Get answers from demand generation leaders
Laura Hart
Figma Senior Director, Growth Marketing • July 26
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.
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Dan Ahmadi
Branch VP Demand Generation and International Marketing | Formerly Outreach, MuleSoft • September 8
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.
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Eric Martin
Stack Overflow Vice President, Demand Generation • September 7
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)."
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Abhishek GP
Freshworks Inbound Growth • December 1
Let's first define an 'integrated campaign' approach. * At its core, the 'Integrated' approach implies three things - knowing and using the buyer's journey as the premise to building the marketing strategy, aiming for consistency in marketing across touchpoints & sequencing your messaging across these touchpoints * A 'campaign' is nothing but a coordinated set of assets & tactics to help your buyers progress from Awareness to Consideration to Decision. The other underrated impact of a campaign is its ability to corral organizational focus, time, and efforts toward a single goal and theme (sales, product, customer success, marketing) An Integrated Campaign strategy is an amalgam of these concepts. So do all businesses need an integrated campaign strategy? Yes. But does an integrated campaign strategy look the same for all businesses? No. The need for a Series A startup to craft an integrated campaign strategy is as much as it is for a Series C & Post-IPO business. The nature and scope of integration, however, vary significantly. These factors might help as you think through this. 1. Have you achieved Product-Channel(s) fit? * If are a Seed stage startup and have reliably managed to scale one or two acquisition channels, you have other things on your mind than 'integrating' these two channels. That is because, today, you do not have the channel width to capture a large part of the buyer's journey (community, email, in-app, review sites). * If you have a larger business, you might already have the channel width that covers a large proportion of your buyer's journey. This is the right time to think about an 'integrated campaign' strategy. Some of the questions to ask are - a) Do I know my buyer's journey with a fair degree of confidence b) Are they experiencing the same 'messaging theme' across touchpoints c) How can I sequence my tactics & messaging based on the demand funnel 2. What is your GTM motion? * Are you PLG or Sales-led or both? If you are PLG, you focus on specific channels that drive inbound demand - SEO, Paid Search, Content, In-app virality, Community, Review sites & Emails. If you have a Sales-led motion, you (mostly) focus on channels that go beyond these to also include Webinars, Events, SDR messaging, & Content. In both scenarios, your buyers want to experience your business in a way that is consistent across these touchpoints and takes them through a journey (sequencing in messaging) irrespective of whichever touchpoint they are in. 3. Do you have an established Brand marketing strategy within your organization? * If your org runs brand marketing campaigns, you'll need to redefine the architecture of your demand-gen-led integrated campaigns. In this new scenario, you'll have to view the buyer's journey together and build out common areas of leverage. For example, a Brand marketing campaign usually targets a large proportion of 'Problem unaware' buyers. So how can your demand-gen team nudge these buyers down the funnel via an integrated approach? Here, the role of demand-gen shifts to nudging these buyers to the 'Consideration' & 'Decision' stages using the same messaging theme and leveraging tactics (such as collecting a retargeting pool of qualified intent, etc.) that capture their engagement and intent for your category or business.
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Carlos Mario Tobon Camacho
Eightfold Senior Director of Demand Generation • April 18
ROI and marketing attribution is the most challenging KPIs for startups in the technology space; most of these companies do not measure CLV and instead, they measure results on an annual basis, depending on factors such as average sales cycle, average deal size and market maturity, reporting returns of marketing investment in the short term is challenging. One important KPI that demand generation teams may overlook in fast-growing technology companies is the customer lifetime value (CLV). CLV is a metric that calculates the total amount of revenue a customer is expected to generate for a company over the course of their relationship. It takes into account factors such as customer acquisition cost, average purchase value, and customer retention rate, and provides a more accurate picture of a company's revenue potential than simply looking at short-term revenue or leads generated. By focusing on CLV, demand generation teams can prioritize their efforts on acquiring high-value customers who are more likely to generate long-term revenue for the company. They can also identify areas where they can improve customer retention and increase the overall value of each customer. Overall, CLV can provide a more comprehensive and strategic view of a company's revenue growth potential and help demand generation teams make more informed decisions about their marketing and sales strategies.
