How do you communicate Demand Generation updates and activities to the rest of the company?

Communication to the broader department or company (depending on size) is key. I often find long emails or slack chats with updates get lost in the shuffle. Holding a standing meeting may be a better route. Find a cadence that works (weekly, monthly, or quarterly), create a consistent agenda so folks know what to expect, and make it fun. We award a 'beast mode' at the end of each meeting to a cross functional team member who has gone above and beyond. This helps to drive attendance folks want to see who wins beast mode.

Make sure you're adding value to attendees or they'll stop showing up. Structuring the call with metrics (actual to target) along with program highlights is a good start. Did you just run a webinar? How did it do? What promo plan did you execute? Many cross functional teams find immense value in this, everyone from creative (seeing what graphics did or didn't work in driving response) to PMM, MOPs, and more. If you have other teams like field marketing, local geos (APAC, EMEA, etc) make sure to include them so they can showcase programs and share learnings.

Demand Generation sits at a critial intersection of the business, and as such, holds an important responsiblity to ensure that stakeholders and business leaders have access to key metrics. That said, different stakeholders and departments of a company often require information shared in customized ways that ensure that those updates are relevant and actionable to their area of focus. For example, the updates you provide to sales leadership will differ from the updates you provide to the product team. Content leaders may look to understand what content is performing and what trends can be identified for future content development, whereas product marketers will find more value in insights into how an ICP is responding to different messaging and value props. It's critical to think about your intended audience and what is most relevant to them, and to communicate impact in that way. At a company wide level, the most relevant updates usually involve the impact that DG is having on overall business outcomes and the north star of the company. Keep it simple, impactful, and specific to your audience. 

Communicating demand gen updates and activities to the organization is incredibly important. Not only should you advocate for the impact you and your team are driving, but you’ll find other folks in the org are typically very interested in understanding what is working and what isn’t. I’ve found opportunities to work with other colleagues just from having conversations and communicating about current actions that are in motion and understanding what they are working on. Here are some methods I have experienced that have helped with communication:

• Ongoing sessions about learnings. Bring data to the table, but also tell a story about what the data is saying and the insights you have from the data. This is also about what isn’t working and how you are going to thoughtfully respond.
• Office hours to ask questions. Have a dedicated, recurring time where anyone in the org can come and ask questions which you’ll find helps create transparency.
• Larger updates at company meetings. For updates that would be helpful for the entire org to know, have a section dedicated to providing updates and asking questions.
• Update channel. Test having a dedicated channel people can subscribe to to get learnings in a way that works best for them.
• Lunch and learns. An alternative approach is to host a lunch and learn which provides a dedicated time where folks can be engaged and ask questions in a slightly less formal setting.