How we are going to hit our objective(s) DACI: Who is invol ...Read More

I usually think about KPI targets as something you build, not pick. You start with the business goal—like how much pipeline or revenue you need—and work backwards to what marketing has to deliver to get there. Then you sanity check it with history. What have you actually been able to produce before? What’s seasonal? What’s trending up or down? After that, you layer in reality: how much can the team actually execute given budget, headcount, and sales capacity. A target that ignores capacity usual ...Read More

Setting KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for a new start-up in the technology industry can be challenging as there may not be a lot of historical data to use as a reference point. However, here are some steps to follow when setting KPIs for your new start-up: Identify your business objectives: Start by identifying your overall business objectives. This will help you determine what you need to measure to ensure you are making progress toward your goals. Determine the most critical metrics: Ident ...Read More

This may sound cliched but it is tried and tested. Targets should be SMART :) Specific KPIs should be defined for each channel tactic or campaign. Paid search, paid social, webinars, events should have channel specific goals. The Marketing team overall maybe responsible for # of SQLs and pipeline revenue but each campaign owner needs to understand how their channel/campaign contributes to the SQL and pipeline goals Measurable Having measurable targets drives success. Sometimes when you launch a ...Read More

Setting targets for demand generation KPIs all starts with understanding the goals. All of the departmental and individual goals should roll up in support of the overall company objectives. This allows day-to-day work to stay focused, impactful and meaningful. Here are a few ways to get started: Define the objectives. What are the overarching company objectives? Once this has been defined, you can start to think about how to best support these objectives. Identify your ideal customer profile (IC ...Read More

The 2 most important factors in determining targets are: Past performance and current/future business goals.   Past performance: Looks at historical performance (within the company or look at industry benchmarks), to understand what can be achieved by deploying a particular campaign, e.g. email CTR, website bounce rates, etc. Look at data from atleast 2 years to give you a better sense of trends and patterns, e.g. did a large deal skew Q2 last year? You can only know if you look at Q2 from a yea ...Read More

This can be a tough question and definitely not something myself or our team has mastered. I do like stretching goals, so I'm ok falling short in some cases. Having historical data to reference and provide relativity to performance is helpful. Working backwards from the main outcomes where possible. There's lots of reverse conversion math in marketing to get to a target. If you need 100 opps how man marketing leads do you need? If your program is budget our resource dependent than taking an assu ...Read More

When setting targets for KPIs, it can be helpful to follow a structured approach that could include such steps: Identify the goals and objectives of the project or initiative for which the KPIs will be used. Select the most relevant and important KPIs to track progress towards these goals and objectives. Collect and analyze data on the current performance of the selected KPIs, in order to understand their baseline levels. Set targets for each KPI that are ambitious but achievable, based on the g ...Read More