What challenges do you encounter with tracking KPIs?

Who knew something so simple as a few metrics could be so difficult?! The reality is KPIs put into practice can get messy if you don’t set things up properly across teams, have difficulty actually accessing the data, don’t monitor frequently enough and aren’t clear and concise in your communications. Challenges typically boil down to these buckets: Sloppy metric definitions. This is shockingly common. You define your KPI as X% win rate for a certain product line only to find another team has a s ...Read More

A few questions I've asked (or heard) more than once: What does growth in X look like over time? How is no one tracking X? Why does marketing have a different number than product? Why does this dashboard have a different number than the other tab? Will anyone actually read this report? I get stuck in all of these at different times. And honestly, that last one doesn't get talked about enough. Communication is harder than tracking. If it's measurable and prioritized, someone can build the tooling ...Read More

Product Marketing does not own any meaningful KPIs. It should, however, report on them to tell the picture of the health of the product portfolio. Mindset always needs to be mini-CMO or -General Manager. From there friction can occur when reporting on, say, DemGen numbers that PMM influences but does not own. The other area that comes to mind is separating leading indicators from trailing indicators. Website visitors are not necessarily an indicator of success/failure. Only when combined with co ...Read More

The biggest challenge for us lately is that it's hard to track certain KPIs on a quarterly basis, because the nature of enterprise deals is that they can take longer than 3 months from very first touch to contract signing. We like to do it to ensure directional improvement and alignment, but things like "reduction in closed losses" or "increased conversion to POV" are really hard to measure from quarter beginning to end, in comparison to the last quarter beginning to end—specifically because by ...Read More

For me, the biggest challenges with tracking KPIs are usually less about the numbers themselves and more about alignment, context, and expectations. One common issue is clarity on ownership and influence. Product marketing often sits in the middle – we influence pipeline, conversion, and adoption, but don’t fully own them. That can create tension if KPIs are treated as hard targets rather than signals that need interpretation. Another challenge is time lag. Many of the things product marketing w ...Read More