By Dany Ortiz, on 05 December 2019
It’s easy to set goals. Now, tracking them… well, that’s a different story. Following up on established objectives can be a challenge for any company. And certainly staying focused on meeting the annual objectives is a difficult task. Therefore, in this article, we will talk about the OKR Methodology and how it can help your company optimize, track, and analyze digital marketing strategies.
What is the OKR Methodology?
The acronym OKR translates to:
- Objectives
- Keys
- Results
It is a methodology that is applied to align the entire team at the organizational level and centralize the approach so that everyone can work synergistically towards common goals. The OKR System is used by several of the world’s largest companies, including Google, Amazon, LinkedIn, Accenture, and Netflix.
How to Implement the OKR Methodology
To be able to implement the OKR Methodology, it is essential to understand how it works and how it is structured. Here are our four tips to ensure you get the most out of it:
1. Global Annual Objective
The first step is to define a global annual objective. To do this, think about where you want your company to be next year. What are the essential achievements that will lead your company in the right direction and allow it to continue to grow and succeed? Your objective should be derived from the company’s vision and mission.
2. Objectives
Once the global annual objective is established, you must define quarterly objectives. These will be vital in leading you as they will serve as smaller, incremental objectives that ultimately serve the larger goal. There should be a maximum of three or four goals per quarter. Rather than being centered around metrics, they should be more inspiring in nature.
Setting goals is not easy. Often when we think about things to improve we end up with multiple goals that don’t even relate to each other. I recommend brainstorming with your team to come up with multiple objectives, then apply a prioritization method to choose the most important ones. I recommend using a stacked ranking technique or ICE scoring system to prioritize your objectives.
This would define your quarterly objectives in the OKR template.
3. Key Results
The third step is to define the key results. Your key results will help you determine if you are going in the right direction towards your goals. A key result must be ambitious, as it will measure your success; therefore, they must contain metrics based on KPIs.
4. Key Actions
As the last step, you must assign three key actions for each key result. The key actions are activities that will lead you closer to your key results, and thus your overall goal.
An Example of The OKR Methodology Implemented
Global Annual Objective: Increase visibility and improve brand positioning
Objective 1: Improve SEO
- Key Result: Organic web traffic above 50,000 visits per month
- Key Actions: Position 3 articles by keywords that generate a high number or searches
- Key Result: Increase the loading speed from 7 seconds to 4 seconds
- Key Actions: Compress the size of all the images embedded in the blog
You can follow up weekly with your quarterly objectives by filling in the template. Remember that each excel sheet monitors a different objective
Objective 2: Improve Presence and Engagement in Social Networks
- Key Result: Reach 5,000 subscribers on YouTube
- Key Actions: Periodically launch a newsletter to the contact base with the content from the channel
- Key Actions: Produce and share videos with more practical and less theoretical content
- Key Result: Increase engagement on our Facebook page by 10% monthly
- Key Actions: Share more content
- Key Actions: Vary the content formats
Advantages of the OKR Methodology
The implementation of this methodology brings multiple benefits, including:
- It reduces the risk of experiencing a crisis
- It facilitates teamwork
- Focuses your team on what really matters
- Allows you to achieve your objectives
