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. 

I recently posted that I haven't seen anything capture the publics imagination like ChatGTP since the first iPhone was announced. I'm tempted to say that generative AI has surpassed even that in the buzz and hype it's created. That seems well deserved however, it is already impacting demand in a number of ways I can see and I can imagine there's many more I haven't seen and infinitely more we haven't made real yet. The first impact is on the execution and scale of demand gen marketing. Just about every one of my peers is experimenting with it in some way to increase scale. I see companies using it to write social posts, emails, ads, blog content, etc. Some very lightly, some are full tilt publishing thousands of articles generated by it without so much as a review. Even if you take a safe route you can still use it to help generate the first versions of a lot of what we do, which will significantly shorten how long it takes to get stuff done. In fact, the first study on this shows a 14% efficiency and effectiveness boost. Another impact is search. And this one scares me a little. Microsoft has already integrated it into Bing. I'm sure more will come. Why this scares me is that many companies rely on the traffic they get from search and the next step they can get someone to take on their website. With ChatGPT answering the search query many users won't need to visit the site at all. Imagine for example that you tell Bing "I need a New York cheesecake recipe?" In the past the result would likely be a recipe website, on Google the top result is allrecipes.com, but now the result is a plain text recipe without ads, without the inevitable "history of cheesecake" intro that SEO focused websites have to add to their content to rank. That's great for users but now the recipe website can't entice you to buy that mixer you've always wanted, losing their revenue. The third is enablement and support of customers. The models are incredibly accurate about how to do even some complex tasks like coding, or product specific tasks. I've literally had them help me write code that fully functions. If you have a product or service that users need to understand or might need a little help using you used to have to throw people at a chat window on your website. Now you can start with generative AI and it will likely cover the majority of questions your customer will ask. Now, it wouldn't be fair to answer this question by myself, so let's ask ChatGPT4 (yes I'm paying personally for access and I'd recommend it to others). Prompt: How do you think ChatGPT will impact how you do demand generation? As an AI language model, I don't "do" demand generation myself, but I can provide you with insights on how ChatGPT might impact demand generation for businesses and marketing professionals. 1. Content Creation and Optimization: ChatGPT can help create and optimize various types of content, such as blog posts, social media updates, and email campaigns. By using the AI's natural language capabilities, marketers can generate high-quality, engaging content that aligns with their target audience's interests and preferences, resulting in increased traffic and lead generation. 2. Personalization: ChatGPT can enable more personalized marketing efforts by analyzing customer data and tailoring content to specific segments or individual users. This level of personalization can lead to higher engagement rates, better customer experiences, and improved conversion rates. 3. A/B Testing: ChatGPT can assist in creating multiple variations of marketing content, allowing businesses to conduct A/B testing more efficiently. By identifying the most effective messaging and content, marketers can optimize their demand generation campaigns for better results. 4. Chatbot Integration: ChatGPT can be integrated into chatbots to improve customer interactions on websites or social media platforms. By offering personalized responses and engaging with users in real-time, chatbots can help capture leads, answer questions, and even guide users through the sales funnel. 5. Social Media Monitoring: ChatGPT can be used to analyze social media conversations and identify trends, sentiment, and user preferences. By gaining insights into what potential customers are discussing and looking for, marketers can tailor their demand generation strategies to better target their audience. 6. Market Research and Analysis: ChatGPT can help with market research and analysis by gathering and synthesizing data from various sources, such as competitor websites, industry reports, and customer feedback. This information can help businesses identify gaps in the market, new opportunities, and areas for improvement, ultimately informing their demand generation strategy. 7. Time and Cost Savings: By automating various tasks related to content creation, personalization, and analysis, ChatGPT can help businesses save time and resources, allowing marketing teams to focus on higher-value tasks, such as strategy development and relationship building. While ChatGPT offers numerous benefits for demand generation, it's essential to remember that AI is a tool to support marketing professionals, not replace them. Human expertise, creativity, and strategy will remain crucial in developing and executing successful demand generation campaigns.

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.

