AMA: Shopify Director (Head of) Global GTM & Demand Generation, Tamara Niesen on Demand Generation Soft and Hard Skills

Creating an environment where we have trust, pysocholigical safety, and fun is key, but it's trust that allows team members to have autonomy and agency. Celebrating wins toegther, celebrating mistakes (fail forward!), and removing roadblocks are foundational to building healthy teams.   Something I try to encourage is that each team member is the owner of their business line, audience, program, etc. As a business owner, they know what they are accountable to, and what is required to meet their g ...Read More

Operating in a silo from sales and not treating them as my first team. B2B demand gen marketing- developing pipeline for sales is our job. If we are not in lockstep with sales, and don't show up as one team, we end up with an unhealthy tension that pits teams against eachother.    I have only made this mistake once, where I hit my MQL/Sales accepted targets and when we didn't hit our deal target for the quarter, I did not take accountability for the full funnel, and left sales to take responsibi ...Read More

Successful demand gen marketers have a broad skill set, from creative thinking to critical thinking. Some of the most important things I look for: Project management and relationship management: working cross functionally is essential to devlopping strategic demand gen programs and campaigns. Demand gen is the central hub if you will- channel owners, product teams, sales teams, content, field, etc. The ability to pull plans and tactics together to create time bound, TOFU, MOFU, BOFU or full funn ...Read More

Network and seek advice. Getting to know people in the field, genuinely asking about their roles, responsibilites, what keeps them up at night, recommendations on where you might learn more is the best starting point.  In addition to that, get in on these Sharebird AMAs, Demand Gen podcasts, take courses where applicable- this could be in digital marketing/performance, SEO, PMM, sales....all of these crafts are inputs/influence demad gen. A personal goal of mine throughout my career has been to ...Read More

The answer here is nuanced. I have a background in product marketing, so I am biased, but if this role is the first marketer overall, I would actually prioritize a product marketing hire or skill set and focus on the foundations: Positioning, value props, messaging, personas, pitch decks, roadmap, leave behinds Sales and product feeback loops- customer insights, win loss analysis Customer stories- social proof of product market fit Competitive intelligence If this hire is the first demand gen hi ...Read More

As an engineer, I suspect you have deep product and user knowlege, and this could be a huge asset in marketing!  I would start with getting to know the demand gen team at your organization, or, start to network, subscribe to AMA's like this one, listen to demand gen podcasts to better understand: role responsibilities- what are they responsible for, how are they measured, what does a day in the life look like when targets are not being met, what are the levers demand gen has at their disposal le ...Read More

Demand generation is to create pipeline, and transparently, it's easy to cheat and create volumes of leads. Accountability lies in quality, and so measuring teams on the metric that is a true indication of quality is essential for ensuring teams target the right audience and it's also a measure for fit intent- what leads are truly the right fit (product fit/timing fit, high intent/high). Whether you are creating pipeline for a self-serve buying process, or a sales-led process, marketing/demand g ...Read More

This is a difficult question to answer, I would love more context in order to respond thoughtfully, but I will share this- a work enironment that is build around psychological safety, one that encourages healthy debate and conflict is (IMO), the envinroment that breeds the most creative and successful teams. It's good to disagree and work together to come to an agreement, or comprimise, but your leader may have context you don't have, and they may not even be able to share that context. In some ...Read More