Get answers from demand generation leaders
Laura Hart
Figma Senior Director, Growth Marketing • July 27
The way that Customer Marketing teams and functions should be staffed and organized will vary greatly from company to company, especially when looking at more traditional B2B or sales-led organizations vs Product-led organizations. In my experience, though, the best way to orient the team is around three core responsibilities: * Activation & Engagement: Measurement of activation metrics and time to activation, often in the form of lifecycle marketing. Driving customer education and programmatic communication that support enterprise onboarding, end-user training materials, and aircover to gain as much traction within paying accounts as possible. * Upsells & Expansion: Driven through targeted programs that aim to increase revenue from existing enterprise accounts through targeting new teams, referrals, and surfacing new MQLs to account managers. Can be done through Customer Advisory Boards, 1:1 Account Events, Customer Webinars, and account-based acquisition campaigns. * Advocacy: Measurement of output-based programs that develop champions and put your customers on a stage like case studies, referencable logos, and customer stories across channels (webinars, events, content). When first starting out or when you have a lean team, I've found starting with an account-based customer marketing approach is the best way to drive meaningful impact and quick wins for your CSMs and on your company's bottom-line. Identify the top renewals or any accounts at risk of churning and create targeted account plans to save and expand each. This will provide the frameworks and structures to scale as the team grows.
...Read More13648 Views
Upcoming AMAs
Carlos Mario Tobon Camacho
Eightfold Senior Director of Demand Generation • April 19
Here are some examples of good OKRs for a Demand Generation team: 1. Objective: Increase qualified leads by X% Key Results: * Increase website traffic by Y% * Increase conversion rates on landing pages by Z% * Increase the number of demo requests by Y% * Implement a new lead scoring model to prioritize leads for sales team follow-up 2. Objective: Improve marketing funnel efficiency Key Results: * Reduce customer acquisition cost by X% * Increase conversion rates at each stage of the funnel by Y% * Implement new email nurturing campaigns to engage leads who are not yet ready to purchase 3. Objective: Expand market reach Key Results: * Increase website traffic from target industries by X% * Develop a content marketing plan to target new buyer personas * Expand social media presence to increase brand awareness in new markets * Add to your database a number of new contacts/account from a new audience 4. Objective: Drive revenue growth through demand generation Key Results: * Increase marketing-sourced revenue by X% * Implement new ABM (Account-Based Marketing) campaigns to target high-value accounts * Optimize the sales funnel to reduce sales cycle time and increase deal velocity OKRs should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). By setting goals that are aligned with the company's overall objectives, the Demand Generation team can help drive growth and success for the business.
...Read More3196 Views
Abhishek GP
Freshworks Inbound Growth • December 2
Here are the four most important parameters that determine your Channel strategy when designing an Integrated Campaign. 1. Who? - Audience * Are you talking to developers, end-users, or decision-makers? * How large is the buying group for your product? * Is your product a single or multi-department purchase? 2. Why? - Marketing objective Is your campaign objective creating awareness, building pipeline, or accelerating pipeline? Each objective dictates the count of audience you have available to target which in turn informs the decision to choose channels. For example, if your objective is to accelerate pipeline, you might be limited to using targeted Social (custom audience), emails, closed-door events, and direct mail. However, if your objective is to create awareness, your channel coverage needs to expand dramatically because you are now trying to reach a broader audience to inform them of your existence. Now you are thinking Display, Content syndication, 3rd party tradeshows & publishers, etc. 3. What? - Average Contract Value (ACV) or ARPA What kind of product do you sell? Typically, it's safe to assume that a product with a higher ACV needs consideration and involvement from senior decision-makers across LoBs. Note that the same decision-makers are not easily accessible via conventional channels such as Paid social, email, Paid search, etc. Therefore your channel mix needs to evolve to match where they pay attention to. In this scenario, your channel mix might include direct mail, exclusive invites to 3rd party events, etc. 4. How much? - Available budget If you are well-funded, go ahead and explore multiple channels until you have a mix that delivers predictable lead volume and Qualified Pipe. If funds are tight, you might want to prioritize channels based on 3 factors - - Does that channel have your buyer's attention? (qualitative assessment) - What is the Cost per reach per channel? - Based on rough funnel math, can this Cost per reach ultimately deliver a respectable Pipe per $ spent over the duration of your sales cycle? Overall, two variables determine the effectiveness of this strategy - 1. Do you have a sufficient volume of buyers who you can target? 2. Are you able to effectively and efficiently access those channels to reach them?
