AMA: Demandbase Head of Digital Marketing, Matt Hummel on Establishing a Demand Generation Function

In my experience there are 3 keys to both developing and retaining top talent: Prioritize and maintain alignment with sales: nobody wants to be doing work that isn't appreciated or that isn't aligned with the organizational priorities and objectives. Create a framework but keep it flexible: it's so important in any DG function to create scale, but it's also important to not stifle individual thought processes or creativity. Lead/guide, but don't force down a certain path Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize, but leave room for testing and creativity: the best DG marketers are scientists and artists. And when you have good talent, sales loves them, and wants more of them! This means you have to prioritize the work that comes their way (see key #1), while also making sure you aren't over-utilizing them so they are unable to create both the mental space but also the physical space to test new things! Bonus #4 - be direct, respectful, and kind :-)

I'll provide a high-level framework I've used at a few companies, which is not totally unique to me, but has proven very helpful: First 30 Days: LEARN!!! Products (sit on demos, sales calls, web training), people (primarily your team/relevant stakeholders), process (helpful to know how to get stuff done, plus there are likely areas you'll want to improve at some point BUT don't do that immediately - be patient!), culture, and systems. Next 30 Days: start to formulate your initial learnings into insights / action plans. Test this out with relevant stakeholders to course-correct and/or get alignment. So important to do this! Last 30 Days: GO! Ensure alignment of plan with your manager, and jump in with both feet! Whatever you do, don't try to boil the ocean (trust me, I've tried multiple times) - but do find quick wins - and friends. Find your people - your advocates. Someone you can confide in, someone who has your back, and someone who can continue to help mentor you! Ultimately every situation is unique, so apply this with a grain of salt. But I've found that you really have a small window where no question is a dumb question - so take advantage of it, and set yourself up for long-term success. I've seen too many folks have a short-term view and want to fix everything or prove themselves too fast and too much without having a true picture of what matters most to an organization. One last tip - start with the end in mind. Write down a few questions you want to be able to answer at the end of each 30 days, and that will give some focus to how you approach your time.

I've been in both situations, and you really do need the same talent to be successful, it's just how you prioritize and ultimately staff that can be different. For example, you'll often see at small companies a sole digital marketer driving demand which unfortunately is mostly through top-of-funnel lead gen activities. Of course you can do more full-funnel with digital, but you're missing so much opportunity if that's your only skill set. In a small company, if you have someone who knows tech (e.g., SFDC and Marketo), plus knows how to work with sales and create campaigns - then you can work with that plus an agency to provide some additional support. That scenario works the same even without the technical skills - you would just need to augment with likely either external agency support or sometimes you can find that type of expertise within Sales Ops. When your team gets larger, you can start to create more nuanced skills - SEO, paid media, campaign strategists, campaign planners, marketing ops, CRO/web, ABM (though this should really be an inherent skill of any good DG marketer) ... the list could go on. Always start by understanding your buyers and then determine what your needs are - with a smaller team your focus should be on setting up some repeatable demand levers (think content syndication, LinkedIn, paid search) where you can partner with some folks to establish strong full-funnel evergreen content that can buy you some time to grow revenue and ultimately grow and scale your team.

Build a demand playbook. This forces you to get under the hood on how demand is created at your organization. Map out the entire process from awareness to advocacy, and everything in between. This will help you understand if there are any gaps in the process - for example, is demand gen (or even the organization) only focused on new customer acquisition but doesn't have a process for expanding or retaining? Compare that with the data - digging into conversion rates throughout each stage. I call this "fixing the leaky bucket." I've created more revenue and profit through fixing leaks in the bucket than any cool new program created. Trust me, it's there - you just have to know where to look! Another benefit of the playbook is it aligns everyone around a common set of operating practices. This is so helpful as you create scale, but also as you onboard new employees or agencies into your mix.