I look for three traits when I hire - 1) does this person have a strong sense of ownership especially around accountability and delivering results, 2) openness for feedback and a growth mindset - do they enjoy learning and want to improve on their approach and outcomes, and 3) will this person be a good culture fit. At a former company I've worked at, we used to call this the "eye of the tiger".

When I think about measurement gone wrong, my first question is typically about the marketer, not the KPI. All KPIs can be useful, assuming your measurement is scalable (i.e., it doesn’t take a week to do the analysis) and you are using them appropriately (i.e., context is everything). That said, here are some metrics that I generally find less material to understanding the health of the business: 1. Impressions/Followers/Engagement: In a world overrun by bots, ad impressions, social media followers, and engagement metrics have become less relevant. You’d be surprised how many companies with massive social media followings built their audiences by purchasing cheap likes from engagement farms. 2. Frontend Email Metrics: Between email preview panes skewing results and well-documented issues stemming from privacy updates introduced in iOS 15, open rates have become far less relevant in recent years and are no longer sufficient to understand if your message is resonating. 3. CPL & Raw Lead Metrics Without Context: Lots of marketers fall into the trap of driving down CPL at the expense of lead quality. There's no faster way to lose the trust of your sales colleagues than flooding them with low-quality leads & expecting them to convert.

Soft skills are more critical when joining a new team, especially in Demand Generation, where collaboration is key. This role requires working cross-functionally with product marketing, creative teams, operations, sales, and paid media, making the ability to lead through influence essential. Strong candidates can build alignment, negotiate effectively, and rally teams behind a shared vision. Emotional intelligence plays a major role in success. Reading the room, understanding team dynamics, and adapting communication styles help drive initiatives forward. Executive presence is equally important—engaging confidently with marketing leaders and sales stakeholders fosters credibility and ensures buy-in on strategic initiatives. While technical skills are valuable, they can be taught. Core Demand Generation competencies, such as campaign execution, analytics, and optimization, can be learned over time. However, soft skills like leadership, collaboration, and adaptability take longer to develop. A candidate with strong interpersonal skills can quickly gain the necessary technical expertise, but even the most technically skilled professional may struggle without the ability to navigate team dynamics and stakeholder relationships.

I always ask what are your KPIs/Goals? How do you measure success? Some of the best answers I’ve heard have been around business growth directly attributed, as well as creating programs that built pipeline. I also hear a lot of candidates fumble and talk about just running campaigns/events, without any measurable outcomes. Demand generation is not only awareness, so there need to be clear and measurable outcomes that every demand gen marketer drives.

Scaling isn’t just about adding more people; it’s about adding structure so things don’t break. That means clear ownership, accountability, and a process for prioritization. A best practice I have taken with me from multiple organizations? Campaign and project briefs (and supporting processes). Every initiative should start with: What problem are we solving? Why is it worth solving? How will we measure success? What are the tradeoffs? If we can’t answer those questions, we’re wasting time. We also needed a clear operating model—who does what, who owns what, and how we make decisions. Without defined swim lanes (e.g. identifying DRIs, DACI), you end up with confusion, duplicated efforts, and inefficiency. I’ve seen this firsthand, and it’s painful to untangle later. Another thing we’ve done is implement a structured planning cadence. Quarterly roadmaps, six-week sprints, whatever works—just something to ensure we’re aligning on priorities and not getting distracted by the latest shiny object. Finally, we needed a single source of truth for reporting. Demand Gen needs to be tied to revenue. If we can’t prove our impact, we won’t get the budget to keep scaling. Dashboards, monthly reviews with insights, learnings, and what we do with those insights are key here.

Direct mail is an offline channel that, when done thoughtfully, can drive results. Below are some direct mail campaigns that have been successful for me. 1. Outbound direct mail: Empower your sales development teams to book meetings with prospects from target accounts. Have quarterly campaigns tied to seasonal themes such as summer, fall, etc., or topical themes. Get creative with concepts that will resonate well with your target audience. A memorable direct mail campaign I was the recipient of was a comic poster I received themed “Demand Gen Mastermind” 2. Direct mail to support new product launch: These help with getting existing customers to try another product your company just launched 3. Cross-sell or in-app direct mail campaign: We tested this idea of targeting in-app users with an incentive (direct mail item) and getting them to take a demo for a cross-sell product 4. MQL revival direct mail: This is a tough one, but it works! Target demo leads that went cold. A little nudge with a thoughtful gift may just be the incentive they need to take a demo.

