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.

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.

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. 

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?

Great question. Difficult to answer, without knowing more about you as a human (feel free to reach out to me on LI and we can chat more specifically). That said, here is my general thinking on the subject: First, leverage your experience. You sales background is a huge asset. Use your experiences to help the Marketing team get a better understanding of customer pain points, buyer personas, and the nuances of the sales funnel. Your team will find your knowledge to be invaluable in crafting effective demand generation strategies that resonate with potential customers. That said, you will have a lot to learn about how the function of "demand generation" works. * Digital Marketing: Learn about SEO, SEM, social media marketing, and content marketing. This is often the largest discretionary spend in your entire company. Experts here command executive attention, have a huge impact on spending decisions and can make or break your top of funnel volume. * Marketing Automation Tools: Get hands-on experience with tools like HubSpot, Marketo, or Pardot. Learn how scoring works. Get a sense of how email campaigns are developed, what your marketable database looks like, and how you can help the team improve their segmentation efforts. * Data Analysis: Marketing data is adjacent to Sales data, but it's a whole new pile of stuff (100's of metrics across the different parts of the org) to learn. Get a sense of what matters most and what are nice to do metrics. Develop skills in analyzing data to understand campaign performance and ROI. * Content Creation: Work with the content team to understand the machinery. How does content marketing generate leads? What content is mapped to what stage? How is that content scored? You can be a big help here; help the team brainstorm new and relevant topics at the awareness, consideration and decision stages. Help the PMM team develop one pagers for sellers that actually matter. I'd suggest that you work to deepen your understanding of the customer journey from awareness to decision. Spend some time with the PMM team, growth team, or your lifecycle marketing person. Get a sense of how your organization creates create touch points that guide potential customers through the funnel will be essential in a demand generation role. What are the "aha" moments in your product that signal a potential long-term paying customer? How many touches in your SDR sequences or in your marketing nurture emails. One interesting, big concept to consider: How can you start to shift your focus from individual sales (1:1) to broader, more programmatic marketing strategies (1:Many). Consider how you can leverage what you know, and how you can apply it at scale, to attract, engage, and convert leads to closed won. Making this mental shift will be critical to your success in Marketing and Demand Generation. This is a big one, a mandatory IMO. Please please please please please communicate your career aspirations with your current manager or HR department. You need to find the right balance between being direct but non-threatening. You want them to know what you want and when, but not make them feel like you have checked out or are not worth continuing to advocate for and invest in. Managing this carefully will be key to making a smooth transition between roles. The marketing landscape is constantly evolving. Stay curious, keep learning, and be adaptable to new tools and trends in demand generation. Attend events, participate in webinars, and read read read read read everything you can get your hands on. Continuous improvement will be key to your long-term success, whatever path you choose to pursue. Of course, I'd be remiss if I did not suggest you work to connect with professionals who are already in demand generation roles. You can't go wrong seeking mentorship from experienced colleagues and industry experts. Their guidance can provide valuable insights and help you navigate the transition smoothly. Some thoughts if you are still in your Sales role: Demonstrate your capability and interest in demand generation. Spend some time with your DG partners. Offer to assist with marketing campaigns, contribute to content creation, and help with lead nurturing efforts. Showcase your company knowledge, your proactive approach and you're going to win both kudos and a better chance at landing a Marketing role. Finally, I'd recommend working to build your "T-shaped career." A generalists breadth and broad understanding of marketing concepts will help you accelerate and become successful and valuable in smaller companies. As you grow, you'll develop the long leg of that "T" - your specialization. This will become more and more important as you grow in seniority and look to take on more senior roles. Companies usually hire because they have a problem they want to address, and they are looking for folks who have specialties in addressing them. This WILL become a huge part of your later career value proposition, so start thinking about it now.

The move from Manager to Director is about transitioning from someone who is told what to do and "pulls the levers." In someone who can own a strategy and help execute it. Before you can build a strategy, you need to be an expert on the execution side of the work. Dive into every channel, and understand how they work and when they are leveraged. Additionally, always be looking at how others market. Look at your competitor's digital ads, read their blog, sign-up for a newsletter, and immerse yourself in their content. And step outside competitors as well. Find those brands you respect and learn everything you can about how their teams work and build programs. From a strategy perspective, look at areas within your business and think about how you could improve them. Then, bring your ideas to your managers and leaders. Getting feedback on those ideas can help you understand their thoughts, and you'll pick up some strategic guidance along the way. And don't be afraid to ask questions!

