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.

1. Sales Leadership If you're in the B2B SaaS space, you'll know that marketing alone does not generate deals. We engage prospects and customers, bring them to the surface, and rely on AEs and sales development to mature that relationship, converting them to meetings and subsequently, deals. If your target account list is not aligned with Sales, the efforts get largely wasted. ABM works when Sales is ready and excited for each of those accounts to engage. Ultimately all accounts on the ABM list should either be assigned to an AE or on a target list, ensuring strong alignment between teams. 2. Sales Development Digging deeper on the above, it's imperative that Sales Development is also bought into the ABM strategy. It could have a major impact on their workflow, from lead assignments, qualification thresholds, and follow up SLAs. In my experience, I've found the best partner here to be the outbound SDR team, as they're incentivized to work the same accounts in the ABM list. Also, it's important to consistently surface the efforts being made to warm these accounts, as well as to analyze and prove that a warm account has a higher likelihood of converting than a cold one. If you do run the numbers and don't find that trend, it's likely that something is broken, or your thresholds for account activation are set too low. 3. Business Development / Partners Partners can make a huge difference when trying to break into major accounts. The BD team can be an excellent partner to provide inputs from partner organizations as to which accounts may be more susceptible to purchase new technology, as well as which ones have strong partners involved already.

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.

There is definitely not a single path for demand gen. I personally transitioned into demand gen from field marketing. I can't say there is a single path that makes more sense than the next, but I can say there were a few things that helped me make the seamless transition. 1) All the events I ran had a quantative goal along with a qualitative goal. All programs had success metrics attached to them so we could look back and understand was it sucessful or not. 2) The other was that I always had buy in from the sales, CSM, and other GTM teams. I would start with communicating that this path forward would help them hit their goals and then share how their partnership would bring it even more success. 3) Events are expensive! Field marketing and demand gen will always cost money. Learning how to communicate upwards to c-level and other leadership positions is key. Whether you are on the content team, product marketing team, or a fellow field marketer and want to transition into demand gen, focus on proving value of your programs, have a close relationship with sales, and be ready to prove value of your demand gen mix to leadership. 

I would recommend building target account lists based on where that account is in their customer journey. Channels are usually pretty constant. Your targeting ability, level of intent, tactics/offers, messages, and the budget you're willing to spend on them will change. It will cost significantly more budget & time to acquire a new customer, so focus on where you see the biggest potential impact first. Within a tiered 1:1, 1:few, 1:many structure: what is the potential ARR of an account within each segment? That could help determine your effort & willingness to spend on a given account list. 

* Not necessarily over-hyped, but I think it is important to find the balance between being too focused on top-of-funnel (Traffic, leads, MQLs) and having targets that are out of your control to drive (closed / won, revenue). If your marketing team is ONLY KPI'ed on MQLs and nothing else, you may be incentivized to drive a ton of volume at the detriment to quality. Then your sales team might come back and say that the 'leads' you are sending aren't good quality. If you don't have other metrics further down funnel (I recommend tracking SALs - sales accepted leads, and SQLs - meetings booked or opportunities created), then it becomes hard to identify where you need to optimize and lean in. * I also see a lot of fuzziness around the word 'leads'. In my world today, lead means a net new name to the database. But, I will often hear BDRs talk about leads in terms of the people they are working (so an MQL or SQL), and AEs might talk about leads in terms of the deals they are working (an SQL or SQO). It's really important to make sure you have clear definitions for the KPIs that you are driving and that you are working over time to build a shared language in your organization.

Let's first define an 'integrated campaign' approach. * At its core, the 'Integrated' approach implies three things - knowing and using the buyer's journey as the premise to building the marketing strategy, aiming for consistency in marketing across touchpoints & sequencing your messaging across these touchpoints * A 'campaign' is nothing but a coordinated set of assets & tactics to help your buyers progress from Awareness to Consideration to Decision. The other underrated impact of a campaign is its ability to corral organizational focus, time, and efforts toward a single goal and theme (sales, product, customer success, marketing) An Integrated Campaign strategy is an amalgam of these concepts. So do all businesses need an integrated campaign strategy? Yes. But does an integrated campaign strategy look the same for all businesses? No. The need for a Series A startup to craft an integrated campaign strategy is as much as it is for a Series C & Post-IPO business. The nature and scope of integration, however, vary significantly. These factors might help as you think through this. 1. Have you achieved Product-Channel(s) fit? * If are a Seed stage startup and have reliably managed to scale one or two acquisition channels, you have other things on your mind than 'integrating' these two channels. That is because, today, you do not have the channel width to capture a large part of the buyer's journey (community, email, in-app, review sites). * If you have a larger business, you might already have the channel width that covers a large proportion of your buyer's journey. This is the right time to think about an 'integrated campaign' strategy. Some of the questions to ask are - a) Do I know my buyer's journey with a fair degree of confidence b) Are they experiencing the same 'messaging theme' across touchpoints c) How can I sequence my tactics & messaging based on the demand funnel 2. What is your GTM motion? * Are you PLG or Sales-led or both? If you are PLG, you focus on specific channels that drive inbound demand - SEO, Paid Search, Content, In-app virality, Community, Review sites & Emails. If you have a Sales-led motion, you (mostly) focus on channels that go beyond these to also include Webinars, Events, SDR messaging, & Content. In both scenarios, your buyers want to experience your business in a way that is consistent across these touchpoints and takes them through a journey (sequencing in messaging) irrespective of whichever touchpoint they are in. 3. Do you have an established Brand marketing strategy within your organization? * If your org runs brand marketing campaigns, you'll need to redefine the architecture of your demand-gen-led integrated campaigns. In this new scenario, you'll have to view the buyer's journey together and build out common areas of leverage. For example, a Brand marketing campaign usually targets a large proportion of 'Problem unaware' buyers. So how can your demand-gen team nudge these buyers down the funnel via an integrated approach? Here, the role of demand-gen shifts to nudging these buyers to the 'Consideration' & 'Decision' stages using the same messaging theme and leveraging tactics (such as collecting a retargeting pool of qualified intent, etc.) that capture their engagement and intent for your category or business. 

