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.

Strategies usually get defined bi-annually or annually and most of us don't have complete influence and control on what gets defined. So allow me to stray a bit and take this opportunity to share some 'tactics' that have worked for me. 1. Do you use common vocabulary? You will be surprised how many salespeople in your organization don't understand the difference between an 'acquired contact' and a 'marketing qualified lead'. Many times, this could be attributed to a combination of a lack of commonly agreed definition and lazy communication from Demand gen 2. Are you measuring the same thing? Acknowledge that solving their problem is your problem. Your success and reputation depend on whether your programs are planned to help them achieve their goals. In the PLG world, it could be a commonly agreed definition of what is a PQL. In the ABM world, it could be the definition of 'Engaged accounts'. 3. You know their 'stated position' but do you have a pulse on their 'interest'? A stated position from sales is usually concrete and explicit. For example, it could be 'I want more leads'. But look for the underlying interests, which are usually unexpressed. For example, it could be 'I need better quality leads - leads that display engagement on the website or inside the product or both'. When you appeal to the 'real interests' of your sales teams and succeed at meeting them, you will build trust and emerge as stronger partners. 4. You need to be okay with not being able to resolve 'all' issues. There will always be a few 'open' questions and opinions about the other team that might never get resolved. For example, as a Demand gen marketer, you'd want a multi-touch attribution model to be instituted but sales might never refer to it. In fact, they could vouch for the clarity provided by a last or a first-touch attribution model. Another one - Sales might have feedback on why marketing needs to do more of a certain kind of content (because the competition does) and deep down, you know that it is a nice-to-have, not a must-have. 6. Divide and conquer. collaborate with your counterpart in Product marketing who can help ease off the pressure on you by helping sales win and keeping up the momentum. They make sure Sales are engaged and are enabled with a winning message, collaterals, and direction. 7. Cultivate a champion in the sales team. Do you have someone from Sales who helps validate your Campaign theme and messaging, and vet prospect emails so they don't read marketing(y)? This is the person who will stand up and speak on your behalf when things get tough for you (which they do occasionally). 8. Identify opportunities to build alignment. Invite champions from your sales team to build the buyer journey and the persona map along with you. Collaborate with them when you conceptualize the PQL logic for your PLG motion or define the segmentation strategy for your next campaign. 8. Build an Always-on feedback loop - given the nature of the roles, it is possible that the Sales-Demand generation relationship could get transactional very fast. Avoid this at any cost. As Demand gen marketers, the onus is on us to elevate the discussion (and our relationship) and ask higher-order questions from a place of curiosity (I know this is super difficult and I'm also learning). One way to do this is to find the right opportunity to pose strategic questions such as 'what is good for the business' and 'do we need to revisit our Ideal Customer Profile' as against 'You are not touching these leads fast enough'. Strive, as much as possible, to attain the right balance in every conversation.

Marketing cannot close business without sales. Sales is the most important partner to marketing, ABM or not. While you can gain the support of the leadership teams, sales ops, etc, if you don't have your sales team onboard with your plans, you will not succeed. Bring your sales team into the process early and keep them informed ia regular status updates (bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly). Highlight your wins and your losses.

First, I’d like to define a B2B campaign as a set of tactics that will drive pipeline revenue for a particular solution or a market segment. The campaign timeline can span over a quarter or 6+ months. To launch a successful campaign you first need to answer these 5 questions. * What are the campaign goals * Begin with the end in mind. * Keep your eyes on the prize and optimize relentlessly * Who is the Target audience * Persona - Business and technical buyer * Segment - Enterprise, Mid-market, SMB * Geo - North America, EMEA, LATAM, APAC * Verticals * What is the value proposition * What are the buyer pain points * How can our solution help solve * Why should they choose us over competitors * What is the content mix by persona and buyer jobs to be done * Buyer jobs to be done including problem identification, sol exploration, req building, vendor selection, validation and consensus building. Be sure to include different formats such as e-books, checklists, analyst content, video demos etc * By persona - business buyer and/or technical buyer * What is the budget * This will guide the channel/tactic mix * Define the tactic mix including both * Paid media - paid search, paid social, third party programs, trade shows * Owned media - website, email nurture, webinars, blogs Once you have the answers you are ready to plan and launch a solid campaign. Pro tip: Don't wait for everything (ads, emails, landing pages etc.) to be perfect. The mantra is to launch and optimize :))

