* These are the core OKRs that I've tracked in various forms throughout my demand generation career: * Objective: Drive pipeline * Key Results: * Raw volume merics: * Leads: Net new names added to the database * MQLs: Marketing qualified leads, or folks who have reached some kind of behavioral, predictive or demographic threshold * SALs: Sales accepted leads, or folks that BDRs/AEs have accepted to work * SQLs: Meetings booked. This can be either an SQL # or an SQL $ value, depending on your business. * Funnel efficiency metrics: * Lead:MQL CVR: What percent of leads generated this quarter turn into MQLs? This is an indicator of how well you are taking the new folks entering your database and engaging them with marketing materials to reach a score threshold, and/or how strong your targeting is in terms of bringing in folks with the right firmographic and demographic criteria. * MQL:SAL CVR: What is the quality of MQLs that you are sending to BDRs? Are BDRs disqualifying too many MQLs before they even reach out? You want to keep a really close eye on this metric if it is less than 75%. * SAL:SQL CVR: How well are BDRs converting the folks they are working into meetings. This is a little out of marketing's control, but marketing can support BDRs with enablement, email sequences, best practices and more to drive this number up. * In addition to the above, if you have a broader focus on awareness as well as pipeline, you should look at metrics that relate to website traffic, SEO (top keywords, traffic from SEO), etc. * As you get more sophisticated, you probably want to have a sense of how the pipeline you are generating turns into revenue for the business. Depending on the segments you serve, marketing should plan to provide anywhere from 25% of pipeline/revenue (Enterprise business) to 75%+ of pipeline/revenue (self-serve/SMB businesses). * When I take a look at the current quarterly OKR list for our entire marketing team, we have about 60 KRs we're looking to track - my team is responsible for about 30 of them. SO, as my team has scaled we've gone beyond the core metrics above.

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 have one question that I love to ask in all of my in-depth interviews: "What is the challenge you are looking for at your next opportunity to help you grow to the next level in your career?" The best answers are those that sound intentional, thoughtful and deliberate. "I want to grow in my ability to do (x), and through this role, I'll be able to take on challenge (y) to help me get to the next step on my career path to (z)."

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.

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. 

Here's a quick laundry list of things to consider without diving into your business model and marketing plans. 1. Partnerships: Do you have partners you can work with to integrate a call-to-action? For example, in one of our small business campaigns where we were targeting small business owners we were able to partner with local banks to include our offering in their small business loan welcome package. I know integrations are tough and it requires more than marketing to champion so I would also think about co-marketing. Are there any partners that have a database of people you are currently not getting in front of? Cross-promoting in partnership channels is a great user acqusition tool. 2. Direct Mail: you're probably thinking this is old school but the campaigns my teams have run are showing positive ROI from direct mail. The reason? It's cheap and you can get a broad reach. We typically pair direct mail pieces with a call to action (ie, register to attend our event, download this ebook, get in touch with sales, etc). This creates a multi-touch journey to your campaigns. 3. Lastly you can run some fun guerilla marketing to drive foot traffic to your storefront. 

This question has a lot to unpack. Influencing change takes a LOT of time, but I would recommend starting with first principles. 3 things I would start with: * I gotta say marketing sure did a good job of marketing ourselves! However, “ABM” is not a marketing thing; it’s a holistic revenue strategy. The first thing I usually do is internally rebrand “Accunt-Based Marketing” to be a target account strategy. * “Seek first to understand.” That will mean building relationships cross-functionally to establish trust and credibility. You’ll need key stakeholders to advocate for this strategy when you’re not in the room. Understand what’s important to those teams first: whether sales, e-staff, revenue ops, customer success, and product. * With Sales & Customer Success: Learn how they are approaching their accounts today. What’s working well for them, what do they need help with? What account insights can you surface that they wouldn’t otherwise have? * With Product / Product Marketing: How does the voice of the customer inform product development? What market trends are you seeing from your ICP? * With revenue ops: Depending on the maturity of the organization, you’ll need their alignment to identify ICP criteria to build out target account lists and partner on campaign measurement. This account-centric view will require a different way of measuring traditional lead > opportunity reporting. Can we measure account engagement today? * For Finance: You’ll need their support for any new budget, which means you’ll need to do some math to speak their language. Can you show them customer acquisition costs (CAC) for target accounts vs. non-target accounts? * Then, you’ll likely need to show results before you tell. Introduce an experiment that you can manage without fancy technology. Start with a hypothesis around a very crisply defined account list, brainstorm with others around a mix of tactics / messages / channels that you can measure, and chip away to learn what works. Share progress often.

