Impact Goals Over Activity Goals
Judge a marketing team by big bets and full-funnel conversion, not by how many blog posts they shipped.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 92%
A diagnostic for whether a marketing team is actually effective. Great teams set impact goals (traffic, conversion, activated signups) rather than activity goals (write 10 blog posts). They can name their core keep-the-lights-on work, their big bets for step-change growth, and the broken foundations slowing them down — and they track conversion rates across the whole funnel, not just raw counts at their own stage.
Origin
Emily Kramer's framework for evaluating marketing teams, drawn from her work advising startups and building teams at Asana and Carta; she contrasts 'content flattery' (busy work) with 'content strategy'.
Core principles
- 01An activity ('write 10 blog posts this month') is a tactic, not a goal; the goal is the impact (traffic, conversion, signups)
- 02Effective teams separate core linear-growth work, big bets for step-change growth, and broken foundations
- 03You can't grow at venture pace by only doing incremental things
- 04Track raw stage numbers PLUS the conversion rate to the next stage — more low-quality signups that don't activate helps nothing
- 05'Content flattery' is busy work meant to look busy; impact focus is the opposite
How to run it
- 1
Reframe every goal as impact, not activity
Convert activity targets into outcome targets. 'Write 10 blog posts' becomes 'traffic and the conversion rate from that traffic' or 'signups that come from it'.
Watch out 'Our goal is to write 10 blog posts this month' is a tactic masquerading as a goal — reject it.
- 2
Ask the team to name their big bets
Have the marketing lead articulate the few things they believe can cause step-change growth in signups or other key metrics — distinct from the core work that keeps the lights on.
Watch out If a marketing lead can't name their big bets, that's a red flag — you can't grow at venture-backed pace on incremental work alone.
- 3
Ask what foundations are broken
Have them name the foundational pieces that aren't done and are slowing them down (e.g. no lead-scoring system, a website that needs to move to Webflow so it's editable).
- 4
Check for full-funnel conversion tracking
Verify they track conversion rates, not just raw counts at their own stage — e.g. signups PLUS the conversion rate from signup to activated user, held the same or better.
Pro tip Set signup goals with a paired conversion-quality threshold, since it's easy to flood a funnel stage with low-quality volume that never converts.
Watch out A team that looks at raw numbers at each stage but tracks conversion nowhere has a huge problem — volume without conversion may help nothing.
In the wild
A marketing team says 'our goal is to write 10 blog posts this month.' Kramer flags this as a tactic, not a goal — the actual goal should be traffic, the conversion rate from that traffic, or the signups that result.
→ Reframing to impact metrics reveals whether the blog work is actually driving growth.
A team optimizes for a raw signup or qualified-lead number. Kramer notes you can get many more people to sign up, but they might be really low quality, so the team should track signups with the conversion-to-activated-user rate held the same or better.
→ The paired metric prevents vanity volume that never activates.
Common mistakes
Setting activity goals instead of impact goals
Targeting output counts like 'write 10 blog posts' is busy work ('content flattery') that looks productive but isn't tied to tangible growth; goals must be impact metrics like traffic, conversion, and activated signups.
Tracking raw stage counts but not conversion
Watching only the raw number at each funnel stage, without the conversion rate to the next stage, lets a team pour low-quality volume into a stage that never converts — so the effort may help nothing.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and product leaders trying to judge whether their marketing lead and team are actually effective, and marketers who want to hold themselves to an impact standard
Not ideal for
Very early pre-product-market-fit teams still doing bespoke founder-led selling, where formal funnel metrics don't yet exist to optimize
From the transcript
“our goal is to write 10 blog posts this month and i'm like no that's that's not a goal like that's maybe a tactic but…”
“you shouldn't have activity goals you should have impact goals”
“what are the big bets that you're taking and then what are the foundational sort of pieces of marketing that aren't done yet”
“you can't grow at the rate of venture back startup to grow by just like continuing to do incremental things”
“they're focused on signups with a conversion rate to activated user uh the same or better than it is now because i can get (51:30)…”
From the episode
How to build a powerful marketing machine
Emily Kramer (Asana, Carta, MKT1)