Work with your sales team! You can use a lot of different tech and methods to identify target accounts, but if your sales team isn't bought in, you won't be successful. I suggest using tools or conducting a TAM analysis to narrow down the list of potential accounts a tad small. Have the sales team participate in the account selection process. One of the most common mistakes I see people make is allowing their sales teams to pick companies like Verizon, ATT, Amazon etc. These companies are broken out into several lines of business and divisions. Sales should understand the account and where they'll break in. If you are going to use digital channels, ensure you have a list large enough to meet audience size requirements on your preferred media partners.

In the Demand Generation world, KPI's are ever-evolving but one always remains consistent - "to drive marketing pipeline for the business." When starting out your career in DG, KPI's will be decided by your MLT team and assigned dependent on the annual, bi-annual or quarterly goals. Some of the most common may be dependent on: - a low performing product line needing a boost - a regional team needing pipeline assistance - or a channel needing support As you grow into DG leadership, additional KPI's come into play around driving better ROIs on campaigns, driving down business costs, while delivering additional pipeline, as well as employee development for your team.

* I'd think about how you can leverage agency and contractor resources to get more out of your small team. * Then I'd also look at the maturity of the marketing program: * Do you have a decent database of leads, and the goal is activating that database and driving MQLs and SQLs? If so, you should probably lean into marketing automation, engagement programs, email + lifecycle programs, and BDR enablement. * Do you have no database to speak of? Then you want to spend time and dollars on ensuring you have a website built for conversion and effective paid programs to drive relevant people to your website. * What you want to make sure you are clear on with leadership: * What are the force-ranked priorities for your small team? It's fine to say there are three key things you are looking to achieve, but you will not be able to focus effectively if you don't literally force rank them in terms of the first, second, and third things you need to do well. * How I'd approach the strategy from there: * Given those priorities, you should then develop a strategy that covers at least the next 6 months, which outlines what you can start to tackle immediately (next 30 days), medium term (next quarter or next 90 days), and then beyond that (6 months) * You also probably want to build a 12-18 month roadmap that outlines what additional investments (people, campaigns, technology) you'd recommend. And, I'd provide options: A 'small + scrappy' version, a 'medium'-sized version, and a more aggressive/ambitious version. Along with each of these versions, it shouldn't be just an ask for more resources. You should do your best to forecast or estimate the return the business would get for those investments. At an early-stage company with low maturity and not many programs, putting in baseline programs should be able to get you 3-5x ROI in a decent timeframe. * Effective campaign development: * I'll share a few tips I've learned that have worked for me: * (1) Don't give up too early - you can't run a webinar or launch a program and expect to get a result after just a few efforts. Commit to a program for at least a quarter if you can, if not two. * (2) Start with a machete and not a scalpel. At early stages and with small teams, it is less important to know WHY a test or campaign worked and more important to know that it DID work - you want to be able to throw a bunch of things together and see a number actually move. Then, you can get into testing what works best: A question-focused email subject line, a red button, or a dedicated campaign on Facebook. In the early stages, you are just looking for any kind of lever that you can pull. * (3) You need both 'fuel' and an 'engine' - fuel is the right content for your audience that provides real and meaningful value. The engine is how you capture those leads, how you deliver that content, how you engage with the folks to drive them further down the funnel, and how your BDR hand-off works. If you don't have great fuel, it doesn't matter how good the engine is. If you have a great engine but no one is interested in what you are offering, you are also stuck. * Big questions to ask yourself: * Does the resourcing we have (heads + dollars) align with the strategies and objectives we're looking to hit? * If I invest a dollar here vs there, what return can I expect? You need to get really good about framing tradeoffs in a way that doesn't feel defensive or a resource-grab. * If I had 40 or 80 units of time (1 person = 40 hours/week = 40 units of time), how should I be prioritizing and spending that time for the most return? * Is the plan that I'm proposing flexible enough to adapt to the needs of the business? You don't want to sign a 1-year agreement with an agency to do SEO or produce shiny videos if you don't know if that's really what's going to drive a result in the next 1-3 months. * Do you know what returns the business is looking to get from the dollars you have at your disposal? Having a healthy budget is great, but with 1-2 resources, you do need to make sure that there is enough capacity to effectively use that budget. You can't rely on the same old ebook or webinar replay for too long before you will get diminishing returns on your ad spend. * What does it take to prove to the business that you need more full-time folks on the marketing team? You should understand if the business is thinking about marketing HC as a % of overall headcount or if they are looking to see an increasing marketing contribution to business results in order to unlock more resourcing.

