When addressing alignment with executive stakeholders it is important to drive clear goals, KPIs, RACIs, and a strategy that outlines the pros and cons. This can include the following: 1. Goal alignment: You need to align with both stakeholders up front on the core problem we are trying to solve. By driving this alignment you ensure that everyone is on the same page around the goals we are trying to achieve. Without this, your strategy won’t align. 2. Organized swimlanes: It is important to build a RACI with an ultimate decision maker, including who can make the final decision and escalation paths as needed if these two stakeholders disagree. 3. Influencer mindset alignment: It is your job to understand their core KPIs and business needs, which you can highlight in the options you share. This includes their personal and professional drivers, which may influence their decision-making later in the process. 4. A company-first strategy: The proposed strategy should include the pros, cons, and risks. Different leaders may assign different values to each of these areas. Ideally, you align these to your company or organization's priorities to make it easier to see from a company-first perspective. Ultimately, when you provide a suggested strategy, it should be the one that provides the overall company with the least amount of risk meeting the core objectives you agreed to solve for. If needed, you can use the escalation paths in your RACI, but ideally, doing the upfront alignment will be needed less often.

A Demand generation manager career path usually takes one of two routes. 1. A specialized expertise in a particular area, audience, GTM motion, vertical, technology focus, etc. 2. A people manager role, helping teams execute. Depending on your organization there may be several levels within each of these paths that allow for various amounts of responsibility, expertise, and scope. Spending time reflecting on what aligns with your aspirations will be important as you progress throughout your career.

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.

It's not too different from your traditional demand funnel/waterfall and KPIs, but instead of leads > MQLs > SQLs > Opportunities > $ pipeline, your funnel should start with web traffic, both from an aggregate perspective, as well as the core pages you want to drive users to sign-up for your self-service offering. Quality web visitors are essentially your "leads," and from there you measure conversions to your sign-up pages, web trial downloads and starts, paid users, and eventually upgrades, expansion, etc. Then depending on your martech sophistication you can get extremely granular with your UTM parameters to measure where traffic is coming from, whether by channel (i.e. organic search, SEM, paid media, organic social, etc.), tactic, campaigns, etc. and continually optimize based on where you're seeing the greatest conversion throughout the self-serve funnel.

It’s crucial for Demand Generation professionals to see how their contributions align with larger company goals and strategy. This fosters a sense of purpose and keeps them invested in the organization’s success. Given the cross-functional nature of the role, offer senior team members the opportunity to lead strategic workstreams rather than being limited to tactical execution. This not only increases their impact but also enhances their leadership skills and long-term career prospects. To retain top Demand Generation talent, provide a clear career path with opportunities for growth. Ensure they are continuously challenged with stretch projects that expand their skill set and keep them engaged. While empowerment is key, leadership must also offer necessary support and “air cover” to help them navigate obstacles effectively. By fostering growth, empowerment, and strategic involvement, you create an environment where top talent feels valued and motivated to stay.

Great Question! Here are a few to consider and why: Sales * Why: The sales team has direct insights into customer needs, pain points, and buying behaviors. They can provide valuable input on target accounts and help align sales and marketing efforts. * Role: Identify high-value accounts, provide feedback on messaging, and collaborate on account-specific strategies. Marketing * Why: The marketing team is responsible for developing and executing the ABM strategy. They bring expertise in content creation, campaign management, and analytics. * Role: Develop targeted content, manage campaigns, and measure the success of ABM initiatives. Customer Success * Why: Customer success and support teams have a deep understanding of customer satisfaction and can provide insights into account health and opportunities for upselling or cross-selling. * Role: Offer insights on customer needs, help with account retention strategies, and support customer-focused content. Executive Leadership: * Why: Executive buy-in is crucial for allocating resources, setting strategic goals, and ensuring alignment across the organization. * Role: Provide strategic direction, approve budgets, and support cross-functional collaboration.

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 🚀.

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

To manage pipeline forecasting differences between sales and demand generation, I'd focus on building a system where sales, demand gen, RevOps, and MarOps work together, combining sales' insights with campaign data for one solid forecast and identifying any root causes. Below are the typical steps that I go through: * Create joint processes, like unified dashboards, to quickly spot and troubleshoot discrepancies. * Ensure a common understanding of key metrics - lead volume, conversion rates, etc. - and the assumptions behind them, such as product launches, P&P changes, or marketing campaign launches, so both teams are aligned. * Troubleshoot data pipeline, which often causes forecasting discrepancies and gaps. Addressing this first saves time before digging deeper. * Review individual metrics alongside historical performance to identify shifts in trends or dynamics, ensuring forecasts reflect current realities. * Set up weekly or bi-weekly check-ins to keep communication going, adjust forecasts as needed, and build trust across teams.

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.