Here are the four most important parameters that determine your Channel strategy when designing an Integrated Campaign. 1. Who? - Audience * Are you talking to developers, end-users, or decision-makers? * How large is the buying group for your product? * Is your product a single or multi-department purchase? 2. Why? - Marketing objective Is your campaign objective creating awareness, building pipeline, or accelerating pipeline? Each objective dictates the count of audience you have available to target which in turn informs the decision to choose channels. For example, if your objective is to accelerate pipeline, you might be limited to using targeted Social (custom audience), emails, closed-door events, and direct mail. However, if your objective is to create awareness, your channel coverage needs to expand dramatically because you are now trying to reach a broader audience to inform them of your existence. Now you are thinking Display, Content syndication, 3rd party tradeshows & publishers, etc. 3. What? - Average Contract Value (ACV) or ARPA What kind of product do you sell? Typically, it's safe to assume that a product with a higher ACV needs consideration and involvement from senior decision-makers across LoBs. Note that the same decision-makers are not easily accessible via conventional channels such as Paid social, email, Paid search, etc. Therefore your channel mix needs to evolve to match where they pay attention to. In this scenario, your channel mix might include direct mail, exclusive invites to 3rd party events, etc. 4. How much? - Available budget If you are well-funded, go ahead and explore multiple channels until you have a mix that delivers predictable lead volume and Qualified Pipe. If funds are tight, you might want to prioritize channels based on 3 factors - - Does that channel have your buyer's attention? (qualitative assessment) - What is the Cost per reach per channel? - Based on rough funnel math, can this Cost per reach ultimately deliver a respectable Pipe per $ spent over the duration of your sales cycle? Overall, two variables determine the effectiveness of this strategy - 1. Do you have a sufficient volume of buyers who you can target? 2. Are you able to effectively and efficiently access those channels to reach them?

Growth marketing and demand generation are both essential facets of a comprehensive marketing strategy an while there are some similarities, they focus on different areas, utilize unique tactics and are measured differently. Here’s how I think about it and would break down the differences: Scope and Focus * Growth Marketing: It is a broader strategy that encompasses a wide range of tactics and channels to not only attract customers but also retain them, aiming to increase the lifetime value (net retention rate) of customers and foster brand advocacy. It involves a data-driven approach to all aspects of the customer lifecycle — a combination of customer acquisition, expansion and retention with a focus on revenue at all stages. * Demand Generation: This is more focused on generating interest and awareness about the company's products or services. The primary goal is to create a demand for the product in the market, targeting potential customers at the top and middle of the sales funnel. Tactics and Strategies * Growth Marketing: Utilizes a mix of content marketing, SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, A/B testing, and more, aiming to grow the business sustainably through iterative improvements and experiments. * Demand Generation: Involves tactics like inbound marketing, content creation, paid advertising, webinars, and events to stir interest and create buzz around the product or service in the market. Metrics and KPIs * Growth Marketing: Measures success using a variety of metrics including Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), retention rate, churn rate, and Net Promoter Score (NPS), focusing on long-term growth. * Demand Generation: Focuses on short-term metrics such as lead generation, conversion rates, and the number of new opportunities created, tracking the immediate impact of campaigns on generating interest and demand. Target Audience * Growth Marketing: Targets a broader audience, including prospects, existing customers, and even past customers, aiming to nurture relationships and build a community around the brand. * Demand Generation: Primarily targets potential customers, focusing on attracting quality leads that can be nurtured into customers, usually working at the top of the sales funnel. Customer Journey * Growth Marketing: Engages customers at every stage of the customer journey, from awareness to advocacy, focusing on providing value and building long-term relationships. * Demand Generation: Focuses mainly on the early stages of the customer journey, aiming to create awareness and generate interest to move potential customers through the sales funnel. In summary, while there is an overlap between growth marketing and demand generation, growth marketing has a broader scope, focusing on long-term sustainable growth through customer acquisition, expansion and retention, while demand generation is more centered on generating interest and creating a demand for the products or services in the market.

The prioritization should align with your business objectives. Those overarching goals decided by your sales and marketing leadership team should formulate a foundational layer for you to build from. From there you can prioritize the programs based on the largest gaps that need to be filled. Are you needing Leads? Content? Events? Sales Materials? Digital or ABM programs? You don't have to focus on one thing at a time, so make sure to be able to multitask. Sorting priorities from most critical to least then executing will help you make the quickest impact to fill the business need.