How to Use Marketing OKRs to Drive Success
Aligning a marketing team’s efforts with overarching company objectives can be a challenging feat, but the OKR framework can offer a powerful solution.
Alice de Courcy, CMO of Cognism, has not only introduced OKRs but has successfully used them to propel the company from a modest $3 million in ARR to over $70 million.
In a recent episode of the Attributed Podcast, Alice shared her insights on how OKRs can drive marketing success and why this methodology could be the missing piece for B2B marketers struggling to connect their daily activities with long-term company growth.
Here is what we will cover:
The foundation of OKRs
Making OKRs work for marketing teams
Overcoming resistance and embracing change
Implementing OKRs for creative teams
Balancing ambition and feasibility with the 80/20 rule
Accountability and transparency for successful OKRs
Check out the entire conversation here.
The foundation of OKRs: setting ambitious and measurable goals
OKRs, or objectives and key results, are essentially a goal-setting framework. Alice explains that this structured approach is designed to foster ambition, ensuring teams strive for bold targets while maintaining measurable outcomes and alignment across the organization.
The thing that's unique about OKRs is they're set up to be ambitious, measurable, and trackable and when they work the best they should be applied across the full organization at both a team and individual level.
Alice’s OKR framework at Cognism is implemented on a half-yearly basis, with the executive team setting four top-level objectives.
These objectives are ambitious, reflecting the company’s strategic vision, and are cascaded down through department heads to their respective teams, ensuring alignment from the top down.
This hierarchical alignment is critical because it ensures that every employee’s efforts contribute to the company’s larger strategy while maintaining the ambition that drives innovation and growth.
Making OKRs work for marketing teams
While OKRs have traditionally been associated with engineering or product teams, Alice has effectively adapted the framework for a marketing environment.
This move has been instrumental in creating transparency and accountability within the department while fostering collaboration across teams and functions.
We all come back together… and talk to our ORKs that we’re going to focus on from a department level, how we see them rolling up into the organization level ones, and why we think that will help us… it’s a very open forum.
At Cognism, OKRs operate at three key levels to ensure alignment and focus across the organization:
Departmental: Broad OKRs are set for the entire marketing team, ensuring their objectives tie directly into the company’s overarching strategy.
Team: Individual marketing functions, such as content, demand generation, or product marketing, establish OKRs that contribute to departmental goals while addressing their specific focus areas.
Individual: Team members set OKRs that align with their role and responsibilities, giving them clarity on how their work impacts broader goals.
Planning for departmental and team-level OKRs requires a clear understanding of priorities and resource allocation.Learn more about setting strategic plans in Planning and Budgeting for B2B Marketing Success in 2025.
This tiered approach ensures alignment at every level, empowering teams and individuals to take ownership of their contributions while staying connected to the larger strategy.
Alice’s extensive experience implementing OKRs and scaling Cognism’s marketing strategy is detailed further in her book “The Diary of a First-Time CMO.”
Objectives and Key Results
In practice, a typical marketing objective might be to increase the proportion of marketing-sourced pipeline from midmarket accounts, a focus area Alice believes is pivotal for the company’s growth.
The corresponding key result for this objective would be a specific target, such as generating a set amount of pipeline from ICP accounts.
The thing that was great about this OKR was that it could be department level and then it was really easily slotted into each of the functions.
Alice stresses that key results are not just random metrics but meaningful indicators that guide decision-making and prioritize team efforts.
This structured approach ensures that everyone in the organization, from senior leaders to individual contributors, has a clear understanding of what success looks like and how their work contributes to the company's overall vision.
For more information on mastering marketing metrics check out this conversation with Bill Macaitis.
Overcoming resistance and embracing change
Implementing OKRs isn’t always smooth sailing, especially in creative and dynamic environments like marketing.
Alice acknowledged the initial resistance she faced when rolling out this framework, noting that it requires a shift in mindset from simply executing tasks to focusing on outcomes.
You have to be prepared for some uncomfortable conversations to defend your point of view but also be open to being wrong. Then it's a healthy conversation and from there the work is a lot easier.
To counter this, she invested time in training and education, helping her team understand the purpose behind OKRs and how they could be used as a tool for personal and professional growth.
Implementing OKRs for creative teams
One challenge many marketing leaders face is integrating creative functions (such as design and video production) into an OKR framework that is traditionally numbers-driven.
Alice addressed this by setting specific, measurable OKRs for creative teams, linking their efforts directly to pipeline and revenue targets.
For example, the video team was given a pipeline goal, which led them to develop a more structured YouTube strategy, leveraging existing assets to drive traffic and conversions.
Our video lead has created a kind of YouTube strategythat we didn't have before all driven through the OKRs because we gave video a pipeline and revenue target.
For more on leveraging YouTube, check out this conversation with Tim Soulo.
This not only gave the creative team a sense of ownership but also made their contributions more visible and tied directly to business outcomes.
Balancing ambition and feasibility with the 80/20 rule
One of the core principles that Alice employs is the 80/20 rule, which she uses to ensure her team remains focused on the main strategic objectives while leaving room for creativity and spontaneity.
She explained that 80% of the team's efforts are directed towards core strategic initiatives outlined in the OKRs, while the remaining 20% is reserved for experimental projects that could yield unexpected insights or quick wins.
This approach empowers the team to take ownership of their projects and provides flexibility.
Accountability and transparency for successful OKRs
OKRs only work if there is consistent tracking and accountability.
Without these elements, the framework risks becoming a collection of aspirational goals with no clear path to execution. Accountability ensures that individuals and teams take ownership of their objectives, while regular tracking provides the necessary feedback to assess progress and make course corrections.
At Cognism, OKRs are tracked using Asana’s goals feature, allowing for seamless integration of project management with the OKR framework.
The transparency this provides is critical, as it allows team members to see how their individual contributions tie into the broader company goals.
The use of Asana also facilitates bi-weekly sprint planning, where teams reassess their priorities based on the latest data, ensuring they remain agile and responsive to changes.
By holding team members accountable and continuously reviewing progress, organizations can identify obstacles early, celebrate wins, and ensure that resources are being allocated effectively.
Moreover, transparency in tracking allows every team member to understand how their work connects to the broader strategy, fostering a sense of purpose and alignment.
Conclusion
OKRs, or Objectives and Key Results, provide a powerful framework for aligning teams with overarching company objectives.
By setting ambitious goals, tracking progress, and maintaining accountability, OKRs help organizations focus their efforts on what truly matters while fostering innovation and measurable outcomes.
For B2B marketers looking to replicate this success, the key lies in starting small, proving the concept, and gradually scaling up, while always leaving room for innovation.
Marketing teams are constantly pressured to deliver results and using OKRs can provide a clear roadmap, ensuring every campaign, creative project, and strategic initiative is driving towards a common goal.
About the Speaker
Alice de Courcy is the CMO at Cognism, she authored "The Diary of a First-Time CMO," which chronicles her journey in scaling Cognism's annual recurring revenue from $3 million to over $50 million. Known for her innovative and data-driven approach, she excels in using OKRs to align marketing teams and drive growth. Alice is a thought leader in B2B marketing, focusing on authenticity, demand generation, and strategic execution.
