Have a beginner's mind. What worked in the past might not work in your new position (or it may? But you have to test it first before implementing something full blown). The challenges you have faced leading other teams are not going to be the same set of challenges you will face in your new role. I will think about my conversion path and buyer's journey before I even think about what go-to-market channels I need to build or optimize. Step 1: I would start off by listening to all the functional leads in your new company (sales, product, support, ops). I will then sit down with the data science team or someone from ops to help you draw out the exact conversion, purchasing and upsell funnel for your prospects and customers. Step 2: Identify from a marketing perspective when the key events happen (ie. web conversion, sales opp win/loss, what causes someone to convert, when upsells happen, what causes attrition...you get the point). Then figure out where the bottlenecks are that are preventing your users from taking the action you want them to take. Step 3: Once you have a good grasp on your bottlenecks and conversion point then you can start thinking about (in priority order) how these channels can be used to drive conversions and sales: 1) website/SEO, 2) email/marketing automation, 3) paid digital strategy, 4) sales alignment/training, 5) content buildout 6) webinars/events. 

As a Demand Gen Marketer, you need to make sure that your 30/60/90 day plan is skewed towards learning about the company/space. The more time you can devote to understanding the business/space/customer, the better you'll be at your job in the long run. That said, I do sprinkle these "quick wins" into my 30/60/90 plan to ensure I'm moving performance in the right direction. I find the campaigns below to be low-effort yet impactful. 1. Run an a/b test on your website's pricing page. Chances are this is one of your best-performing pages when it comes to traffic and impact on conversion. Test something above the fold and you should come to statistical significance within ~45 days. 2. Send out a closed-lost/expired MQL survey. Ask every MQL that didn't convert in the last 3 months to complete a survey in exchange for a $20 Amazon/Starbucks gift card. The questions should be geared towards learning what initially made them interested in your product and why they didn't end up purchasing. Make sure you ask them if they went with a competitor and if so who. If they didn't purchase another product, re-route them to the sales team with their survey answers. If they did, tag them in your CRM to follow up in 9 months. 3. Run an email campaign that generates new reviews. Determine your business's most important keyword that you currently don't rank on page 1 for. Identify the review site (G2, Sofware Advice, etc) that is ranking the highest for that term and ask your customers to write a review on that site. Pull a list of customers with NPS scores of 9/10 and send them an email prompting them to review in exchange for a gift card. While you might not currently rank for that important search term, you can be visible on the website that ranks for it. 

A team of one has the opportunity to lay the foundation for a solid demand generation function. That being said, it's important to ensure a thoughtful and scalable approach. You'll need to choose 1 or 2 main KPIs to impact, you should work with sales and PMM to form a point of view. You might choose traffic and form fills to start depending on the maturity of your business. Or you might choose MQLs and Opportunities. Once you have your KPIs chosen you can begin crafting the right mix of programs to achieve your targets. Generally speaking I recommend an 80/20 split, 80% always on programs, think trial, ebooks, on demand webinars, AR, etc and 20% point in time (PIT) webinars, training, hands on etc. Especially for a team of one you need to prioritize programs that will help you get the most out of your efforts. You’ll never be able to run enough webinars to keep up with growing targets, so it's important to build a solid always on engine.

The most important thing around influence is clearly identifying and communicating how your work is contributing to sales success and ultimately having a positive impact on the business. Early on in my career, I learned that the most effective marketers are deeply committed to designing their goals around metrics sales teams actually care about. This essential insight is what inspired me to shift away from measuring leads to measuring marketing-generated pipeline. Changing metrics may be daunting at first but it’s ok to be uncomfortable. In my experience, it’s the best way to move away from a dynamic where marketing and sales blame other teams for standing in the way of their success. If you see this dynamic bubble up, consider it an invitation to reframe your work in the context of finding shared metrics that ladder up to a larger company goal. By measuring your success with metrics both stakeholders actually care about, you’re laying the foundation for a trusted partnership that has the potential to drive tremendous growth for your business. When you have that trusted partnership, the sales team should feel really excited about your roadmap and be asking how they can get more support because they find your work so valuable to them. This is a great opportunity for you to jointly present for additional resources - having sales and marketing both make the same budget or headcount request is much more powerful than marketing doing it alone.

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.

It is important to recognize that the B2B buying cycle is not linear. Various buyers can be in different stages of the buying cycle and the best way to address this is to have: 1. Always-on tactics such as paid search, paid social, and email nurture. These are by nature evergreen campaigns and must be optimized quarterly or based on performance 2. Time-sensitive tactics such as webinars, tradeshows and in-person and online BOF events such as executive round tables That said, it is important to have the MOF/BOF tactics such as email nurture and SDR outreach sequences live before you launch paid media campaigns. This will ensure the right follow-ups are triggered the moment the first content lead or the first demo lead or the first event lead hits the CRM.

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?

In any strategy, it's not just about how much you measure but also what you’re measure and why. It's about setting the barometer for what success looks like and how KPIs are monitored, discussed, and leveraged to drive improvements. It's beneficial to break your KPIs into Operational North Stars – these are the Key Results (KRs) that every GTM TEAM should strive for. They are the metrics on your CEO's daily dashboard. Remember, ABM is about targeting specific audiences and accounts with more specific and relevant marketing tactics that focus on who they are, the problems they have and how your solution is differentiated in solving for their problems. Therefore, your company's KPIs should align with this approach: * Percentage of target accounts in your marketing database * Percentage of target personas generating MQLs * Percentage of pipeline originating from named accounts * Percentage of target personas as the primary contact * Percentage of expansion pipeline from named accounts * Percentage of revenue from named accounts * ACV (Average Contract Value) from named accounts * Average Deal Cycles from named accounts All of these should have quarterly goals set.

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.