I'd recommending focusing a lot more on engagement and less on lead generation or MQLs. In general, you should know the people you want to engage in each account, and you'll have them already populated in your CRM. This completely eliminates the need for any "lead source" tracking to prove effectiveness. Additionally, you'll want your team to keep engaging the important few until they're ready to take the next step with your company, so measuring actual engagement with marketing materials/programs is key. Several tools out there help with this such as Demandbase and 6Sense, but it can also be homegrown if you have the appetite for it. If I were to oversimplify a lot, assign points based on activities, roll them up to the account level, ensure they decay over time, and then set thresholds based on what matters most for your business. Maybe you need a lot of engagement within a few key contacts, maybe you need the whole village to get activated! If you're not sure, start somewhere, backtest, measure, and iterate. 

Incorporating experimentation and A/B testing into growth marketing strategies is key for driving sustained growth. Without it, marketing results often plateau quickly. Here’s a 6-step process I’ve used in the past to structure a conversion rate optimization program around. Step 1 - Hypothesis Formation In this initial step, pinpoint crucial variables that influence user engagement and construct hypotheses regarding potential changes and their outcomes. * Identify Key Variables: Recognize the key variables (like webpage layout, email subject lines, ad creatives) that you think have a significant impact on user engagement or conversion. * Develop Hypotheses: Formulate hypotheses based on your observations, analytics data, or customer feedback, predicting how changes in these variables might affect the outcomes. Step 2 - Designing Experiments Here, the focus is on developing different variants based on the formed hypotheses, establishing a control group, and setting up appropriate analytics tools to track the performance metrics accurately. * Creating & Develop Variants: Create different variants of the webpage, email, or ad, incorporating the changes as per your hypotheses. * Control Group: Maintain a control group where no changes are made, to compare the results with the variants. * Define Key Metrics: Set up key metrics (like click-through rate, conversion rate, etc.) that will help you evaluate the performance of each variant. * Setting Up Analytics: Ensure that analytics tools are set up correctly to accurately track the performance metrics. Step 3 - Conducting Experiments During this phase, conduct the experiments by segregating the audience into different groups and launching all variants simultaneously to avoid time-based biases, ensuring a fair test. * Randomized Split Testing: Divide the audience randomly into different groups, each group being exposed to one variant. * Simultaneous Launch: Launch all the variants simultaneously to prevent any time-based biases from affecting the results. Step 4 - Data Collection and Analysis This step entails meticulous data collection and analysis to discern the most effective variant, followed by deriving insights to comprehend customer preferences and documenting the findings for future reference. * Collect Data: Gather data on how each variant performed based on the defined metrics. * Analyze Results: Analyze the data to find out which variant performed the best and if the differences are statistically significant. * Draw Insights: Draw insights from the experiment results, understanding customer preferences and behaviors. * Document Learnings: Document the learnings from each experiment to build a knowledge base for future reference. Step 5 - Implementation and Optimization At this point, your focus is implement any successful test, engage in continuous optimization based on the learnings, and accelerate growth by repeating the testing process with new hypotheses. * Implement Changes: Implement the changes based on the winning variant to optimize your marketing strategies. * Continuous Optimization: Use the learnings to continuously optimize and improve your marketing strategies. * Scale Successful Experiments: Scale up the successful experiments to a larger audience to maximize the benefits. * Iterative Process: Make experimentation an iterative process, continuously testing new hypotheses to foster growth. Step 6 - Knowledge Sharing Lastly, foster a data-driven culture within the organization by sharing the learnings with the team, encouraging collaboration, innovation, and developing a flexible marketing strategy adaptable based on the insights gathered from the experiments. * Share Learnings: Share the learnings with your team to foster a culture of data-driven decision-making. * Collaborative Approach: Encourage a collaborative approach where team members can propose new hypotheses for testing. * Fostering Innovation: Foster a culture of experimentation within the organization, encouraging innovation and agility. * Adaptability: Develop an adaptable marketing strategy that can pivot based on the insights from the experiments. By following this structured approach to experimentation and A/B testing, you can effectively incorporate them into your growth marketing strategies, driving improved results and fostering sustainable growth.