Your buyer's journey as well as your demand funnel, play a key role in this decision. * First set of channels & tactics: A rule of thumb that has worked for me when launching a campaign is to select the channel(s) that provide the widest audience reach. I've consistently observed that 'Audience reach' & 'Frequency of reach' have had a clear impact on overall campaign performance (qualified lead volume and pipeline). But the way I think about 'Reach' is that it is a necessary, not a sufficient condition. So what else matters? Curating the right 'offers', and the right 'format'. For example, Linkedin (the channel) offers a reasonable reach per month for most B2B SaaS players. What offer you choose to launch the campaign with is equally important? Should it be a global virtual summit headlined by Top influencers or a Playbook with interviews from well-regarded industry practitioners? Here two very different offers are served on the same channel. * Next set of channels & tactics: As you start thinking about the Demand capture phase of your campaign, you'll work with channels that reach fewer audiences. These channels include SEO, Paid Search, In-product journey, SDR engagement, etc. Most of these channels involve high-effort, and a high-volume of output, so prioritization is key. A way to allocate budgets toward these channels is by prioritizing them by reach, expected buyer engagement & intent.

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! 

Build a simple waterfall model that starts with the revenue target for the year. Assign a percentage of that target to marketing. Use some conversion benchmarks (either historical for your company or industry avg) to work up a funnel for how many opportunities, demos, MQLs you need to hit that target. Plannuh has a free funnel-building tool to guide you through this exercise. https://funnel-builder.plannuh.com/

Here are three things I would recommend at the end of a campaign: 1. Compare performance to goals 2. Update your campaign strategy slides/doc with results, highlights and lessons learned 3. Bring the team together for a campaign retrospective meeting. Discuss what worked well and what can be done better

This is a tricky one! First, you should assume that both stakeholders have good intent and that they’re willing to work together to resolve the issue. It’s critical to go in with a positive mindset! Then, try to create a shared fact base so that you’re all working from the same data. Once you have a shared understanding of the facts, then you can begin to build shared goals. Ask lots of questions to find shared goals between the stakeholders, and help them work towards a compromise that meets both of their goals (or at least as many of their goals as possible!)

I think the relationship with Sales should be seen as a Partnership where both sides have insights to deliver to one another (not just a one-way relatinoship where Marketing delivers Leads). This partnership should be built on trust and understanding. I was lucky to have done a Field Marketing role prior to leading Global Campaigns when I was at Google, and what I learned during that initial role is that Sales knows the field better than anyone. They understand what content resonates with prospects/customers, what competitors are doing to appease these audiences and what our brand's key differentiators can be, and what a target audiences' true painpoints are. Some best practices I found in striking a strong relationship with Sales are: * Have common goals: At the end of the day, Marketing and Sales all have the same goal -- increase revenue for the company. How each team goes about that is where we differ. Ensuring there's a strong handoff from Marketing Qualified Lead to a Sales Accepted Lead is critical. Also making sure Marketing is providing the right tools for Sales to take that Lead to the finish line is where the Marketing/Sales partnership can either fall flat or succeed. * Educate them & Make them a co-partner in your work: I co-created a Sales Council that met monthly where it was a two-fold experience: 1) educating Sales on what Marketing did so they understood we did more than just Events and 2) gathering their feedback on messaging, upcoming campaigns, and more. * Lean on their expertise to improve meessaging: I was charged with building Sales scripts for Inside Sales teams as a first touch for a Marketing Qualified Lead. I was the expert in the campaign but not necessarily the expert in the ideal length of a LinkedIn InMail or a first-touch email. So I often went to Sales colleagues I had a strong relationship with and would ask for them to review the messaging and gather tips on how to improve it. * Keep them in the loop: I would often meet with Sales Directors and other Sales Specialists to share campaign reporting and where we were looking to pilot or optimize the flow. Often times, Sales does not fully understand the Marketing funnel or how it works. So it's great to educate them on general reporting and areas that need improvement. Sometimes I would find myself brainstorming tactics with them that we employed in the campaign as a pilot and they would show success. 

To gain influence, do your job well. When you join a team, it is essential to connect with all your teammates and try to add value as soon as possible. Throw yourself into projects and offer up your time and expertise. A series of small, quick wins can go a long way toward earning you some "street cred" while showing you're a team player here to make an impact.