If your marketing team runs on OKRs, you’ve probably noticed the problem: the objectives are inspiring, the key results are measurable, but six months in nobody can explain how the marketing plan connects to what the CEO is trying to achieve. OGSM fixes this.
OGSM for marketing teams is a one-page strategic framework that cascades your marketing plan directly from the company strategy, giving every campaign and KPI a clear line of sight to business-level goals.
It’s the one planning framework designed to cascade directly from the company strategy — which means your marketing plan stops floating free and starts pulling its weight where it matters. This article explores what a Marketing OGSM looks like, how to translate company goals into marketing goals, and how to get started on yours.
Why Marketing OKRs Often Float Free of Company Strategy
OKRs are a great personal productivity tool. They’re less great as a strategy alignment tool — because they don’t have a built-in mechanism for connecting upward.
When a marketing team sets OKRs, they typically start with what marketing wants to achieve: brand awareness, MQL volume, content reach, social followers. These are legitimate goals. But they’re built from the inside out — from what marketing can control — rather than from the outside in, starting with what the company needs.
The result is a marketing plan that’s busy, measurable, and largely disconnected from the business priorities that actually matter to the CFO and CEO. OGSM solves this by starting with the company-level plan and working down. If you haven’t already, read what OGSM actually means — it’s the foundation everything else sits on.
What a Marketing OGSM Looks Like vs. a Company OGSM
A marketing OGSM has the same four elements as a company OGSM — Objective, Goals, Strategies, Measures — but scoped to the marketing function.
The key difference: a company OGSM sets the direction for the whole business. A marketing OGSM is built in response to the company OGSM. It identifies which company-level Strategies marketing owns, and builds a plan that directly supports those priorities.
Think of it as a nested structure. The marketing Objective should be traceable to at least one company Strategy. The marketing Goals should feed into the company Goals. The marketing Strategies are the specific choices marketing is making to hit those Goals — not a restatement of the company plan, but a genuine marketing response to it.
This is the design principle that makes OGSM different from OKRs for marketing teams. Alignment is baked in, not bolted on.
How to Translate Company Goals into Marketing Goals
Before you write a single word of your marketing OGSM, you need the company OGSM in front of you. Specifically, you need the Strategies — because those are the choices the company has made about how it will grow. Marketing’s job is to execute the Strategies that fall in its domain.
Here’s the translation process:
Step 1: Identify which company Strategies marketing owns (fully or in part). Common examples: “Grow market share in the SME segment,” “Build brand recognition in new geographies,” “Reduce customer acquisition cost by 20%.” Marketing might own one of these outright or share ownership with Sales.
Step 2: Identify which company Goals marketing directly influences. Revenue, customer acquisition, market share, NPS — whichever Goals have a marketing lever. Be honest about this. Marketing influences some Goals heavily and others barely at all.
Step 3: Set marketing Goals that are upstream contributors to company Goals. If the company Goal is £40m ARR, and marketing is responsible for inbound pipeline, your marketing Goal might be “Generate £15m in marketing-sourced pipeline.” If the company Goal is 85% retention, and marketing runs the customer communications programme, your Goal might be “Deliver a quarterly customer newsletter with 30%+ open rate.”
The test: if marketing hits all its Goals, does the company get meaningfully closer to its Goals? If yes, you’re aligned. If not, rebuild.
What Are the 4 OGSM Elements for a Marketing Team?
Objective The marketing Objective is an inspirational, qualitative statement of what marketing is here to achieve in the planning period. It should connect naturally to the company Objective — same ambition, marketing-specific scope.
Example: If the company Objective is “Become the most recognised name in sustainable workplace furniture,” the Marketing Objective might be: “Make our brand the obvious choice for design-conscious office buyers who care where their furniture comes from.”
Goals Goals are quantified milestones that measure whether you’re hitting the Objective. They should be ambitious but achievable, with a clear time horizon.
Example:
- Generate 3,500 MQLs per quarter by Q4
- Grow organic website traffic to 80,000 sessions/month
- Achieve brand recall of 35% in target segment (measured annually)
- Deliver £18m in marketing-sourced pipeline
Strategies Strategies are the choices marketing is making — what you will focus on and, implicitly, what you won’t. Three to five is the right number. If you have ten Strategies, you have none.
