AMA: WooCommerce CMO, Tamara Niesen on Building a Demand Generation Team

Scaling isn’t just about adding more people; it’s about adding structure so things don’t break. That means clear ownership, accountability, and a process for prioritization. A best practice I have taken with me from multiple organizations? Campaign and project briefs (and supporting processes). Every initiative should start with: What problem are we solving? Why is it worth solving? How will we measure success? What are the tradeoffs? If we can’t answer those questions, we’re wasting time. We also needed a clear operating model—who does what, who owns what, and how we make decisions. Without defined swim lanes (e.g. identifying DRIs, DACI), you end up with confusion, duplicated efforts, and inefficiency. I’ve seen this firsthand, and it’s painful to untangle later. Another thing we’ve done is implement a structured planning cadence. Quarterly roadmaps, six-week sprints, whatever works—just something to ensure we’re aligning on priorities and not getting distracted by the latest shiny object. Finally, we needed a single source of truth for reporting. Demand Gen needs to be tied to revenue. If we can’t prove our impact, we won’t get the budget to keep scaling. Dashboards, monthly reviews with insights, learnings, and what we do with those insights are key here.

Marketing can be a black box to people outside of it, which is why transparency and education are so important. The last thing you want is for the rest of the company to think Demand Gen is just running ads and sending emails. The reality is, Demand Gen is highly strategic and directly tied to revenue, and it’s our job to make sure that’s clear. One of the ways we have started to do this is through Monthly Business Reviews (MBRs). These meetings focus on key areas: What’s in the market right now? How is it performing? What’s not working and why? What’s coming next? We make sure we’re looking at actual business metrics—pipeline contribution, conversion rates, and revenue impact—not just vanity metrics like clicks or impressions. Another key piece is real-time dashboards. Everyone should be able to see how Demand Gen is performing at any time. No hidden reports, no mystery numbers—just clear, accessible data that shows the impact of our efforts. But beyond the numbers, I think one of the most important things we do is educate the company on how Demand Gen actually works. A lot of people think marketing is just about ads and messaging, but in reality, it’s a highly sophisticated system that involves experimentation, optimization, and a deep understanding of customer behavior. Attribution is a great example. People outside of marketing often assume it’s easy to track the exact path a customer took to conversion. The reality is that it’s messy and tracking is even more so—last touch, multi-touch, incrementality—it’s all complex. But people will assume we're guessing if we don’t communicate that complexity and show how we measure success. As a marketing leader, one of the best things you can do is build strong relationships with Finance. If Finance understands the value of Demand Gen and sees that we’re disciplined in allocating budget, it’s a lot easier to secure resources and make the case for growth. At the end of the day, if you’re not actively communicating Demand Gen’s impact, people will make their own (often incorrect) assumptions about it. Regular updates, clear reporting, and ongoing education are the best ways to make sure the business understands how marketing is driving revenue.

Demand Gen and Product Marketing need to work in lockstep, but their responsibilities should be clearly defined so there are no gaps. I see Product Marketing as the strategic foundation. They own positioning, messaging, and audience segmentation. They’re the ones gathering customer insights, developing solution narratives, and ensuring that we have a compelling story to tell. They also drive product go-to-market (GTM) strategies, which include things like product launch plans, competitive analysis, and sales enablement. If Sales needs a deck, a battle card, or a better way to pitch our platform, Product Marketing owns that. Demand Gen, on the other hand, takes that foundation and activates it. They’re the ones turning messaging into high-converting campaigns across paid media, email, SEO, ABM, and whatever other channels make sense. If Product Marketing defines the "why" and "what," Demand Gen figures out the "how" and "where”, and the campaign narratives to deliver. KPIs reflect those differences. Product Marketing is measured on positioning effectiveness, sales enablement adoption, product health (adoption and usage), and market impact. That might mean looking at things like win/loss rates, messaging resonance, product attach, and how well Sales uses the materials they create, or in some cases, how well self-serve/product-led cross-sell motions convert. Demand Gen, on the other hand, is held accountable for lead generation, pipeline growth, and campaign performance. That means things like MQL/SQL volume, conversion rates, and cost per acquisition (CPA). The key is that these teams need to be deeply connected. If Product Marketing isn’t aligned with Demand Gen, then you end up with campaigns that don’t resonate. And if Demand Gen isn’t leveraging the insights from Product Marketing, you’re just running ads and hoping for the best. They’re two sides of the same coin, and when they work together, they drive real business impact.

