AMA: Qualia Director, Demand Generation, Laura Lewis on Demand Generation 30 / 60 / 90 Day Plan

Unfortunately, I don't have a good answer for this one. I have never actually had success with a 3rd-party demand generation agency! I truly believe this is a role that requires a level of project management and organizational understanding that you cannot outsource without heavy involvement from someone internal to the organization. And now with generative AI entering marketing workstreams, nurture emails can quickly written up by AI and then edited by an internal human in much less time than it would have taken to do the entire project from scratch. However, I do believe you can be successful outsourcing highly skilled or technical roles, like digital marketing, marketing automation, or web development. These roles have a clear objective/task and require less project management: "implement a cookie consent banner on our website / build a lead scoring model from this spreadsheet outline / launch these ad campaigns." KPIs are is the required work done, done well and on time, and for digital marketing, are any metrics like CPC or CPL improving over time.

Being new to demand generation makes this question difficult! If you are brand new, learn learn and learn some more. Look at the data - not just marketing data like open rates and click rates, but sales data as well. Understand how much pipeline is being generated, where it is coming from, what success looks like and where your current gaps to achieving success more often look like. Understand what things that marketing generates convert more, or convert less to pipeline. And then once you understand the numbers, it's time to talk to people to understand why the numbers are the way they are. Has no one ever focused on them before? Do they know the situations that work well, and those that do not? Are there historical reasons for the current structures and processes that contribute to those numbers? Then, decide which areas should be focused on. Pick 1 or 2 things per quarter only to focus on. That might be, "This quarter, we are going to work on increasing MQL volume. Our paid search campaigns are not optimized enough, so we'll start there." Or it might be, "We're generating a lot of leads for sales, but conversion is low! We need to bring that up by scoring our leads more and ensuring sales reps have a consistent follow-up cadence." So, to summarize, learn learn, and learn! Look at the data and talk to folks. Then, at 90 days, you should know what metrics need focus from you right away and can build a plan to address those.

I have some standard 30-60-90 bullets that I apply to any new role. Roughly, those look like this: 30 days - "Listen and Learn" * Complete formal onboarding * Get to know my team/boss/peers * Schedule introduction meetings with cross-functional peers * Understand my job description and key responsibilities * Review current performance data, budgets, and plans * Understand company long-term goals and strategy and how I fit in there 60 days - "Find the Red" * Continue with 30 day items * Dig deeper into metrics, sales performance, customer data, partners * Understand technical workflows and processes * Identify key project areas 90 days - "Build and Change" * Continue with 60 day items * Build formalized plan and socialize with organization * Begin implementing needed changes and working on key projects

Meeting with cross-functional partners when joining a new company is so important, especially if you're working remote. It helps to build general rapport and understand where each person fits into the organization and how you'll be working with them. It also can help you further identify what initial projects might be - what are the main pain points for these people? Questions will vary depending on the role of the person you're meeting with, but there are some that are universal. I'll ask everyone how they're working with marketing today, what their recommendations for improvement are, and what their current challenges are. If the person is in a sales role, I'll dive deeper into understanding the sales process, personas, pitches that resonate, and if they feel confident in meeting their quotas for the current period. If the person is in leadership, I'll ask them about their long-term vision for the company, their teams, and how marketing fits into that. If the person is in Operations, I'll ask them about how our systems connect today and what key reports are. Regardless of who you're meeting with, tailor your questions to understand their role. You never know what you might learn. And make sure you actually understand what they're saying! Don't be afraid to follow-up with more questions or ask them to clarify further or repeat something.

It depends on your company and your market. As a baseline guide, I map Demand Generation resources to sales teams. If there are 2 products being sold by 2 different sales organizations, you need support for both products and both sales teams. That might be 2 Demand Generation Managers - one for Product A and one for Product B. In a situation where there is only a singular product or sales team, I look more at the approaches. Are we doing ABM for our Enterprise accounts, but still running Integrated Campaigns to the market as a whole? That might require 2 Demand Generation Managers still, but one focused entirely on ABM. Do we have a Land and Expand motion? That might require a Demand Generation Manager focused entirely on upsell/cross-sell to our customer base.

Establishing the function is a different beast than coming into an organization and reviewing data to find the red and focus on improvements there. There might not be data if the function is new. If that's the case, the most important thing to do is to get data. Work with an Operations partner - or learn some technical skills - or hire a consultant to help - to make sure you have a funnel. It can be the original SiriusDecisions waterfall - there's no reason to go crazy at this point. All you're looking for is a starting point. In parallel, however, you need to also launch campaigns. This can be difficult when data is nonexistent or lacking, but your primary function is to drive business and build pipeline and a gap in activity will lead to a gap in results. Demand Generation to build an audience is a slower roll than to market to an existing audience. To build an audience, look at SEO, content syndication, databases, paid search & social, and find partners to run webinars and newsletter sponsorships with. Use AI to help write content to increase your throughput as a small team. Then, once your metrics are available and you've begun building an audience, you'll have more of an opportunity to market to them directly and work on optimizing existing efforts.