As a lead product marketer with a broad set of responsibilities and very few resources, what are the critical KPIs I should report on? When you're responsible for product launches, messaging, sales materials and enablement, the metrics seem 'soft.'

As a product marketer, you’re often working across a business line, and a result you’re often responsible, on your own, for very few of the metrics that indicate the health of the business. That doesn’t mean you can’t track and influence them, though. In an early stage product or company, creating a complete picture of the business, from leads to pipeline to revenue, usage and retention, can be a way to create a lot of value as a PMM. Once you have set up this reporting, you can then help identify where the business needs to focus efforts to grow the business line.

For the individual areas you’ve identified, you may also want to report project-level metrics that indicate success or outcome of a particular project. These could range from the reach and engagement generated by a launch or piece of content, to creating a sales certification and tracking successful certifications, to pipeline influence of content and sales enablement materials. At the end of the day, though, your success is tied to the success of the product, so always ask yourself, how is what I’m doing helping us gain more awareness, close more business, or retain customers? And what KPIs do I need to report on to show how we're getting there as a team?

Here's a non-comprehensive list of KPIs to choose from:

• Launch content
• # of press articles mentioning your product
• # of views on blog posts
• # of visitors to landing pages
• # of downloads of gated content
• # of social media post impressions
• # of users adopting the product/feature 30-60-90 days post-launch
• Demand Generation
• # of sourced MQLs (through activities like webinars)
• # of sourced SQLs (through activities like webinars)
• Position in Analyst Reports (e.g. Gartner, IDC, etc.)
• Position in Software Review sites (e.g. G2, Capterra, TrustRadius)
• Sales Enablement
• # of views/downloads of sales collateral (e.g. pitch decks, FAQs, one-pagers, etc.)
• rating by sellers on sales collateral
• # of deals influenced

I think about two buckets of metrics - activity and outcome. Activity metrics are easier to measure, but are not as directly tied to company performance ("hey, we delivered 2,748 leads to sales this quarter!"). Outcome metrics are often abstracted a layer, but focus on what really matters ("bookings from marketing contributed pipe was up 52%"). I find a good blend of the two helps give a more complete picture, and activity metrics can help diagnose problems when the outcome metrics are lagging. 

Some examples you could look at for activity metrics (not even remotely complete)

• Sales tools published
• Sales calls attended
• Marketing content generated
• MQLs delivered
• Launch activity
• Training activities
• Sales team satisfaction with PMM (could be considered outcome)

And examples for outcome metrics (not even remotely complete)

• Marketing contribnuted pipe/bookings/revenue
• Total pipe/bookings/revenue
• Churn/retention
• Lead velocity, flow conversion
• Product/sales NPS