When addressing alignment with executive stakeholders it is important to drive clear goals, KPIs, RACIs, and a strategy that outlines the pros and cons. This can include the following: 1. Goal alignment: You need to align with both stakeholders up front on the core problem we are trying to solve. By driving this alignment you ensure that everyone is on the same page around the goals we are trying to achieve. Without this, your strategy won’t align. 2. Organized swimlanes: It is important to build a RACI with an ultimate decision maker, including who can make the final decision and escalation paths as needed if these two stakeholders disagree. 3. Influencer mindset alignment: It is your job to understand their core KPIs and business needs, which you can highlight in the options you share. This includes their personal and professional drivers, which may influence their decision-making later in the process. 4. A company-first strategy: The proposed strategy should include the pros, cons, and risks. Different leaders may assign different values to each of these areas. Ideally, you align these to your company or organization's priorities to make it easier to see from a company-first perspective. Ultimately, when you provide a suggested strategy, it should be the one that provides the overall company with the least amount of risk meeting the core objectives you agreed to solve for. If needed, you can use the escalation paths in your RACI, but ideally, doing the upfront alignment will be needed less often.

In order to be a Demand Generation leader, you want to be both left and right-brained. Often people think Demand Gen is all about analytics and architecting user journeys that deliver leads. But these journeys are targeting consumers, and consumers engage best with compelling content (e.g. - videos, images, etc.). This is where the right brain comes in to deliver creativity. When I think of the list of Hard skills (aka Must Haves) vs. Soft Skills (Nice to Have's), this is where I land: Hard Skills (Must Have's): * Analytical mindset/Data manipulator: This role calls for interpreting data and connecting the dots. How can one look at a Marketing funnel and identify gaps or ways to optimize the flow to produce more leads? Where are leads dropping off and why? * Tech Stack Guru: Mastering the Tech Stack used within an org is critical so * Curiosity: A true leader will want to explore what they do and develop hypotheses for tests to pilot. E.g. - if they introduce a new content asset, will that increase engagement? Is there a different audience to try targeting? What are other competitor brands doing in the space that can provide learnings? * Problem-solving: With Marketing, there are constantly challenges that arise (e.g. - leads dropping off, etc.). A great leader is constantly figuring out ways to fix and build upon these challenges presented. * Customer-first mindset: Having a strong understanding of the target audience and their painpoints and key motivational drivers is critical to ensure the Demand Gen program is successful. * Cross-Functional Communicator: This role sits at the center of Product Marketing, Sales, Content Strategy teams and more. Having a thorough understanding of those teams' work and how to leverage it would be important for a Demand Gen leader. Also communicating out the Demand Gen strategy to those teams will be important in relationship-building and ensuring all teams are aware of what's happening. Soft Skills (Nice to Have's): * Creativity: B2B can often be a bit stale, so it's nice to inject new ways to execute (e.g. - new channels, new content types, etc.). * Org Design & Communication: Make sure your team understands their remit, goals and any new company developments that affect their roles. 

I generally like to communicate through two types of vehicles: Weekly progress updates - this is meant to convey what's happening now * Performance metrics (absolute numbers, performance vs. goal, YoY %) * Drivers of above performance (i.e. what's causing it) * Adjustments that will be made given the drivers (i.e. what are we doing differently?) * Where we're stuck (i.e. how readers can assist) Monthly progress updates - this is meant to convey overall progress against a larger strategic plan * Performance (monthly to give context) * Initiatives that we committed to doing at the start of the plan (more context as to the what and the why) * Progress of those initiatives * Bottlenecks * Adjustments that we'll making based on what we learned (this reflects more against initiatives and where we're spending time)