How do you set priorities and measure the success of product marketing?
Consider using OKRs.
👇 Here’s a breakdown, plus a common mistake you can avoid.
The focus of product marketing is often shifting to address different needs across the org.
You may be looking to:
🎯 Break into a new market
🎯 Launch a new product
🎯 Engage a new buyer persona
🎯 Roll out new messaging to address changes in the market
The success of these initiatives is often not easily reflected in a few high-level product marketing KPIs.
That’s why I prefer to align metrics to specific business or department objectives.
In addition to constant north star KPIs like competitive win-rate, and influenced pipeline, and revenue.
Some may be annual, while others may change quarter over quarter.
My favourite way to track this is with the OKR method.
Objectives and Key Results, but also Projects.
Here’s that broken down 👇
Objectives are meaningful goals you want to achieve. They should be aspirational, specific, and action-oriented. If you’re lucky to have broader company goals from your CEO, it helps to keep those in mind and aligned with your Objectives.
For example:
- Improve our messaging to the CRO persona
- Launch a successful V1 of our AI product
- Expand into the Telecom industry
Key Results are measurable outcome that leads to achieving your Objective. They should be specific, time-bound, and I repeat, MEASURABLE. You can have multiple Key Results nested under one objective. The idea is that when all of them are met, so is your Objective.
For example:
- 100% sales adoption of CRO messaging by June 30
- 1000 AI product trial signups by Sept 30
- 25 Telecom opportunities generated by Nov 30
⚠️⚠️⚠️ One mistake I’ve made (and I see others making) is creating Key Results that are actually just projects. So let’s talk about Projects.
Projects are the actual work that leads to making progress towards your goals. The things that are going to help you move the needle on your OKRs. Projects are a way to make progress whereas Key Results are how you measure them.
Some examples:
- Run a CRO messaging training series with sales
- Launch V1 of our AI product on Product Hunt
- Develop messaging targeting the Telecom Industry.
That’s it.
If you’re looking for a way to help your product marketing team:
🎯 Set priorities
🎧 Stay focused
📈 Measure success
I definitely suggest giving this approach a try.
Did I miss anything?
#productmarketing #marketing #productivity
PS. For anyone using the PMM Productivity Hub, there’s a built-in OKR Dashboard you can use to track your goals and relate projects to specific objectives and key results 🙌