As the founder of a startup, your day-to-day is always full of different tasks, chatting to lots of people & getting things done. At 10am, you're building out your next product update then at 11am, you're on a demo call with a new prospect & after lunch, you're writing a LinkedIn post & meeting investors.

And you’ll no doubt have soaring 1 year, 3 year & 5 year business goals which you’ll need to pull back to what needs to be done each week, month & quarter to reach them.

That’s why it’s important to have these goals outlined in a clear framework that you can monitor & continuously make progress on.

Now that we’re so close to 2024, let’s dive into getting started with OKRs for the New Year.

OKRs = objectives & key results.

This goal-setting framework helps you communicate what you want to achieve & what milestones you'll need to meet to accomplish the different goals you’ve proposed.

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💭 Why does your startup marketing team need OKRs?

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There are many reasons why introducing OKRs will be beneficial for your startup’s marketing team. No matter how big or small the team is. Even if it’s the case that you, as the founder, are taking charge of the marketing.

With remote working becoming the norm, many startups face the challenge of maintaining the same levels of productivity as well as adjusting to remote leadership.

Setting clear targets with OKRs is a great way of establishing what targets to work towards so that everyone in the team & wider business can get behind one set of goals. Once the key objective has been outlined, it can be broken up into specific roles within different teams to ensure all aspects of the team feel equally considered.

In a more general sense, these goals are either a great way to measure productivity & hold people accountable when performance slips or, even better, to help recognise people’s achievements when targets are met & accomplished.

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💡 How do we set them?

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Easily. We’ve created a simple framework template for you to follow & set your OKRs.

But first, let’s break it down…

• In the “Themes” column, set 3-5 themes for your OKRs, each one should be associated with a core “Business goal”.
• Be clear on what “key results” are expected i.e. actions & initiatives that build up to achieving these goals.
• Allocate each “key result” to an “owner” (team member or team).
• Track weekly “progress” & ensure any lagging key results can be reattributed or other actions can be taken to get them back on track.

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Keep reading for our free OKRs framework template 😏👀 What are some things to watch out for?As with any goal you set for your business, you want them to be attainable. So it’s important to stick to a couple of guidelines when setting them. You want to make sure they’re:

• Measurable
• Actionable
• Allocated to a single person
• Contributing to business goals
• Realistic (it’s good to be optimistic & push the team but they also need to be possible otherwise they’ll be demotivating)

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It’s also important to make sure the whole team is involved in setting your 2024 OKRs that way, the whole business is aligned on the focus.👀 Get hold of our FREE OKRs framework template & an example of OKRs here.Key takeaways 👉 OKRs communicate what you want to achieve & the milestones needed to accomplish them.👉 Don’t set too many OKRs, you want to be able to focus on the ones you set. We recommend around three OKRs.👉 OKRs are key in boosting the productivity of your startup teams as well as creating focus on the important goals.

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