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Sierra Summers
Albertsons Companies Director of B2B Marketing • January 18
I don't think ABM at its core is all that different from landing net new vs cross/upsell/expansion. If you boil it down, you are taking a set of channels and tactics and deploying campaigns to get your prospects or customers to take a desired action or behavior. I will argue that you have more room for error when going into new prospects or markets where you might not have as much data or evidence to support your messaging, positioning and campaign strategy. When marketing to current customers, you better know what you're talking about. There is nothing worse that being an existing customer of a brand and receiving messaging and campaigns as if you had never worked with that brand in your life. With cross/upsell/expansion, you not only have to know your customer, but you better make sure you let your customer know you know them. For example, if you're already in at Amazon and looking to upsell, you better be able to discuss pain points that came up at prior QBRs, understand their org chart, tech stack, and review how you can help them achieve their goals,
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Kanchan Belavadi
Snowflake Head of Enterprise Marketing, India • April 26
The most important template is the Campaign calendar (of activities) – that everyone can track. A good campaign calendar gives a clear view of 1. All active campaigns 2. Gives a clear timeline 3. Identifies owners 4. Lists outcomes expected 5. Outlines asks and challenges My favourite is the product launch checklist, simply because it has too many moving parts and is a very critical finale to a product that is usually long in the making. A good checklist again lists owners, timelines, dependencies and next steps.
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Adam Kaiser
6sense VP, Growth Marketing • August 10
The intersection of digital and direct mail can be a powerful combination. I have run many direct mail campaigns (actually direct FedEx!), where a package is sent to a prospect, and the materials point them back to a website, where they are prompted to enter a PIN or other code. From there, you've identified who you've reached and can capture data (through surveys or other means) on their current challenges, tech stack, etc., and even offer an incentive to book a meeting with sales. In some of these campaigns, I've seen 50%+ response rates.
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Monica Myers
Lattice Director of Demand Generation | Formerly Gusto, Qualia, AdRoll • August 24
Demand Gen is such a fun role (I know, I'm biased) because of the split because art and science. DG provides a unique opportunity to get creative and strategic in crafting new campaigns and programs, while also definitively measuring impact and analyzing results. As such, some of the best Demand Gen marketers I've hired and worked with contain a true passion for that combination, and with that, a deep sense of accountability and ownership over the success of those programs.
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Pamela King
YouTube Marketing Lead for NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV | Formerly Google Cloud • July 27
I think the relationship with Sales should be seen as a Partnership where both sides have insights to deliver to one another (not just a one-way relatinoship where Marketing delivers Leads). This partnership should be built on trust and understanding. I was lucky to have done a Field Marketing role prior to leading Global Campaigns when I was at Google, and what I learned during that initial role is that Sales knows the field better than anyone. They understand what content resonates with prospects/customers, what competitors are doing to appease these audiences and what our brand's key differentiators can be, and what a target audiences' true painpoints are. Some best practices I found in striking a strong relationship with Sales are: * Have common goals: At the end of the day, Marketing and Sales all have the same goal -- increase revenue for the company. How each team goes about that is where we differ. Ensuring there's a strong handoff from Marketing Qualified Lead to a Sales Accepted Lead is critical. Also making sure Marketing is providing the right tools for Sales to take that Lead to the finish line is where the Marketing/Sales partnership can either fall flat or succeed. * Educate them & Make them a co-partner in your work: I co-created a Sales Council that met monthly where it was a two-fold experience: 1) educating Sales on what Marketing did so they understood we did more than just Events and 2) gathering their feedback on messaging, upcoming campaigns, and more. * Lean on their expertise to improve meessaging: I was charged with building Sales scripts for Inside Sales teams as a first touch for a Marketing Qualified Lead. I was the expert in the campaign but not necessarily the expert in the ideal length of a LinkedIn InMail or a first-touch email. So I often went to Sales colleagues I had a strong relationship with and would ask for them to review the messaging and gather tips on how to improve it. * Keep them in the loop: I would often meet with Sales Directors and other Sales Specialists to share campaign reporting and where we were looking to pilot or optimize the flow. Often times, Sales does not fully understand the Marketing funnel or how it works. So it's great to educate them on general reporting and areas that need improvement. Sometimes I would find myself brainstorming tactics with them that we employed in the campaign as a pilot and they would show success.
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