It depends on the stage of growth, but if I had to pick one, I’d say Marketing Operations & Analytics. You can have the best creative, a well-funded ad budget, and an airtight product positioning, but if you can’t measure what’s working, optimize campaigns, or prove impact, then you’re just throwing money into the void. Marketing Ops is what makes everything run smoothly. They make sure leads are getting scored and routed correctly, that attribution is set up so we know what’s actually driving pipeline, and that we’re focused on quality over quantity. Because that’s a big trap—thinking that more leads means better performance, it doesn’t. If you’re bringing in leads that aren’t high-intent or a good fit, they won’t convert, and all you’ve done is inflate vanity metrics. That’s why having an Ops function is critical from the start. Once that foundation is solid, the next hire really depends on the business’s goals. If acquisition is a priority, then a paid media or growth marketing specialist makes sense. If you’re targeting larger accounts, you need ABM expertise. If retention is an area of focus, then a lifecycle marketer should be next. But none of those roles can function properly without a strong Ops foundation. If your data is a mess, your lead flow is broken, and your reporting isn’t giving you the insights you need, scaling becomes impossible. Operations is the backbone of a successful Demand Gen team. Without it, everything slows down.

I see Demand Gen as a system—an engine that requires multiple areas of expertise working together to drive awareness, consideration, conversion, and retention. Especially in B2B, where you’re dealing with longer sales cycles and multiple decision-makers, you need a team that can build full-funnel campaigns that nurture prospects from “never heard of us” to “customer for life.” So, who makes up this system? You’ve got performance marketers and paid media specialists making sure we’re reaching the right people at the right time. SEO experts and content strategists are constantly building our organic muscle and positioning us as a thought leader. Then you’ve got conversion rate optimization (CRO) folks ensuring that traffic isn’t just landing on our site—it’s turning into pipeline. The campaign managers/demand gen managers are the ones tying it all together. They develop campaign narratives and motions that move people through the entire buying journey. They need to know the customer inside and out—who we’re targeting, what their pain points are, and how our product solves them. And to get all of that messaging in front of the right audience, we rely on strong product marketers, copywriters and content creators who can engage prospects, whether through ads, blogs, email nurtures, or long-form thought leadership content that builds credibility in the market. On the backend, we need automation specialists and lifecycle marketers nurturing leads and driving expansion opportunities within our existing customer base. And none of this works without Marketing Ops—they’re the ones keeping the whole system running, tracking what’s working, and making sure we’re optimizing conversion rates and lead quality. Finally, we can’t forget Sales. They’re a huge part of the Demand Gen engine, whether they’re doing outbound, working inbound leads, or giving us direct feedback on what’s resonating with customers. Without a tight feedback loop with Sales (and CS, for that matter), we’re just throwing leads into the void and hoping for the best.

It’s not just important—it’s non-negotiable. Demand Gen doesn’t operate in a silo. Without strong cross-functional alignment, we’d just be a lead factory dumping names into the system with no real impact on revenue. Sales is the most obvious partner. If they’re not bought into our campaigns, conversion rates will suffer. We need to be in lockstep on lead definitions, follow-up cadences, and messaging alignment. I’ve seen situations where marketing thinks they’re driving a ton of pipeline, but Sales isn’t following up properly—or worse, they don’t see the leads as valuable. That’s why we must maintain a tight feedback loop and ensure Demand Gen isn’t just about generating leads but generating the right leads. Customer Success is equally important. Acquisition is only half the battle—retention and expansion are what drive long-term growth. CS teams have direct insight into what keeps customers engaged, which helps us create better lifecycle and upsell campaigns. Plus, they’re the best source of customer stories, which we can use in our marketing to build trust and credibility. And then there’s Operations. If Sales and Marketing aren’t working off the same data, we’re in trouble. Marketing Ops ensures that lead scoring, routing, and attribution models are all functioning properly so that Sales and CS teams are set up for success. In some orgs, Strategic Partnerships are also a critical piece of the puzzle. A lot of our Demand Gen efforts are tied to our partner ecosystem, so alignment here is key to making sure we’re factoring in their goals and relationships into our campaigns. The bottom line? Demand Gen is a company-wide function, not just a marketing function. If we’re not deeply aligned with Sales, CS, Ops, and Finance, we’re just running campaigns in a vacuum. The more tightly integrated we are, the more successful we’ll be.