What are good OKRs for Demand Generation?

• These are the core OKRs that I've tracked in various forms throughout my demand generation career:
• Objective: Drive pipeline
• Key Results:
• Raw volume merics:
• Leads: Net new names added to the database
• MQLs: Marketing qualified leads, or folks who have reached some kind of behavioral, predictive or demographic threshold
• SALs: Sales accepted leads, or folks that BDRs/AEs have accepted to work
• SQLs: Meetings booked. This can be either an SQL # or an SQL $ value, depending on your business.
• Funnel efficiency metrics:
• Lead:MQL CVR: What percent of leads generated this quarter turn into MQLs? This is an indicator of how well you are taking the new folks entering your database and engaging them with marketing materials to reach a score threshold, and/or how strong your targeting is in terms of bringing in folks with the right firmographic and demographic criteria.
• MQL:SAL CVR: What is the quality of MQLs that you are sending to BDRs? Are BDRs disqualifying too many MQLs before they even reach out? You want to keep a really close eye on this metric if it is less than 75%.
• SAL:SQL CVR: How well are BDRs converting the folks they are working into meetings. This is a little out of marketing's control, but marketing can support BDRs with enablement, email sequences, best practices and more to drive this number up.
• In addition to the above, if you have a broader focus on awareness as well as pipeline, you should look at metrics that relate to website traffic, SEO (top keywords, traffic from SEO), etc.
• As you get more sophisticated, you probably want to have a sense of how the pipeline you are generating turns into revenue for the business. Depending on the segments you serve, marketing should plan to provide anywhere from 25% of pipeline/revenue (Enterprise business) to 75%+ of pipeline/revenue (self-serve/SMB businesses).
• When I take a look at the current quarterly OKR list for our entire marketing team, we have about 60 KRs we're looking to track - my team is responsible for about 30 of them. SO, as my team has scaled we've gone beyond the core metrics above.

Demand Gen should have annual and quarterly targets for qualified pipeline and revenue. They are always at the top of the list and the main KPIs

Other leading indicators to consider MQLs, newly engaged accounts, efficiency gains in MQL to Opp conversion

Increase high-quality web traffic. 

Increase traffic conversion rate. 

Increase lead to opportunity rate.

Demand generation is all about creating demand and capturing it. 

Increasing your website's traffic with high-quality traffic (target ICP) is the best way to build actual awareness as users self-educate on your website. Then you need to really focus on good, clear CTAs and incentives for users to convert on the page(s) you direct them to. Once they are in your funnel, help the sales team by putting them into nurturing emails and teasers for what the product can help them achieve to increase the lead-to-opportunity conversion rate. 

Here are a few valuable examples of OKRs for demand generation that I encourage you to consider. I’m going to approach this question from a SaaS product-led growth (PLG) perspective.

• Objective: Increase brand awareness
• Increase lift of branded search by X% in X timeframe.
• Increase direct traffic as a source by X% in X timeframe.
• Objective: Increase quality sign-ups
• Increase total volume of new leads by X% in X timeframe.
• Improve the conversion rate of visits to sign-up by X% in X timeframe.
• Increase the percentage of activated sign-ups by X% in X timeframe.
• Objective: Optimize demand gen programs
• Improve cost-per-acquisition (CPA) by X% in X timeframe.
• Launch at least three experiments per X timeframe and conduct retrospectives after each experiment.

Furthermore, my recommendation is to develop a framework for how you will report on the progress of your OKRs. This ensures accountability and visibility into what is working and what isn’t working.

Here are a few valuable examples of OKRs for demand generation that I encourage you to consider. I’m going to approach this question from a SaaS product-led growth (PLG) perspective.

• Objective: Increase brand awareness
• Increase lift of branded search by X% in X timeframe.
• Increase direct traffic as a source by X% in X timeframe.
• Objective: Increase quality sign-ups
• Increase total volume of new leads by X% in X timeframe.
• Improve the conversion rate of visits to sign-up by X% in X timeframe.
• Increase the percentage of activated sign-ups by X% in X timeframe.
• Objective: Optimize demand gen programs
• Improve cost-per-acquisition (CPA) by X% in X timeframe.
• Launch at least three experiments per X timeframe and conduct retrospectives after each experiment.

Furthermore, my recommendation is to develop a framework for how you will report on the progress of your OKRs. This ensures accountability and visibility into what is working and what isn’t working.

