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.

A Demand generation manager career path usually takes one of two routes. 1. A specialized expertise in a particular area, audience, GTM motion, vertical, technology focus, etc. 2. A people manager role, helping teams execute. Depending on your organization there may be several levels within each of these paths that allow for various amounts of responsibility, expertise, and scope. Spending time reflecting on what aligns with your aspirations will be important as you progress throughout your career.

This is a great question! Demand generation marketing and content marketing should work hand-in-hand to achieve broader marketing objectives. When identifying KPIs and metrics to measure demand generation and content marketing together, you should consider the type of content being distributed and the channels through which it's being distributed. This will help determine your KPIs. For example, a blog post may not have the same KPIs as a gated piece of content or a video. The channel mix of promotions will also factor into KPIs. Is this a larger integrated marketing campaign that will require a more extensive mix of promotions and budget? Or is this a smaller campaign, perhaps targeted at a specific/smaller audience, that won't require as much external distribution and promotion? Once you understand these components, you can determine your KPIs. Here are some general KPIs to consider: * Number of site sessions to a blog post * For gated content: Conversion rates, form fills * Number of video views * MQLs, SQLS, sourced opps and/or influenced opps from the content being promoted (how many deals/opps were generated or influenced by this content) * Impressions * Share of voice * SEO metrics - keyword rankings, organic search traffic to the content

When transitioning from a company with established demand generation to one where you're building it from the ground up, you should expect several significant differences: Resourcing You should expect to find yourself evaluating the true state of available resources. This is precisely why you've been hired - to build and optimize: * Data visibility limitations - Basic information like conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, or even clean prospect lists may need development * Tech stack opportunities - Tools you previously utilized (marketing automation, analytics, etc.) might need implementation or refinement * Content development needs - You'll likely need to create foundational content that speaks directly to buyer pain points Relationships In established demand gen environments, sales and marketing usually have defined workflows. When starting fresh: * Building trust is essential - Sales teams will be looking to see if marketing can deliver tangible value * Alignment opportunities - You can establish shared definitions of what constitutes a "qualified lead" from the beginning * Process creation - Implementing new lead routing, scoring, or follow-up processes is an opportunity to optimize from day one Working with Founders and Leadership * Learn and borrow from the founder's vision - If you're working directly with a founder, absorb their perspective on the category, company values, and how teams work * Identify their strengths - Depending on their functional background, determine specific areas where should leverage their expertise * Setting expectations together - Help leadership understand what will yield results when, potential failure points, and realistic timelines Operational Foundations * Operations & Analytics - These are the foundation to your planning and decision-making. Determine what is "good enough" to start with and prioritize hiring in this area as soon as possible * Balancing gut and data - Respect past work but evaluate programs based on their actual impact. Build conviction around what will work and structure these as experiments * Timeline realities - You'll need to manage the balance between pressure for quick wins and building sustainable programs The Cultural Opportunity Building demand generation often allows you to shape organizational mindset: * Education as leadership - You have the opportunity to establish marketing concepts that will become standard practice * Measurement maturity - You can introduce the data-driven approach that modern demand gen requires * Patience with purpose - Help leadership understand the investment timeline while delivering incremental wins In short, the journey from established to ground-zero demand generation is about strategic vision, stakeholder alignment, and balancing short-term wins with long-term building.

My recommendation is to apply and not be discouraged. Learn as much as you can on the subject. If you are able to have a good understanding conceptually, you will stand out among the other candidates that may not gone the extra mile. Be open to any entry level role in Marketing that even remotely works closely with the demand gen team. Sometimes these roles won't have a demand generation title. Marketing analyst, sales development rep, digital marketing specialist, or marketing coordinator are all paths that lead into Demand Generation. When there is an opportunity to work on a cross functional project that interfaces with the DG team - jump on it and show them how helpful you are.

The best Demand Generation candidates possess a unique blend of strategic thinking, creativity, and executional excellence. They deeply understand the product, messaging, and audience, enabling them to craft compelling go-to-market strategies. Creativity is key—they generate innovative ideas to activate campaigns and drive engagement. I was once tasked with building a campaign for a software product we were selling in the Retail space. To activate this beyond the run of the mill webinar and content, we decided to take over a luxury retail store in SoHo during fashion week. We hosted top customers for an exclusive shopping experience and a live interview with the famous designer that we also streamed online and amplified on social media. Because this was such a unique and memorable activation, we were able to close business and also drive awareness. In addition, a strong grasp of channel strategy and optimization is essential. These candidates know how to leverage paid media, content, email, events, and other channels effectively, continuously testing and iterating for performance improvement. They are resourceful and scrappy, thriving in fast-paced environments where they must do more with less. Beyond tactical execution, top candidates are natural leaders who can align cross-functional teams, collaborating seamlessly with product marketing, creative, field marketing, and sales. Their high emotional intelligence (EQ) allows them to navigate pressure with composure, influence stakeholders, and drive alignment across departments. Being data-driven is non-negotiable. The best candidates don’t just execute campaigns—they analyze performance metrics, extract insights, and refine strategies based on data. They understand pipeline impact, revenue contribution, and how to optimize for business outcomes. Ultimately, the strongest Demand Generation professionals balance analytical rigor with creativity, strategic vision with hands-on execution, and leadership with adaptability. Their ability to connect the dots between messaging, channels, data, and cross-functional collaboration makes them invaluable assets to any marketing team.

