AMA: YouTube Integrated Marketing Strategy & Planning Lead, Pamela King on Demand Generation Soft and Hard Skills

In order to be a Demand Generation leader, you want to be both left and right-brained. Often people think Demand Gen is all about analytics and architecting user journeys that deliver leads. But these journeys are targeting consumers, and consumers engage best with compelling content (e.g. - videos, images, etc.). This is where the right brain comes in to deliver creativity. When I think of the list of Hard skills (aka Must Haves) vs. Soft Skills (Nice to Have's), this is where I land: Hard Skil ...Read More

This is a great question and a tough one to answer! Every org should develop this based on need. If I were to design a Demand Gen org for Global, it would look like this:  Demand Gen Strategy & Operations: You need one (or multiple people depending on the size of the org) to own the general Operations for the team. Meeting scheduling, global team interlocks, OKR setting, etc.   Demand Gen Analysts: This team will own the campaign data and so your focus can be on deriving insights and demand ...Read More

There are a few ways to think about asking for an increase in budget. It's important to connect the ask to a strategic result. Here are four ways you can consider thinking about this: Provide a new MQL goal: If you want to increase budget, one of the first things you'll have to focus on is how you can delier highe results. This means you'll want to work on building a forecast of how much it would take if your team wants to increase the MQL goals. Use this as a baseline -- look at the Cost per MQ ...Read More

The one lesson I learned the hard way as a Demand Gen leader was that I was not as knowledgeable about my target audiences as I thought I was. I kept seeing different people respond differently to various assets and did not understand why. I learned that it was important to thoroughly understand the audience before building or when optimizing the campaign. It can't just be work from a 3rd party paper (e.g. - Forrester), it has to be true on the ground insights (from Sales or a Research team).  T ...Read More

I think the relationship with Sales should be seen as a Partnership where both sides have insights to deliver to one another (not just a one-way relatinoship where Marketing delivers Leads). This partnership should be built on trust and understanding. I was lucky to have done a Field Marketing role prior to leading Global Campaigns when I was at Google, and what I learned during that initial role is that Sales knows the field better than anyone. They understand what content resonates with prospe ...Read More

So hard to nail it down to three! But these are the three attributes I find critical when hiring:  Analytical mindset: The ability to read data, analyze it and tease out challenges or areas for optimization are incredibly valuable. This is probably the biggest gap I see in some Demand Gen marketers. They often don't know which data to pull or where to go and   Communication: This role calls for strong cross-functional partnership, so communication is imperative to ensure: 1) Teams are aware of t ...Read More

In order to drive accountability, teams within the Demand Generation organization must have three things be clear by their Leadership team: Goals: What are the results each team is set up to deliver? Do the teams share goals? There needs to be clear expectations set in order to make teams understand what they have to do.  Measurement: How are we measuring the goals set? Are the metrics defined the same way for everyone? Is there a consistent dashboard or reporting tool(s) teams can use to track ...Read More