The way that Customer Marketing teams and functions should be staffed and organized will vary greatly from company to company, especially when looking at more traditional B2B or sales-led organizations vs Product-led organizations. In my experience, though, the best way to orient the team is around three core responsibilities: * Activation & Engagement: Measurement of activation metrics and time to activation, often in the form of lifecycle marketing. Driving customer education and programmatic communication that support enterprise onboarding, end-user training materials, and aircover to gain as much traction within paying accounts as possible. * Upsells & Expansion: Driven through targeted programs that aim to increase revenue from existing enterprise accounts through targeting new teams, referrals, and surfacing new MQLs to account managers. Can be done through Customer Advisory Boards, 1:1 Account Events, Customer Webinars, and account-based acquisition campaigns. * Advocacy: Measurement of output-based programs that develop champions and put your customers on a stage like case studies, referencable logos, and customer stories across channels (webinars, events, content). When first starting out or when you have a lean team, I've found starting with an account-based customer marketing approach is the best way to drive meaningful impact and quick wins for your CSMs and on your company's bottom-line. Identify the top renewals or any accounts at risk of churning and create targeted account plans to save and expand each. This will provide the frameworks and structures to scale as the team grows.

Here are some examples of good OKRs for a Demand Generation team: 1. Objective: Increase qualified leads by X% Key Results: * Increase website traffic by Y% * Increase conversion rates on landing pages by Z% * Increase the number of demo requests by Y% * Implement a new lead scoring model to prioritize leads for sales team follow-up 2. Objective: Improve marketing funnel efficiency Key Results: * Reduce customer acquisition cost by X% * Increase conversion rates at each stage of the funnel by Y% * Implement new email nurturing campaigns to engage leads who are not yet ready to purchase 3. Objective: Expand market reach Key Results: * Increase website traffic from target industries by X% * Develop a content marketing plan to target new buyer personas * Expand social media presence to increase brand awareness in new markets * Add to your database a number of new contacts/account from a new audience 4. Objective: Drive revenue growth through demand generation Key Results: * Increase marketing-sourced revenue by X% * Implement new ABM (Account-Based Marketing) campaigns to target high-value accounts * Optimize the sales funnel to reduce sales cycle time and increase deal velocity OKRs should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). By setting goals that are aligned with the company's overall objectives, the Demand Generation team can help drive growth and success for the business.

My number one tip when building or scaling a Demand Gen function and team is to ensure that there is a clear path to measureable outcomes and impact across the DG team. While understanding impact and building a sense of accountability is important for all marketing functions, it's critical for Demand Gen. Regardless of how your company is structured, every Demand Generation member should have a set of tangible metrics and business outcomes that they are working towards. This is generally a pipeline target, but may vary. For example, if your company sets different pipeline targets across industries or product lines, you want to ensure that you have 100% coverage over those targets through the structure of your team, which requires mapping all team members to targets. While the metrics and goals will differ depending on scope of the role, all should be connecting back up to key goals and objectives for the broader business.

Typically, most campaigns can fall into one of the two buckets: awareness or performance. We need to create campaigns that have a balance of brand and performance as we can’t have brand work that doesn’t perform and performance work that doesn’t elevate your brand. Your campaign should have brand expertise as well as showcasing your product offerings in solving your customer’s challenges. * Brand campaigns are meant to create demand through inspirational content * Performance campaigns are meant to capture that demand by converting the audience The type of campaign prioritized depends on your business KPIs and brand saturation. If your brand/product has fairly low awareness, it is important to build a full funnel approach balancing both types of campaigns to drive awareness, consideration and conversion across your marketing funnel.