ROI and marketing attribution is the most challenging KPIs for startups in the technology space; most of these companies do not measure CLV and instead, they measure results on an annual basis, depending on factors such as average sales cycle, average deal size and market maturity, reporting returns of marketing investment in the short term is challenging. One important KPI that demand generation teams may overlook in fast-growing technology companies is the customer lifetime value (CLV). CLV is a metric that calculates the total amount of revenue a customer is expected to generate for a company over the course of their relationship. It takes into account factors such as customer acquisition cost, average purchase value, and customer retention rate, and provides a more accurate picture of a company's revenue potential than simply looking at short-term revenue or leads generated. By focusing on CLV, demand generation teams can prioritize their efforts on acquiring high-value customers who are more likely to generate long-term revenue for the company. They can also identify areas where they can improve customer retention and increase the overall value of each customer. Overall, CLV can provide a more comprehensive and strategic view of a company's revenue growth potential and help demand generation teams make more informed decisions about their marketing and sales strategies.

The audience I target are primarily Fortune 500 C-Suite. In this case, we take an account first approach and weigh events more heavily than digital in our marketing plans. For integrated marketing plans, bringing in the functional experts to inform the strategy from the start is critical. Generally I recommend having a clearly articulated goal/vision with clearly articulated outcomes of success. Then opening the space for ideation to build the strategy jointly helps create the initial alignment needed for your demand gen strategy.

There is no other way. If you’re not going to invest in intent data, then don’t try to do ABM, you’ll waste money and employee calories. I’ve heard companies say “oh we will just focus our efforts on our ICP” Yes, of course, knowing what accounts have the most propensity to buy is critical. But where they are in their journey is just as critical. Intent data in your Account-Based Marketing (ABM) model is like having a crystal ball that helps you see which potential customers are genuinely interested in what you offer. Here's why it's important * Relevance: It helps you find and focus on businesses that are actively looking for products or solutions like yours. So, you're not wasting your time on those who aren't interested. This is why I love tools like 6Sense and Qualified. * Personalization and customization: Customize for your audiences! With intent data, you can customize your messages and content to fit exactly what these companies are looking for. It's giving them exactly what they want. Messaging for emails, ads, Outreach snippets, landing pages, all of it. * Priority: It lets you know which businesses are most likely to buy soon, so you can put your energy into them first. * The words that matter: It guides you on what to write and talk about. You create content that speaks to their needs and questions, making them more likely to choose you. * Timing: It tells you when they're most ready to hear from you, increasing your chances of making a sale. * Smart Decisions: You're not just guessing; you're using data to make your ABM strategy better, helping you make your marketing and sales work even smarter and work better together. In simple terms, intent data is the best kept secret that shouldn't be a secret in ABM, helping you find the right customers, talk to them in a way they like, and make your business grow faster.

My favorite question to ask is "What is a program/campaign you are proud of and why?" I feel passionate about some of my past campaigns and I want to work with people who are also excited to do what we do. I also get to see if they value. Is it creativity? Is it growth hacking? Also they get share the value of the campaign through numbers and creative story telling. Also a fun perk is maybe walking away with some inspiration for future campaigns!