I am focused on B2B marketing to create, drive and capture demand with the end goal of creating a pipeline for sales teams (well, ultimately to acquire customers!). From my perspective, the pillars that feed into the strategy for driving pipeline include: * Knowing our target audience * Creating compelling narratives, value propositions, and messaging * Developing best in class point of view content to educate the market while establishing our brand as trusted thought leader in the space * Integrated campaigns and multi-channel strategy: getting our message to the right audience at the right time, in the right place (buying journey is complex and requires multiple messages, solutions, tailored to multiple personas at different stages, at any given time, via multiple channels- from digital, to in person events, to social and more) Aligning stakeholders in these processes is typically done by following an established framework I mentioned in a previous question. In summary- a single project or campaign champion would create a proposal for the project/campaign in the form of a brief that is circulated amongst stakeholders. Alignment and approvals take place with the right decision makers, from there, workstream owners or channel owners are identified and brought into a project/campaign kick off. Shared goals, metrics, targets are established, timelines and workback schedules created, and regular check ins/status updates to ensure we are on track, or to remove roadblocks. Once the project/campaign is complete, a retro is conducted with all stakeholders- this can help ensure best practices are identified, key learnings are addressed, or failed initiatives are deprecated ;)

The best candidates have a ruthless attention to detail, this is by far the most important trait in my view. Without it planning, managing, executing, and scaling campaigns becomes nearly impossible. Additionally stellar demand gen team members understand the importance of building true cross-functional relationships. I encourage new members to take the first half of all regularly scheduled 1 on1s to chat about non-work related things, and really get to know your PMM, MOPS, web, paid counterparts. As campaign managers we rely on other teams to get work dones and sometimes on short notice, strong relationships will help you deliver.

Scheduling one-on-ones with your new colleagues is one of the first steps to tackle in your 30/60/90 day plan. In fact, those conversations should influence what makes it into your final draft. You should lean on the team that has seen it firsthand versus thinking you have all the answers. When I first join a company, I make sure that I schedule meetings with at least one representative from sales, customer success, finance, business intelligence, product, and engineering. I also ask these very same questions to every single direct report. Finally, I make sure to interview the longest-tenured employee at the company. 1. What is the best thing that the demand generation team is doing right now? 2. What is something that the demand generation team is not currently doing that you think we should be? 3. Are there any challenges currently facing the organization that the demand generation team should know about? 4. If you had to choose three thought leaders in our industry, who would you choose and why? 5. What are the top three publications/websites in our industry that are frequently read by our target audience? 6. What are the three most common problems customers are trying to solve with our product? 7. What are the three most common objections we face when selling to prospects? 8. Who do you think I should talk to next at this company and why?

My biggest frustration is the fact that sometimes programs work really well and then two months later, that same program will just not work. It's tough when you forecast a certain volume of new names or registrants coming in and it doesn't hit. There are some factors that influence this like seasonality (summer time or holiday months can influence the effectiveness of a program) or world events like a pandemic. While this is a frustration, it is the reason why demand gen leaders should have a good mix of programs every month/quarter in order to hit their pipeline goals, because that program you are banking on just may not hit.

The MarTech stack is only as good as the strategy, people, and process it supports. Invest in the strategy, people, and process to set the foundation, and then select MarTech that will amplify and accelerate that. The MarTech stack at Morningstar includes 6sense, Asana, Bizible, Contentstack, Eloqua, SFDC, BrightTalk, ZoomInfo, and BigMarker

I am fortunate to be a part of a journey where both the span and the scope of what a Demand generation team does have evolved over time. In my experience, the role of what a Demand gen team does will and should change as the organization matures. In the early days, in most orgs, Demand gen manages all things that touch a buyer - SEO, Website, Performance marketing, and Content marketing. As the org evolves, the role gets elevated in a few areas but leaner in others. For example, the concept of Integrated Campaigns/storytelling gets introduced, which becomes the primary driver of marketing-sourced revenue. At the same time, the organization hires experts to lead Website experience & strategy, and this role could move out and live under a separate team (product management or brand marketing). Two good ways to approach these decisions: 1. Be aware of your place under the sun: It is important to know where your organization is (what's working and not; how is marketing perceived internally; what should change) and map this intelligence to your current role and how it needs to evolve so you are able to add more value to the organization while still being in the same role 2. Do not negotiate on 'positions': The standard method of approaching these discussions is usually based on a 'position' that you and the other team choose to take. The more extreme these positions, the longer the time and effort it will take to discover whether an agreement is possible. It could also put your relationship in danger. What's worked for me in the past is to insist on a 'common criteria' that defines success for the business. Let's say you define the 'common criteria' as improving website conversion by X% and engagement by Y%. Which is a better team to own this initiative, and has the bandwidth, the better team structure, and capable and experienced resources?

My general framework is as follows: * PMM is likely to bring the best holistic qualitative insights to the table from the work that they're doing * Demand Generation is likely to bring the best live quantitative data to the table from the work that they're doing Because of that, it's a give-and-take from a responsibility standpoint. * Both PMM and Demand Generation should bring ideas to the table around what can/should be tested * They should be able to workshop those ideas together for refinement. * Example 1: Demand Generation sees some program-specific trending that causes them to want to focus on a particular theme. They bring it to PMM for more ideation as PMM can provide useful context/color based on their work. Together they come up with some ideas for testing. * Example 2: PMM has run a large customer insights study to understand key value props for the product. They bring those findings over to Demand Generation to refine based on program, audience, etc. Together, they come up with some refined ideas for testing. Decisions on what gets acted on are dependent on who's responsible for the number (this is generally Demand Generation). They're ultimately responsible for deciding, based on impact, when they'll be able to do such a test. However, by refining the ideas together, there's also alignment about importance, etc.