How do you recommend socializing KPIs (before the work starts and when it's done)?

• I love this question!
• I think it is really important to make sure that you have alignment on a few key things before you start any project or initiative:
• Context
• Objective
• Strategies
• KPIs
• Primary
• Secondary
• Out of scope
• DACI (Driver, Approver, Contributors, Informed)
• Risks/dependencies
• Timeline
• I actually created a template for project plans / strategy docs. Sharable version here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11bFGp1KErN7ytcHxvJu9pEUQxWb2i_DRiQuLUUmuM9Q/edit
• Before work starts: What's really important in the strategy doc template above in terms of socializing are the following:
• (1) Making sure you have alignment on the context (why are we here?), objectives (what are we trying to achieve), and KPIs (what does success look like?)
• (2) Getting your approver or approvers to sign off on those context, objectives and KPIs before you start work. If you have agreement on what you are trying to achieve and the numbers that would make the program a success, then you have some room to iterate on your strategies and tactics to get to the goal
• (3) When should you do this? You should ALWAYS try to get a sign off on your plan before you get too deep into execution. You don't want to be in a situation where you've signed a contract for an event, committed to an ad campaign, or made a decision that's hard to back out of before you have alignment on the scope of the effort
• (4) I know we live in a Slack world and a move-fast world - but, I think there is IMMENSE value in building the muscle around cascading comms. 9 times out of 10, if you are leading an initiative that has a specific budget, scope or meaningful targets tied to it, you should have (1) a Google doc outlining your strategy and (2) you should send an email to everyone on your DACI list after the approver has signed off and before you start work to say 'here we go! this is what we're trying to do and the metrics we are going to achieve'
• When it is done (+ along the way):
• The question is specifically around when you should share results when the work is done, but I also think it is really important to share progress along the way. This will help to get in front of times when you are not hitting the KPIs as set. And, on the flip side, if something is going really well, you should be proactive about sharing wins.
• Along the way: If a project is going on for a quarter or more, I'd recommend adding 'results readouts' to your key milestones at the 30-day mark, 60-day mark, and 90-day mark. That way you are building the cadence of reporting and sharing into the core of the work you are doing. You'll be able to course-correct more easily if you commit to looking at results early on. In work that we do that's mission-critical, it is not uncommon for us to look at results weekly.
• When a project is complete: It is SO easy to mark something as done and move on to the next thing. However, doing an end-of-project recap or retrospective has a ton of value to the business as well as to you and your future self. At a minimum, I recommend sending a recap of results in the format of an executive summary email: What was the work, what was the goal, what did we achieve in terms of the metrics we wanted to hit, and WHY do we think our results where what they were (either hitting or missing the target). If you want to do more than the minimum, you could put together a retrospective deck that recaps the project plan, results, learnings, and a summary of what you'd do differently / what you'd incorporate into the next iteration of the effort.

• Work hand in hand with your sales or sales ops team to build the KPI reporting so everyone is looking at a single source of truth across sales & marketing.
• Host a bi-annual marketing open house to share first-half/second-half plans with a wider audience.
• Participate in quarterly business reviews across sales & marketing 
• Sales marketing interlocks every other week to review performance, get feedback, and brief them on what’s coming up

Before the work starts:

• Identify your stakeholders using a decision-making framework that is clear (there are many, and some favor DACI).
• Identify KPIs that will define success and learnings and reach an agreement with your stakeholders on these KPIs.
• Communicate your KPIs and goals with the broader team. Set up a dashboard to show pacing towards KPIs to ensure visibility.

When it’s done:

• Perform a retrospective which consists of a summary of the program, data from the dashboard you created in the step above, and recommendations.
• Identify what worked and what didn’t work and why.
• Provide recommendations going forward based on the experiment.

Ultimately, err on the side of what may feel like over communicating. It’s still probably not enough communication. :)

KPIs should be socialized:

• Before the work starts so all stakeholders are aligned and marching towards the same goal

• On an on-going basis with a weekly, monthly and quarterly reviews to understand how campaign KPIs are tracking to goals. These check-ins also provide an opportunity to course correct as needed

The one critical piece is to use one single source of truth. In addition to campaign manager tools in ad platforms such as LinkedIn Ads, Google Ads or your webinar platform, be sure to set up dashboards in Salseforce, Tableau or any BI tool you use to track MQLs, SQLs, pipeline and closed won deals. This ensures individual contributors and leadership teams are looking at the same KPIs

There are 2 sets of KPIs that you need to keep at hand. One is for internal marketing consumption and the other is what you share with the business. The business will be more interested bottom of the funnel, so pipeline, opportunities etc. While for internal tracking, you’d need to track everything from MQLs to revenue and conversions in between.

As you socialize KPIs with these different set of folks, align with their objectives and goals. During the planning process as you outline the plan and commit to delivering certain objectives, be very clear – on the investment required and the outcomes you will own. Once you get that sign off, a tracker or dashboard highlighting these metrics should be shared on a weekly cadence either over a call or email (via Tableau or whatever tools you’d use), so that everyone is aware of where you are against the goals. This also helps flag and overcome any obstacles early on.

A similar process for internal marketing tracking also helps. Sign off during planning for goal setting, from the entire team and then a weekly tracking to ensure everything is on track and course correct wherever required.

Sharing in a central wiki or company repository (we use Notion at Sentry), at the same time as other teams to give them the same level of attention. I am a big fan of async communication.
Connecting ahead of time with other business stakeholder to see how these KPIs fit in their pictures and serve their need.
Connecting ahead of time with the Demand Gen DRIs for each KPIs to request their feedback and how they would prioritize these differently.

On a regular basis, organizing weekly pipeline meetings to track trends and collect feedback on these KPIs.

Ideally prioritized work and KPIs are getting organized across the department, so through you're quarter you're reporting on them there. For KPIs that might not be at the departmental level I think of it in the lens of project management.

I like using the DACI model (Driver, Approver, Contributor, Informed) to then determine who to communicate relevant updates to about your work and outcomes/impacts. To your call out you'd align with the A and C group pre-project, and communicate with all during and post. Using KPIs to celebrate or learn from are equally helpful for people in those roles.

Socializing KPIs before and after a campaign is important. It allows all stakeholders to align, prioritize work that impacts these KPIs, and understand performance, including the reasons behind the performance.

Before creating KPIs, it's important to understand the following:

• Know the campaign messaging and call to action you want users to take: What do we want people to ultimately gain from this campaign? Do you want to drive users to a specific page on your site? Increase free trial sign-ups? Increase demo requests? Is this a top-of-funnel play where you'd want to measure engagement like impressions? It could be a mix of these depending on the campaign, in which case you'd want to account for these various KPIs accordingly.

• Have a strong understanding of the different channels promoting the campaign: For example, if email is a large part of the promotion strategy, you'll not only want to include email metrics as KPIs but also include the percentage of sourced traffic from email versus other channels.

Aside from determining KPIs, it's also important to establish goals and benchmark comparisons. To do this, you can review performance from similar marketing initiatives or research industry benchmarks and set goals based on these insights.

With many moving pieces, it's crucial to communicate your KPIs once you know which ones you want to track and measure. I recommend sharing your KPIs in an easy-to-read template well ahead of your campaign launch to provide time for stakeholders to review and provide feedback.

Once a campaign is launched, you can provide an end-of-day KPI performance readout, an end-of-week readout, and an end-of-month readout. Depending on the campaign's longevity, you could also provide additional KPI readouts. For instance, if the campaign is seasonal and only running for a specific amount of time, you'll want to do a final KPI readout once the campaign has ended.