What are some of the *worst* KPIs for Product Marketers to commit to achieving?

Great question. A couple come to mind that I would advise against signing up for: Sales-enabled revenue. There are so many variables and phases here -- from demand generation, to the sales team actually following up with leads, to the leads actually showing up for a demo, to the sales team effectively selling them -- that it's too big and far removed to commit to. Better to pick some metrics within this (like MQLs, or opportunity to closed won rate) that you have a better chance of influencing w ...Read More

Well, to quote Rush, "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." I would say the worst thing you can do is not commit to something. Pick one and roll with it - you can always adjust if it doesn't fit the business. Owning a number is the best way to establish leadership and priorities. The worst are metrics that don't directly lead to revenue. "Site traffic, asset downloads, content creation, the PMM seeks not these things." Find the outputs that align with your key GTM partners ...Read More

Awesome question - I think there are two buckets that make up the "worst" KPIs for PMMs to commit to achieving: KPIs that simply track task completion and KPIs on which PMMs have no direct impact.  KPIs that track task completion are so tempting because they're straight-forward and, thus, we've all taken them. A binary "complete/not complete" for stuff like messaging briefs, First Call Decks (FCDs), analyst presentations and RFP response docs is important to track, but they're not KPIs. If you c ...Read More

This is a great question. As mentioned earlier, there are so many shared metrics between PMM and other parts of the business - ie Marketing, Product, Sales. So when committing to a specific KPI, make sure you and your team truly are able to influence it. Therefore don't tie yourself or commit to anything you are not able to map back to how you influence that. For example, website or landing page traffic. Sure your messaging may have helped attract those visitors but it will be too hard to attrib ...Read More