Question Page

How do you break down responsibilities and KPIs between demand generation and product marketing?

Jordan Hwang
OpenPhone VP of MarketingApril 21

My general framework is as follows:

  • PMM is likely to bring the best holistic qualitative insights to the table from the work that they're doing
  • Demand Generation is likely to bring the best live quantitative data to the table from the work that they're doing

Because of that, it's a give-and-take from a responsibility standpoint. 

  • Both PMM and Demand Generation should bring ideas to the table around what can/should be tested
  • They should be able to workshop those ideas together for refinement.
  • Example 1: Demand Generation sees some program-specific trending that causes them to want to focus on a particular theme. They bring it to PMM for more ideation as PMM can provide useful context/color based on their work. Together they come up with some ideas for testing.
  • Example 2: PMM has run a large customer insights study to understand key value props for the product. They bring those findings over to Demand Generation to refine based on program, audience, etc. Together, they come up with some refined ideas for testing.

Decisions on what gets acted on are dependent on who's responsible for the number (this is generally Demand Generation). They're ultimately responsible for deciding, based on impact, when they'll be able to do such a test. However, by refining the ideas together, there's also alignment about importance, etc.

1073 Views
Kanchan Belavadi
Snowflake Head of Enterprise Marketing, IndiaMay 8

Product marketing focuses on more on product adoption and sales enablement related metrics, as well as content related metrics if they are actively creating content in that org. Product marketers focus on strategy, messaging and are actively involved in product launches.

Demand gen teams are very funnel oriented and drive metrics like MQLs, SQLs, Opps, Pipeline, etc.

That said, they need to be very tightly aligned as product marketing needs to feed into demand gen activities.

388 Views
Erika Barbosa
Counterpart Marketing Lead | Formerly Issuu, OpenText, WebrootJune 17

Alignment on responsibilities and KPIs is critical. Personally, I have noticed more crossover between growth marketing and product marketing than between demand generation and product marketing. However, here are some considerations:

Demand generation:

  • Responsible for campaigns to generate demand and sometimes is incorrectly referred to as “demand capture”.

  • Examples of KPIs: MQLs and sign-ups.

Product marketing:

  • Involves positioning, messaging, and product launches.

  • Demand generation efforts often amplify product marketing.

  • Examples of KPIs: product adoption and customer satisfaction.

210 Views
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