First, congratulations on your new role! I love this question because it suggests you have already come to the realization that there are significantly more things that you could establish as KPIs than things you should establish as KPIs. A good manager earlier in my career told me once that good goals are those you can a) directly influence and b) easily translate into detailed plans to achieve them. In other words, try to avoid “goals by wishful thinking,” which is often how early-stage companies approach setting Marketing objectives. If I was in your shoes, here’s where I’d start: 1. Understand the Sales Process: If you haven’t already, define the lead stages & what will happen at each. Is Marketing qualifying leads or is Sales? This will help you understand what your team is accountable for vs what you can/should hold Sales accountable for. (Typical KPIs: MQLs, SALs, SQLs) 2. Know How Much Pipe You Need: This is harder in early-stage companies where GTM processes are less mature and changing rapidly; however, you should be able to establish baselines for stage-to-stage CVR% and C/W%, which are critical to understanding how much pipeline you need to generate. (Typical KPIs: Marketing Contributed Pipeline (MCP), Marketing Originated Bookings (MOB). 3. Establish a North Star: Finally, start by asking what the business is trying to achieve and on what timeline. What % of growth is Marketing expected to drive? If this is a brand new company or nascent category, awareness might also be a challenge that you need to invest in solving. Regardless, starting with the big picture will help you understand where to allocate resources and whether your budgets are sufficient to generate what the business is expecting of you.

It's not too different from your traditional demand funnel/waterfall and KPIs, but instead of leads > MQLs > SQLs > Opportunities > $ pipeline, your funnel should start with web traffic, both from an aggregate perspective, as well as the core pages you want to drive users to sign-up for your self-service offering. Quality web visitors are essentially your "leads," and from there you measure conversions to your sign-up pages, web trial downloads and starts, paid users, and eventually upgrades, expansion, etc. Then depending on your martech sophistication you can get extremely granular with your UTM parameters to measure where traffic is coming from, whether by channel (i.e. organic search, SEM, paid media, organic social, etc.), tactic, campaigns, etc. and continually optimize based on where you're seeing the greatest conversion throughout the self-serve funnel.

The key word here is "immediately." I struggle with that. The first reason I struggle is that I don’t trust data at face value. When results look too good or too bad, I don’t react right away. I dig in to understand what’s causing it. That means I wouldn’t immediately kill a campaign just because, after 48 hours, there were no clicks or form fills. The second reason is that a lot of things take time. Modern marketing systems don’t just launch a campaign and expect instant results. They enter a learning phase. Machine learning models adjust targeting, personalization algorithms optimize based on early engagement, and audience data refines itself. So reacting too soon can do more harm than good. But There Are Signals That Require Immediate Attention. One of the most underrated but highest-impact signals comes from sales and customer-facing teams. I once launched a campaign in partnership with PMM that I felt amazing about. The work was deep, visually stunning, and multichannel. We had events, digital, and dynamic ad creative - everything we always dream of in an integrated ABM motion. Then, I got invited to a meeting with enterprise AEs. They were not happy. The campaign had everything… except effectiveness. Instead of helping close deals, it was driving consideration of our competitors. We had worked so hard to be objective that we had actually over-positioned alternative tools. Instead of reinforcing our differentiation, we created analysis paralysis. I walked out of that meeting and killed my beautiful campaign. It hurt, but it was the right thing to do. We reworked the foundational content, and only then did we relaunch. Honestly, there are tons of reasons to reconsider a campaign and take action. You might be bringing in the wrong audiences. It might be upside down on ROI. It might just not be landing. We are artist-scientists, we hypothesize and create beautiful art that we think addresses that hypothesis and then test and measure and adjust our hypothesis based on what we learn. Audience Quality Red Flags - If unqualified audiences are engaging - wrong industries, job levels, or geographies - it means something in targeting is off. Immediate ROI Discrepancies - If a campaign is spending heavily but not converting into meaningful engagement, there’s something off in the message, offer, or targeting. "Not Landing" Reports from Sales - If sales says: "Prospects don’t care about this message." "The positioning isn’t resonating in real conversations." Then you take that seriously. Numbers alone can’t tell you if a campaign is effective - it has to move deals forward. Hope that helps.

* Start With Company Goals: Align OKRs with overarching business objectives (e.g., pipeline targets, new market penetration). * Set Cascading OKRs: Break down the company’s goals into actionable demand gen objectives. For instance: * Objective: Generate $2M in pipeline this quarter. * Key Results: Launch 3 campaigns, achieve $500k pipeline per campaign, drive 100 SQLs. * Project Mapping: Each OKR ties to specific initiatives. For example, a webinar might target pipeline generation for a specific segment.