For each cross-functional project, I build a clear RACI with one ultimate decision-maker for each milestone. This defines who has the power to green-light the project, and it is shared during the introduction phase of the project. It’s important to make clear who has decision-making power vs. consultative power early on in the project and get buy-in from leadership. Likewise, it’s important to provide a strong workback schedule with go-no-go dates that have to be met and be clear on when deadlines will push and which teams will be impacted. If needed, this work can be up-leveled to managers if too many projects are impacting downstream teams.

If you find that volume is sparse in digital channels like organic and paid, here are a couple suggestions: 1. Conferences Your prospects will always try to be leveling up. If they aren't using the world wide web for this, then they are attending their industry specific conferences. Experiment with trying a few different conferences in a calendar year just to determine if it's worthwhile to fish there. 2. Referrals Spin up a referral program and use the network of your existing customer base to spread the word on your behalf. Make sure you incentivize both the referrer and the referee. 3. Co-marketing webinars This is a very economical way to grow your audience. Find non-competitor companies that are also serving your prospects and ask them to do a co-marketing webinar with you. Set the precedent that you and they will promote the webinar to your own audiences and then share the registration and attendee lists afterwards. 4. Invest in building out your TAM (total addressable market) If they aren't using digital channels, chances are you are going to need to invest in ABM and sales outbound. Prior to doing this, put a lot of effort into identifying your TAM. Not only identifying the companies, but then enriching the accounts with useful information. Your going to need tools and resources like Zoominfo, Clearbit, Clay, and Virtual Assistants to get this done.

Demand generation and content marketing are truly a match made in heaven 🌟. Together, they create a powerful blend of long-term brand building and short-term pipeline generation—a partnership that strengthens your marketing strategy from every angle. Here’s how I would measure their combined impact: 1. Content Marketing Metrics 📝: * Audience Growth: Track how much your database is growing 📈. How many people are you bringing into your funnel through content? * Long-Term Conversions: Measure the lifecycle of leads generated through content. For example, someone downloading a white paper today might convert to an opportunity or closed-won deal years later ⏳. * Engagement Metrics: Identify which content pieces are resonating (e.g., time on page, bounce rate, social shares) to refine your strategy. 2. Demand Generation Metrics 🚀: * Pipeline Contribution: How much of the pipeline originates from demand gen efforts? * Revenue Impact: Tie leads and opportunities from content marketing to closed-won deals 💰. * Channel Effectiveness: Evaluate how content marketing enhances other demand gen activities, such as email marketing, paid social, and retargeting. 3. The Combined Impact 🔗: * Customer Journey Tracking: Use tools to follow leads from their first content interaction through to pipeline creation and revenue. This showcases how content influences and supports the entire funnel. * Cross-Channel Amplification: Recognize how content marketing boosts other efforts: * Email Marketing: A strong database built through content drives higher engagement 📬. * Paid Social: Retargeting thrives when fueled by a robust audience familiar with your brand 🎯. * Website Traffic: Consistently valuable content makes your website a trusted destination for prospects 🏡. 4. Consistency Is Key 📆: * Content marketing is a long-term play. You need to act like a consistent publisher 📰—the industry “watering hole” where prospects return for trusted information. The more consistent and strategic you are, the stronger your demand gen and content synergy will become. By pairing the audience-building power of content marketing with the revenue-focused metrics of demand generation, you’ll create a holistic view of success and set your strategy up for sustained growth 🚀.

It depends a bit on whether you're using a PLG or Sales-Led model. PLG: Usually, the first sign is that trial leads aren't activating, or not enough inbound leads (demos, trials) are turning into paid customers. These are your red flags. Sales-Led: Conversions are important here too, but it's trickier. Sometimes it's just the season, sometimes it's lead quality, sometimes it's the process. The best thing is to talk to sales and SDRs. What's happening with the leads? Are they totally wrong for us? Are they just not interested? Listening to sales calls, or gathering notes from tool such as Gong, can help you surface lead/ICP misalignments. Regarding optimizing for lead conversion: Basically, you have to ask yourself: * What kind of leads do we want more of? How do we get them? What content and channels work best? * What's the best way to get them to convert? Is pushing everyone into a free trial the answer? * You have to be careful and maintain a critical mindset. You'll always get some bad leads, and the bad leads tend to be more visible than the very good ones. You don't want to stop a campaign just because you have a handful of visible bad leads, you might loose the good one as well.