How do you structure your demand gen team? How big is it, what does everyone do? How do you measure success of each function/person?

I will answer this specific to my creative team, as it's not quite your traditional Demand Gen team. My current video team is about 8 creatives, plus myself. Here's the current makeup:

• VP, Creative (me)

• Executive Producer

• Director of Post-Production

• Post-Production Manager

• Production Manager

• Producer

• Editor

• Copywriter

• Production Assistant

I measure the teams impact in the same way I assess my own impact, which is 2 ways:

1. The impact they each have on our internal team: culture, processes, stakeholder management, leadership, and creativity.

2. The impact their work has on the bottom line of the business: how much revenue is their work contributing to, are they influencing repeat business, are they getting good feedback from clients/customers, are they pushing creative boundaries in our discipline, etc.

I work with each team member to set individual KPIs/intended outcomes for personal performance each year. These can be fluid and adapt and change depending on the business needs or if they've reached their goals earlier than expected. I have 6 month 360 degree feedback checkins with each employee, consisting of peer feedback and feedback from myself. These help us track how they're working towards their goals and gives them (and me) insight into areas they can improve or grow, which also helps us have constructive conversations around career growth and professional development.

I find these 3 areas as critical towards building a demand gen team:

• Content

• Search

• Design

Depending on the rest of the marketing team structure,

• Marketing Operations

• Inside Sales and

• ABM

Can be a part of Demand gen or can sit outside this structure.

The size of the team depends on various factors like size of the business and stage of the company’s growth. A large organization will obviously have multiple folks within each of these functions. A small startup in its growth stage can also have multiple folks within each function.

It is important to set KPIs to measure success and they must be aligned to clear business outcomes. A content strategist cannot be goaled merely on building assets. They need to be responsible to creating “engaging” assets, essentially assets that customers interact with and find useful and lead to expansion or retention.

Structure depends on the size of the organization, the GTM motion (sales-led or product-led, for example), and where the business is in its growth and maturity lifecycles. You can organize these roles in multiple ways, but it's crucial to avoid a bloated org; you don't want it too wide (+6 direct reports), and you should be cautious of having one manager with only one direct report. The core functions that run the demand engine must include integrated campaigns, digital demand, and event and field marketing. If you're a larger organization (over $50M in ARR), you'll likely build out an ABM and Customer Marketing function. The ABM arm can operate independently under your VP or Sr. Director of Demand or be nested within Integrated Campaigns or Digital. Customer Marketing typically sits with Demand or PMM, depending on the business goals.

Integrated Campaigns: Works closely with Product Marketing on core business themes, leveraging them to build audience-first campaigns. Campaigns are not just eBooks or webinars but a collection of assets targeting a core audience across the entire account lifecycle. Measuring integrated campaigns can be tricky, so it’s important to measure signals via leading indicators like asset performance, audience engagement, lead creation, MQL conversions, and pipeline sourced and influenced. I spoke about this in detail at my 2023 SaaStr talk, check it out here.

Digital Demand: Manages your inbound digital funnel; paid, organic, and owned properties. They activate, acquire, and convert leads across multiple channels, working closely with integrated campaigns, Product Marketing, Brand/Creative, and Content. This team often includes digital (paid and organic) associates and conversion rate optimization and analytics managers. They also manage key agency relationships. Monitoring leading metrics ensures efficiencies in ad spend, including impressions, CPL, CPMQL, first touch conversions, pipeline sourced, and pipeline influenced.

Field and Event Sponsorships/Marketing: Manages in-person, virtual, and hybrid events, aligning with broader marketing goals. Event shapes vary based on GTM motion and core ICP. Efficient event spending requires field sales team enablement, clear objectives, audience targeting, and budget management. Key activities include logistics, content creation, and promotional campaigns. The golden thread principle comes to life here, as events reach your target ICP, and the team must work closely with PMM on positioning, campaigns on content and activations, digital on promotion, and customers on participation and engagement. Performance metrics, feedback collection, and data analysis measure event success. They track pre-event engagement, day-of metrics, and long-term pipeline and revenue metrics, ensuring new and the right audience engagement.

This has changed depending on the company I've been a part of, and the strategy of that company. I've seen a few models, which have included:

1. Global Demand Generation & Regional Field Marketing - Demand Generation is responsible for overall, global marketing for products, while Field Marketing is focused on specific regions, dedicated to localizing campaigns and handling in-country events.

2. Demand Generation & Account-Based Marketing - Demand Generation is focused on a 1:Many approach, usually through advertising, virtual events, webinars, and website optimization. The ABM team carves out a small group of high-value accounts to receive dedicated messaging and high-touch campaigns.

3. Demand Generation & Corporate Marketing - Demand Generation handles all marketing programs, but works with specialists across marketing to make those programs happen. These might be website specialists, social media specialists, designers, or digital marketers. DG ensures the specialists have what they need to post or run their channels.

4. Just Demand Generation - Usually found in a smaller company, in this model DG handles everything related to programs and managing the channels. They might work with external contractors or another in-house marketer for help with areas where they are not the expert.

While model 4 is seen more often in smaller organizations, each of the other models can fit multiple people in multiple roles with varying responsibilities. Success should always be measured the same way - on pipeline and revenue, and the leading indicators (such as leads) that bring these two outcomes about.

I’m going to approach these questions from the perspective of a product-led growth (PLG) startup (my current position). The reason for this is because I could answer this question in several ways based on many factors. This will help me not have to just say, “it depends”. :) If you are curious about a specific scenario, please feel free to reach out and I’m more than happy to discuss.

How do you structure your demand gen team?

This is going to be based on the desired outcomes. What strengths and gaps do you have on your current team? Once you’ve outlined your response to this question, it will help guide the necessary roles which leads to the next question below. This may be an unpopular opinion but, I would actually challenge you to consider folding growth marketing and product under one team (plus a data analyst, engineer and designer). There is a significant amount of overlap between growth and product that could be remedied by belonging to the same team.

How big is it, what does everyone do?

It’s not about how many people are on the team, but rather how the strengths work together. It’s about meeting the needs of the business based on how the team is currently positioned and possibly future proofing for the nearterm. I recommend mapping this out as the roles will become more evident. For context, I’ve seen a different structure in every org that I have worked at and they all have their own pros and cons.

How do you measure success of each function/person?

I typically try to map success back to revenue metrics. This is even for metrics such as impressions. You have to tell the narrative behind how each metric ladders up to the business objectives. This isn’t always easy and one could argue it’s messy at times. This also has to allow room for creativity and a testing mentality – all while being able to speak to desired outcomes and targets. It’s an art and a science.