Here are some examples of good OKRs for a Demand Generation team:

1. Objective: Increase qualified leads by X%

Key Results:

• Increase website traffic by Y%
• Increase conversion rates on landing pages by Z%
• Increase the number of demo requests by Y%
• Implement a new lead scoring model to prioritize leads for sales team follow-up

2. Objective: Improve marketing funnel efficiency

Key Results:

• Reduce customer acquisition cost by X%
• Increase conversion rates at each stage of the funnel by Y%
• Implement new email nurturing campaigns to engage leads who are not yet ready to purchase

3. Objective: Expand market reach

Key Results:

• Increase website traffic from target industries by X%
• Develop a content marketing plan to target new buyer personas
• Expand social media presence to increase brand awareness in new markets
• Add to your database a number of new contacts/account from a new audience

4. Objective: Drive revenue growth through demand generation

Key Results:

• Increase marketing-sourced revenue by X%
• Implement new ABM (Account-Based Marketing) campaigns to target high-value accounts
• Optimize the sales funnel to reduce sales cycle time and increase deal velocity

OKRs should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). By setting goals that are aligned with the company's overall objectives, the Demand Generation team can help drive growth and success for the business.

B2B demand generation OKRs should be defined by funnel metrics and channel metrics

1. Funnel Metrics:
   Marketing OKRs should include marketing qualified leads (MQLs), sales qualified leads (SQLs), pipeline and closed-won revenue. Being held accountable for pipeline and revenue/customers sourced by marketing drives revenue marketers. It is incredibly rewarding to look back at the end of the quarter/year to see that our campaigns drove x% customers and $ ARR

2. Channel Metrics:
   In addition to funnel metrics, OKRs should also be defined by channel. Channel metrics benchmarked against best practices help keep an eye on the day-to-day, especially for B2B as it takes time for a lead to become a MQL / SQL

   • Paid Search: landing page conversion rates, ad click through rates, cost per acquisition

   • Paid Social: Ad click through rates, SQLs influenced by paid social, cost per lead

   • Webinars Registrations and attendance rate for webinars

   • Email Marketing: Email open rate and click through rate

   • Direct Mail: Meetings booked

This is going to vary by every company and where that demand gen team within the company is at in their maturity. O in OKR is "Objective" which align up to company strategy and vision, so that's the piece that's going to change the most and make this question tough to give a blanket or generalized answer for.

A few generalized measures that I would guess most demand gen teams would want to measure are related to how they're creating awareness of their product in the market, how they're capturing the demand generated, and how that's translating into pipeline and booking for the business.

One specific example could be if a company is trying to move up market. That could be the objective. Some demand gen team KRs for that could be around enterprise leads, meeting, pipe, and bookings produced to represent successfully showing up in the Enterprise market.

Effective OKRs for demand gen are measurable objectives that drive impact or growth in key areas such as acquisition, pipeline, awareness, and engagement.

Before creating OKRs, it's crucial to have a firm grasp of not only your team's specific goals but also the broader company objectives. This ensures that your marketing efforts and the OKRs you develop will ladder up to these higher-level objectives. This approach elevates your OKRs from good to great and enables you to tailor them more effectively, making them more specific and relevant.

For instance, if launching a new product is a top company-wide priority, then your OKRs should be refined accordingly. Here are a couple of examples:

• Decent OKR: Source X% of site traffic

• Better OKR: Source X% of traffic to the new product site page

• Decent OKR: Source $X in sourced opportunities

• Better OKR: Source $X in sourced opportunities, with Y% being new product opportunities

The ideal OKRs for demand generation depend on your organization’s specific goals, but they should always align closely with tangible business outcomes, particularly financial targets 💰. Demand generation operates closer to revenue than many other marketing functions, so the focus should be on metrics that directly support the growth and financial health of the business 📈.

For example, OKRs shouldn’t primarily center on surface-level metrics like content downloads 📄 or website clicks 🔗. While these are helpful indicators, they’re not the end goal. Instead, demand gen OKRs should emphasize:

1. Pipeline Generation 🚀:

   • How many Sales Qualified Opportunities (SQOs) are being created?

   • Are you generating enough pipeline to meet the company’s growth targets?

2. Channel Growth and Optimization 🌟:

   • Set measurable goals for expanding high-performing channels, e.g., "Increase pipeline from paid search by 10% quarter over quarter."

3. Cross-Functional Partnerships 🤝:

   • Demand generation often works across multiple business areas, so include OKRs that enhance collaboration. For example, "Improve alignment with sales to increase the conversion rate of SQOs by 5%."

By focusing on these areas—pipeline generation 🚀, channel growth 🌟, and collaboration 🤝—you’ll ensure your OKRs are meaningful, impactful, and aligned with broader business objectives.