Determining what types of campaigns/tactics to include in your strategy starts with you understanding every milestone metric in your funnel. What is your acquisition cost? How much does it take to bring a lead in? How much does it take to get a sign up- everything you do need to map back to how much you spend? Having clear answers to these questions will allow you to optimize and get more efficient overtime. Let's dive into some examples. For example, You might find that facebook drives you a ton of traffic and newsletter sign-ups but it doesn’t help you drive trials. Based on your data, Trials are your highest converting offer. So what do you do with Facebook? Do you cut your spend? No, you set the strategy based on what it’s designed to do. If it’s effective in driving contacts for your email database, you judge the effectiveness of that channel by that metric. Here’s how you do the math. You take your CAC, customer acquisition cost and back into all the various metrics upstream and this backwards math can help you figure out what the maximum dollar amount you can spend to acquire each email subscriber. So you’ve got people in your database, while it’s great to get sign-ups if your traffic doesn’t convert, it hurts your bottom line. So you have to look at activation and your 1st time purchase metrics. If you are a B2B company, you need to know whether or not the deals you are driving from your marketing programs ultimately make it to closing or if you have a more e-commerce like product, you might be measuring app usage and digital transactions. Let me give you an example, you might find out that specific non-branded search terms might cost you a fortune because there isn’t a lot of volume. However, if you have the right reporting structure in place, you might find this has the highest returns because you get revenue from it. The point is, look beyond that form complete. Now the last piece here is Retention. Lastly, at a SaaS company or any company in fact, if you can’t keep your customer’s happy, you fail. LTV is something I’ve been obsessed about at every role i’ve taken because I think that’s a metric that we should all strive to hit. It tells the full story. For example, just because you acquisition cost is high to start, don't cut a program right away. You need to factor in assumptions for LTV. You will have segmentations of customer that are going to be with you for a few years, and/or grow into using more products/features - that value of the customer dramatically increases and the initial cost per acquisition can sometimes be misleading.

Always be open to feedback. Any feedback either positive or negative is a gift. There's always opportunities to improve and grow no matter how much experience you have. In your case, if you don't agree with the feedback, I would ask for examples on how you could have done something differently, or better. Your boss may not see eye to eye with you and that's okay, but as long as you can show impact through your work, numbers don't lie.

I personally started my career as an entry level contractor at Salesforce, where I worked for 17 years and had 12 different roles. By the time I left, I was a Senior Vice President overseeing a large department that consisted of multiple functions and business units. My high level advice for anyone is to stay curious and slightly uncomfortable – because that will keep you learning and engaged. For recent graduates looking to start a career in Demand Generation, the key is to embrace continuous learning and adaptability. Demand Generation is a multifaceted field that touches many areas of marketing—paid media, content, email, field marketing, and analytics—offering exposure to a wide range of skills. This variety makes it an excellent starting point for those eager to develop a well-rounded marketing foundation. Early in your career, be open to taking on tasks beyond your immediate job description. In an entry-level role, saying yes to new challenges—whether it’s campaign execution, data analysis, or content development—can accelerate your growth. The more you immerse yourself in different aspects of Demand Generation, the more career pathways you create for the future. Since Demand Generation is both strategic and executional, building both soft and hard skills is crucial. Develop analytical skills to understand campaign performance, but also refine communication and collaboration skills to work cross-functionally. Being proactive, resourceful, and willing to experiment will set you apart. Finally, seek mentorship and stay curious. Follow industry trends, ask questions, and leverage every opportunity to learn from experienced marketers. Over time, this broad experience will help you identify your strengths and areas of interest, positioning you for long-term success in marketing. By staying open-minded, taking initiative, and continuously learning, you’ll set yourself up for a thriving career in Demand Generation and beyond.