There is no other way. If you’re not going to invest in intent data, then don’t try to do ABM, you’ll waste money and employee calories. I’ve heard companies say “oh we will just focus our efforts on our ICP” Yes, of course, knowing what accounts have the most propensity to buy is critical. But where they are in their journey is just as critical. Intent data in your Account-Based Marketing (ABM) model is like having a crystal ball that helps you see which potential customers are genuinely interested in what you offer. Here's why it's important * Relevance: It helps you find and focus on businesses that are actively looking for products or solutions like yours. So, you're not wasting your time on those who aren't interested. This is why I love tools like 6Sense and Qualified. * Personalization and customization: Customize for your audiences! With intent data, you can customize your messages and content to fit exactly what these companies are looking for. It's giving them exactly what they want. Messaging for emails, ads, Outreach snippets, landing pages, all of it. * Priority: It lets you know which businesses are most likely to buy soon, so you can put your energy into them first. * The words that matter: It guides you on what to write and talk about. You create content that speaks to their needs and questions, making them more likely to choose you. * Timing: It tells you when they're most ready to hear from you, increasing your chances of making a sale. * Smart Decisions: You're not just guessing; you're using data to make your ABM strategy better, helping you make your marketing and sales work even smarter and work better together. In simple terms, intent data is the best kept secret that shouldn't be a secret in ABM, helping you find the right customers, talk to them in a way they like, and make your business grow faster.

This is a tricky one as the business can often communicate all of these features and products are equally important. In reality it often creates too many messages for your audience if you try to go after them all at the same time, not to mention it will quickly burn one to two people out! Consider spending time with product marketing to map out a focus over the next quarter or two. Really force the conversation around prioritization. Pick a product or two or combo of features and ladder them up to a theme or concept. Figure out the story you want to tell and execute on that whether that be through ebooks, whitepapers, webinars, etc. Then repeat for the next quarter. Your prospects and customers will benefit from a focused and directed journey. Ideally the product or feature you focus on in one quarter should lead to the focus for the next quarter so it feels cohesive. Last thing to note, creating an effective an efficient always on engine will significantly ease this burden. I recommend an 80/20 split. 80% of your efforts should be focused on driving always on (trial, ebooks, whitepapers, web, etc) and 20% should be focused on Point in Time (PIT) (webinars, trainings, hands on). As your portfolio of always on assets grows it will naturally cover more products.

As with most questions I'll answer there isn't a single answer, this really depends on where your team and company are and what the current needs are. Here's a few thoughts on how you can address this. 1. FOCUS - Small teams often have direct lines of communication to leadership, leadership often has a lot of ideas, those ideas are almost always a distraction from what you should be doing. Most leaders aren't trying to distract you, if you take their idea and say when you think you could address it relative to your current priorities they'll be fine with it or help you reprioritize. Shiny object syndrome is a thing, don't let it get you. 2. Ensure there's a funnel there - If any of the products absolutely lack the basics required to drive growth then focus on building those. I strongly believe in not letting perfect be the enemy of great. Build the MVP to ensure something exists end to end then move on to the next. 3. Be thoughtful about what work you do - With everything in place you can start thinking about what work needs to be done, what the impact COULD be (finger in the wind is fine), and what the level of effort is. That will help you build initial prioritization. 4. Group the work to minimize scope - When you create one piece of work, lets say a piece of content, what you have created likely contains all the pieces you need to help update a related landing page, add depth to ads, review the product page, or revamp internal enablement. I coach my teams to look for every possible way to take advantage of the work they do. 5. Measure what you do - I think the biggest part of my careers success has been my obsession with knowing the results of my work and trying to beat them. Not just because of the competitive benefits of racing my past successes but measurement, moneyballing my work, has been a huge driver in helping me understand what work is and isn't worth doing. This is how you learn what works for your current company and team, make sure you measure it and then benchmark your results and future expectations, then rethink your approach to prioritizing based on this. 6. One foot in front of the other - It is super easy for smaller teams to feel overwhelmed and like the work is never going to end. All you can do is get the next thing done, and the next, and.. you get it. The work is never going to end, but your work day does. Keeping yourself healthy will actually improve your results, you are the asset not the marketing. A campaign launches two days late there is little impact, you feel completely drained and burned out for two months and the impact is HUGE. I realize this didn't really answer your question about short term vs long term directly but I've used the word "priority" a lot because that's what will help you there. Short term growth often means paid growth that stops when the money stops, you'll have to prioritize that based on impact but you can consider impact over time as well. The foundation for the long term has to be there, your products have to be well positioned, you have to have content that speaks to your audience, relationships with your customers have to be built, etc. So for longer term projects think about longer term results (what will this get me in its lifetime?), for short-term think in the sense of what you get for the time you're spending on it and the cost of that spend. I hope this somewhat answered your question.