Do you need to track your marketing department’s progress against objectives? You can’t just rely on subjective KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) or put all of your trust in analysts’ projections. The benefits of OKR’s are a simple way for managers, analysts, marketers, directors, etc. to see very specific progress being made towards company goals.
At the end of the day, it’s all about identifying and creating a compelling company culture. This is where the benefits of OKRs excel. They’re an opportunity to identify processes, create standards, set goals, and support measurable progress in a very collaborative way to strengthen your marketing business at every level.
Table of Contents
Discussed below are the key benefits of OKR’s for marketing businesses:
1. Goals and Objectives that Focus on TDL’s (Tangible, Dug-in, Learnable) Metrics
By encouraging the focus on TDL-driven metrics such as ROI (Return on Investment) and ROS (Return on Sales). The benefits of OKR’s allow marketers to stay laser-focused on their goals. They also bring direct goals to marketing that are very tangible and easily measurable.
Objectives should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. By focusing on short-term goals that are realistic and relevant, OKR’s push measurable returns that are easily identified.
2. Enabling Collaborative Goal Setting between Businesses and Marketers
Research says that next-level goal setting goes beyond planning for quarterly or annual goals. Marketers, incremental growth, lead volume, average order value, and overall revenue are all metrics that can be directly improved with OKR’s. Therefore, the marketing benefits of OKR’s align with company KPIs and goals.
Companies that implement the benefits of OKR’s should ensure marketers are involved in the goal process. This will enable marketers to better understand the processes and strengthen their ability to act appropriately.
3. Identification of Company Culture with OKR Alignment
Company culture starts at the top. The benefits of OKR’s like these ones are a great tool for identifying company objectives (beyond KPIs) that fit into your wider organizational goals. Once you know what success looks like, it’s easier to pinpoint what you need to accomplish as a marketing team.
Additionally, when you set company-wide OKR’s every department is aware of the overall strategies. This enables everyone to plan how their daily processes support the company’s vision. Therefore, your company culture is rejuvenated and work becomes more enjoyable.
4. Increased Transparency for Employees
Transparency is about trust and without it, your business will suffer. Transparency is crucial for any business and the benefits of OKR’s allow employees (marketing and non-marketing alike) to see what everyone else is working on. When everyone knows what’s going on and how they fit into the big picture, it builds a sense of ownership in your brand.
This is crucial to performance management in marketing. OKR’s enable open lines of communication by creating more awareness about what others are doing within the organization, which ultimately allows everyone to feel like they’re part of something bigger and therefore they will be more motivated to work hard and stay involved.
5. Social Recognition of Accomplishments
Another one of the major benefits of OKR’s is that they’re an effective way of identifying what has been done successfully in the past. This allows marketers to see how their day-to-day tasks worked towards bigger company goals. It also creates a culture of social recognition that encourages other employees to share their win stories as well. When this is done, it creates a greater sense of motivation in the workplace and strengthens the company culture.
Additionally, social recognition of accomplishments helps marketers focus on what matters most – their work. When marketer A sees that marketer B has gotten some love for a project, it’s a sign that they should probably take a deeper look at what was done and how it contributed to the success of the company.
6. A Method to Support HR Metrics and Strategic Goals
This is another benefit of OKR’s that can help support HR metrics and strategic goals (both internal and external). For example, an organization might set a goal for increasing market share from 15% to 18% in 18 months. This can be achieved by hiring X number of people and launching Y marketing initiatives. These KPIs fit into the organization’s wider goal and can be used as a way to measure whether or not OKR’s are helping the company achieve its goals.
In addition, it’s easy for individual marketers to get lost in the mix when there’s no support from upper management. But what OKR’s do is allow marketing teams to prioritize which activities will have the biggest impact on their day-to-day work. This is the best way for marketers to feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves. By aligning individual activities with the company’s larger goals, marketers are better able to understand how their work supports the company’s strategic business plan.
Conclusion
By setting and following through on clear, concise objectives with measurable results, you can achieve success in your marketing businesses through the above benefits of OKR’s. They can be very effective if implemented correctly.