* Understand the Funnel: Map out the buyer journey and identify key points where demand gen has the most impact. * Collaborate With Sales: Agree on definitions (MQL, SQL) and where demand gen takes ownership. * Start Small: Focus on a few key metrics initially (e.g., pipeline contribution, MQL to SQL conversion). * Evolve Metrics: As the function matures, layer in additional KPIs like cost per lead and velocity metrics.

Nand generation is going out into the market and generating interest in your product. Growth marketing is a process in which you develop a hypothesis, test that hypothesis through AB testing, measure the results, continuously iterate.

Always approach the discussion with an open mind to understand the “why” behind the ask. When people come to you asking about ownership it may be to create clarity, remove duplicative work, or something else. Once you understand the “why” you can start to dive into the specifics of the project workflows and areas of ownership to have a discussion on the “how” to solve it. This then becomes a discussion on the process, pieces of the project, and potentially re-reviewing a RACI built previously. If this impacts headcount or resources leadership may need to weigh in. By coming in with a curious mindset, I’ve found people are excited to be heard, and you learn how to work better together and build a try compromise where needed. 

Being in B2B, I personally find B2C to have the best experiential marketing. I truly believe you can find inspiration for events in your day to day life. It's about creating memorable moments. Customers now expect the experiences they have in their personal life to carry over to the type of ease and seamless experiences offered as a guest at work events as well. If you have a budget, doing something as a team building like a trip to Disney Land for recon can always spark some good ideas ;-). To stay ahead, we request our agencies to provide analysis each year on what occurred across the industry. I personally attend Cannes Lions and find ways to attend third party events where I can see how partners and competitors are bringing their events to life. I’ve also spent time to request introductions and get to know my counterparts at similar size companies across industries to hear their best practices and innovations.

Partnering with other internal departments is incredibly important for success in marketing. You should be meeting with your counterparts on other teams regularly. Some topics to discuss and stay aligned on: * With Sales - How is pipeline build looking? Are leads converting the way you expect? Are there gaps to reaching targets currently? What are reasons opportunities are being closed lost today? * With CS - Are retention numbers on track? Are there key feature or other requests from customers? Are there gaps to reaching targets currently? * With Operations - How are the numbers trending? Are all reports working as expected, are there more reports needed? How is the database quality? Is there opportunity to improve processes to get better results?

Typically a content marketing function is measured on the engagement with the associated content put into market via paid, owned, earned tactics (i.e. content/asset downloads, social media engagements, webinar views, etc.), however when associating that content to demand generation programs and campaigns, It's important to understand how that content is impacting and driving the business. Essentially, how many MQLs did that content produce and ultimately what is pipeline associated to the content. I think it's also important to understand how marketing content is driving business outcomes via a direct attribution, as well as influenced attribution as customers will engage with multiple pieces of content throughout the customer journey. However, if your company is not at the state of having a sophisticated multi-touch attribution model that provides a weighted measure of the content's impact, you'll have to align on a first-touch or last-touch model to determine which content gets "credit" for driving downstream impact. It's also important to understand the type of content your organization is creating and the purpose of that content. For example, thought leadership content is not typically intended to drive short term pipeline, but it can impact a weighted multi-touch attribution model. Content on a company's website also has a very different purpose which is to engage and convert customers/prospects to the next action in the customer journey. Therefore it's very important to align on clear expectations of the purpose of the content being produced before it goes into market.

To determine the KPIs you want to track, it's important to align with stakeholders on which KPIs matter most. While there may not be an inherently "wrong" KPI to track, some may require more analysis to understand the full picture. Here are a couple of examples: 1. Email open rates can indicate interest in a topic or message, and can be useful for benchmarking overall email engagement. However, open rates aren't always the most accurate due to bots, email client blocking, or privacy features. Instead, I'd recommend click-through rates if you're looking to get a better understanding of how people are engaging with your emails and taking action based on the message 2. Website visits are certainly an important KPI to measure, but they should be analyzed and segmented, especially from a demand generation perspective. For instance, if your organization has recently released new open roles, it may cause a spike in website visits, but these visits may not necessarily convert into customers