This one is going to be simple. Focus on being close to the numbers and be ready to be creative! I do think there are some foundational pieces to building a demand generation engine. The first is having a balanced program mix, make sure are bringing names in a consistent and steady flow. Being close to the numbers helps understanding what channels are working, which channels to invest more time & money in, and making sure these are the programs that convert to meetings and closed won. Once you have that foundational piece, focus on getting creative. At the end of the day, most demand gen teams are running the same types of programs—webinars, emails, etc. It's up to you as the leader of your team to think out of the box. Tip: Look at those programs that are converting well and see how you can hypercharge them by adding a gift card incentive for taking a meeting!

* Metrics are the data points you are measuring the success of the campaign around (either leading or lagging indicators). This can be # of meetings from your account list, # of campaign responses per account, # of impressions or CTR by account, # of opportunities, $ pipeline generated, etc. Any goal you’re measuring yourself on. * Analytics is the process of acquiring Insights from the data. Why should the team care about these metrics? * How are those metrics driving the business? * What action items can we take from here? * How will we apply these learnings to future campaigns?

This is a great question! I can't tell you the number of times I've created content because someone in the C-suite thought it would be a good idea, or because a sales reply simply couldn't close a deal with a highly customized 1-pager. The truth is - content should be created with a purpose. Here are the questions I like to ask when conducting a content audit: * Does this content answer questions our customers are asking? Does it help our customers & prospects accomplish their goals? * How does the reader feel after consuming this piece of content? Does that feeling align with what our goal was when we created the piece? * What is the purpose of this piece of content? Is it still serving that purpose? * How often is this piece of content used, by who, and in what capacity? * When was the last time this content was refreshed? Is this something we want to be a staple in our library? * In what other forms does this content exist (blog, podcast, short video, webinar, etc)? If the answer is none, should it be created in smaller, more digestible snippets? 

1. Communication! Shared Slack channels, meet regularly and ask your sales team for input so they feel engaged and involved in decisions. Be transparent about how the marketing budget is spent and what is working and what isn't. 2. Shared KPIs. The biggest mistake is disconnected goals. Having a marketing goal of driving leads and a sales goal of driving revenue rarely works out, in my experience. At a minimum, Demand Gen/Marketing needs a sales-qualified pipeline target to fill the top of the funnel. At best, it's a shared revenue target. 3. Having marketing champions on the sales team can make a big difference. A sales leader who advocates for and voices their appreciation for marketing sets the tone for the rest of the sales organisation. Invest time in building those relationships. 4. Listen back to sales calls and hear the types of objections and discussions they are having. It can often give you ideas for new pieces of content that will resonate well and that your sales team will appreciate. 5. Avoid jumping in to fulfil every request of the sales teams. In all likelihood, you will become much more tactical than strategic and ultimately deprioritise things from your plan that may have had a greater impact. It's always better to provide a rational explanation as to why you believe their suggestion isn't the right thing to do. For example, with event suggestions, I usually find that the target ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) isn't quite right. 6. Have fun! Lunch chats, socialising together, connecting over the coffee machine, finding shared interests. All help build up a more personal relationship that ultimately builds a deeper connection and better working relationship.

My role evolved as the organization grew from $100 mil ARR to ~4X the size today. In earlier days, our GTM motion was primarily PLG. I was measured on Qualified Traffic as a leading KPI, and Trial volume and Sales CVR% as the lag KPIs. Today, we have a twin GTM engine - PLG & Direct Sales model. My role and success parameters have evolved accordingly. I'm measured on Marketing sourced and influenced pipeline. The leading metrics are Trial volume and # of accounts displaying category intent and engagement in a given period.

5 things I would consider quick wins within 90 days are: 1. Understanding challenges in the market and what differentiates your product in solving them. 2. A solid grasp of average deal sizes, time to close, and past 3 years of sales metrics and goals. 3. Completing a detailed analysis of past Demand Generation campaigns for successes, failures and most profitable ROI. 4. Received feedback on previous campaigns from cross-functional stakeholders and took a "needs assessment" to help them be more successful. 5. And lastly, and probably the most obvious, begin generating a pipeline with a solid 6-month plan.