...Read More2275 Views
Sierra Summers
Albertsons Companies Director of B2B Marketing • January 19
Marketing cannot close business without sales. Sales is the most important partner to marketing, ABM or not. While you can gain the support of the leadership teams, sales ops, etc, if you don't have your sales team onboard with your plans, you will not succeed. Bring your sales team into the process early and keep them informed ia regular status updates (bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly). Highlight your wins and your losses.
...Read More2890 Views
Bhavisha Oza
Gong Performance Marketing Lead | Formerly Genesys, Instapage, Red Hat • January 27
First, I’d like to define a B2B campaign as a set of tactics that will drive pipeline revenue for a particular solution or a market segment. The campaign timeline can span over a quarter or 6+ months. To launch a successful campaign you first need to answer these 5 questions. * What are the campaign goals * Begin with the end in mind. * Keep your eyes on the prize and optimize relentlessly * Who is the Target audience * Persona - Business and technical buyer * Segment - Enterprise, Mid-market, SMB * Geo - North America, EMEA, LATAM, APAC * Verticals * What is the value proposition * What are the buyer pain points * How can our solution help solve * Why should they choose us over competitors * What is the content mix by persona and buyer jobs to be done * Buyer jobs to be done including problem identification, sol exploration, req building, vendor selection, validation and consensus building. Be sure to include different formats such as e-books, checklists, analyst content, video demos etc * By persona - business buyer and/or technical buyer * What is the budget * This will guide the channel/tactic mix * Define the tactic mix including both * Paid media - paid search, paid social, third party programs, trade shows * Owned media - website, email nurture, webinars, blogs Once you have the answers you are ready to plan and launch a solid campaign. Pro tip: Don't wait for everything (ads, emails, landing pages etc.) to be perfect. The mantra is to launch and optimize :))
...Read More1711 Views
Dan Ahmadi
Branch VP Demand Generation and International Marketing | Formerly Outreach, MuleSoft • September 9
I'd love to, but we have yet to find an intent vendor that has data rich enough for our specific segment that would indicate readiness to buy. For other companies, I've seen this to be really effective, especially when 10s or 100s of people might start researching something the moment a problem is faced. In my current role, our ABM approach is primarily successful in an outbound manner, and there's not a strong enough inbound signal to leverage to guide our efforts.
...Read More4286 Views
Kathy O'Donnell
Gong Senior Director, EMEA Marketing • December 21
Honing your craft and being able to share insights and recommendations (based on data) is a great start. Managers often don't have time to get into the weeds, but if they get insights they don't know or recommendations on how to do something differently, this is a good first step in becoming influential. Being concise in your delivery is also important. If you're putting together a written proposal, it's always recommended to start with a brief summary of the expected outcomes/key findings at the start. More generally, the more you understand the business, the better. For example, if you're aiming to be more influential with sales, understanding their challenges, having shared KPIs, talking their language and really knowing the customer will help you gain respect and become more influential. Finally, being a good person to work with naturally drives this. Being a good listener, giving others a voice, taking ownership, avoiding blame, and keeping everyone focussed on what matters.
...Read More1928 Views
Jordan Hwang
OpenPhone VP of Marketing • April 21
Our demand generation team has three major pillars: * Website - responsible for our corporate website. While they care about impact, they also need to service other needs for the company beyond pure demand generation. They're held to a slightly different standard, as a result. * Acquisition - responsible for acquiring new leads. We have it split between Organic (SEO), Paid, and Channel (BD partnerships) * Customer Marketing - responsible for educating and upselling/cross-selling customers There's multiple teams that live within those major pillars that are structure more tactically, but the three pillars comprise the major differences in expectations and OKRs that would be associated there.
...Read More1230 Views
Moon Kang 🚀
Showpad Director of Digital Marketing & ABM | Formerly a child • December 8
Programmatic display. You cannot GENERATE demand without properly getting in front of folks and visually displaying what you're about. You'd be wasting money without the capabilities to target the RIGHT people to create demand. The right combination of intent data, funnel-specific messaging, and analytics will create the best top-of-funnel experience for prospects you're looking to generate demand.
...Read More667 Views
Liz Bernardo
SquareWorks Consulting Head of Marketing • March 2
In my personal experience, it was best to expand the team by bringing in a marketing generalist with an interest in Demand Generation. Someone who had a solid base of entry-level marketing skills in multiple departments and that was eager to learn the role of Demand Generation, allowed me to have a starting point to expand and grow upon. A generalist has experience in all of the marketing basics and can be a "pinch hitter" for all aspects of your program. ie. If you need a content writer or editor, someone to assist with social media, events or basic SFDC/Marketing Automation platform skills, you have an asset that can fill the gaps. As time grows, you can teach DG basics and the "why" and how to run successful programs, then eventually the newest team member can branch out to develop and run smaller strategic programs for the business and also grow in their career.
...Read More948 Views