Example:
- Build a content hub targeting mid-funnel buyers in the design and facilities management community
- Launch a referral programme for existing customers
- Invest in ABM for the top 50 target accounts
- Run a co-marketing programme with three complementary brands
Measures Measures are the metrics you track to know whether your Strategies are working. Each Measure should have an owner, a baseline, and a target.
Example:
- Content hub: unique visitors, time-on-page, content-sourced leads
- Referral programme: referrals generated, referral conversion rate
- ABM: account engagement score, pipeline from target accounts
- Co-marketing: partner-sourced leads, event attendance
What Does a Marketing OGSM Look Like in Practice?
Example 1: Brand Marketing OGSM (fictional — Greenleaf Office Interiors)
Objective: Make Greenleaf the most trusted name in sustainable workplace design for UK businesses.
Goals:
- 40% aided brand awareness in target segment by year-end
- 25,000 newsletter subscribers
- Earned media coverage in 5 tier-1 publications per quarter
Strategies:
- Launch “The Sustainable Office” editorial series (long-form content + social)
- Partner with leading architects and interior designers as brand advocates
- Sponsor the UK Sustainability in Business Awards category
Measures: Brand awareness survey (quarterly) | Newsletter subscriber growth | Press mentions | Share of voice in target publications
Example 2: Demand Generation OGSM (fictional — Clova SaaS)
Objective: Fill the sales pipeline with high-intent buyers who already understand the problem Clova solves.
Goals:
- 800 MQLs per month by Q3
- SQL conversion rate above 25%
- Cost per MQL below £45
Strategies:
- Build an SEO programme targeting high-intent product comparison and “best [category] software” queries
- Launch a free ROI calculator to capture mid-funnel buyers
- Run monthly live demos for warm leads with product team presenters
Measures: MQL volume | SQL conversion rate | Cost per MQL | Demo attendance | Organic traffic from target keywords
Example 3: Content Marketing OGSM (fictional — Porthaven Financial)
Objective: Become the go-to educational resource for first-time business owners navigating financial decisions.
Goals:
- 50,000 monthly organic visitors by Q4
- 10 articles ranking on page 1 for priority keywords
- 20% of new client enquiries cite content as a discovery source
Strategies:
- Publish two in-depth guides per month on core business finance topics
- Build a “First-Year Finance” email course for new business owners
- Optimise the top 20 existing articles for featured snippets and people-also-ask
Measures: Organic sessions | Keyword rankings | Email course subscribers | Content-attributed enquiries | Average position for target terms
These examples are deliberately varied in scope and industry — but the structure is identical. That’s the point of using the OGSM template: the framework travels across any marketing function without losing coherence.
How to Run Your Monthly Marketing Strategy Review Using Your OGSM
Writing the marketing OGSM is the easy part. Using it to actually run marketing is where most teams fall short.
Set a monthly review rhythm. In each review, work through your OGSM top to bottom:
Objective check: Is the team’s work this month clearly oriented toward the Objective? If the answer is “sort of,” something is drifting.
Goals check: Track each Goal against target. For any Goal that’s behind, name the cause — not the symptom. “MQL volume is down 15% because our paid channel underperformed, which is because we haven’t refreshed our ad creative since March” is a useful diagnosis. “MQL volume is down” is not.
Strategies check: Are your Strategies still the right choices? Markets move. If a Strategy is no longer generating results after a fair trial, make the decision to change it — explicitly, in the OGSM — rather than quietly deprioritising it while it clutters the plan.
Measures check: Is each Measure moving in the right direction? Which Measures are leading indicators of success, and are they pointing the right way? If your content strategy is working, organic traffic should be climbing before MQL volumes follow. The lag matters.
For teams just getting started, the OGSM review also connects to how you cascade the marketing plan into team-level work. Read how to cascade OGSM through your organisation to see how the content team, demand gen team, and brand team each build their own OGSM from yours.
OGSM for Marketing Teams: What to Do Next
Building a marketing OGSM is a half-day exercise if you have the company OGSM in front of you. Here’s the sequence:
- Pull out the company Strategies that marketing owns
- Write the marketing Objective — one sentence, qualitative, ambitious
- Set 3–5 Goals with numbers and timelines
- Choose 3–5 Strategies — the real choices, not a laundry list of tactics
- Define Measures with owners, baselines, and targets
- Review monthly and update quarterly
The one-page constraint is the discipline. If your marketing plan doesn’t fit on a single page, it’s not strategic — it’s operational. OGSM forces you to make choices, and choice is what strategy actually is.
Rock on.