If your demand generation team has only 1 or 2 people responsible for covering multiple products with complex features, how would you recommend dividing the workload in the short-term so as best to support long-term growth and expansion of the team?

For me, it all boils down to what's the most impactful. Generally speaking, we find more short-term and long-term success by going for depth vs. breadth.

The key question to answer is: How do you know where to place your bets?

I like to use a betting framework for this. The key is to understand, as cheaply as possible, what's the most likely to return against the use of resources (people, effort, money, etc.). We can understand this through the use of money or data (qualitative and quantitative).

Once we've shipped a few things (campaigns, experiments, etc.), it becomes clear whether or not we've got something that has legs. The key is to lean into those with legs and stop doing things that don't.

Doing that provides impact early, and gives both you and the company breathing room. Once you've reached that stage, you can go back and figure out the ones that didn't show a lot of early success and determine why. 

As with most questions I'll answer there isn't a single answer, this really depends on where your team and company are and what the current needs are. Here's a few thoughts on how you can address this.

1. FOCUS - Small teams often have direct lines of communication to leadership, leadership often has a lot of ideas, those ideas are almost always a distraction from what you should be doing. Most leaders aren't trying to distract you, if you take their idea and say when you think you could address it relative to your current priorities they'll be fine with it or help you reprioritize. Shiny object syndrome is a thing, don't let it get you.

2. Ensure there's a funnel there - If any of the products absolutely lack the basics required to drive growth then focus on building those. I strongly believe in not letting perfect be the enemy of great. Build the MVP to ensure something exists end to end then move on to the next.

3. Be thoughtful about what work you do - With everything in place you can start thinking about what work needs to be done, what the impact COULD be (finger in the wind is fine), and what the level of effort is. That will help you build initial prioritization.

4. Group the work to minimize scope - When you create one piece of work, lets say a piece of content, what you have created likely contains all the pieces you need to help update a related landing page, add depth to ads, review the product page, or revamp internal enablement. I coach my teams to look for every possible way to take advantage of the work they do.

5. Measure what you do - I think the biggest part of my careers success has been my obsession with knowing the results of my work and trying to beat them. Not just because of the competitive benefits of racing my past successes but measurement, moneyballing my work, has been a huge driver in helping me understand what work is and isn't worth doing. This is how you learn what works for your current company and team, make sure you measure it and then benchmark your results and future expectations, then rethink your approach to prioritizing based on this.

6. One foot in front of the other - It is super easy for smaller teams to feel overwhelmed and like the work is never going to end. All you can do is get the next thing done, and the next, and.. you get it. The work is never going to end, but your work day does. Keeping yourself healthy will actually improve your results, you are the asset not the marketing. A campaign launches two days late there is little impact, you feel completely drained and burned out for two months and the impact is HUGE.

I realize this didn't really answer your question about short term vs long term directly but I've used the word "priority" a lot because that's what will help you there. Short term growth often means paid growth that stops when the money stops, you'll have to prioritize that based on impact but you can consider impact over time as well. The foundation for the long term has to be there, your products have to be well positioned, you have to have content that speaks to your audience, relationships with your customers have to be built, etc. So for longer term projects think about longer term results (what will this get me in its lifetime?), for short-term think in the sense of what you get for the time you're spending on it and the cost of that spend.

I hope this somewhat answered your question.

I would focus on ruthless prioritization of projects that directly influence the KPI you are held accountable to. Long term expansion is out of the picture right now. If you don't hit your goals you will not grow or expand. So roll your sleeves up and hustle.

Regarding the complex product, I would think about the 2-3 most valuable features that customers can't live without and are sticky once you get a customer. Divide up your team depending on your goals. Let's say it's acquisition. Have one person focusing on messaging and positioning. Another person on demand gen. Work super close together to build campaigns and make sure everything you do is driven by a data point or insight. Focus your efforts along the customer journey where you have the least coverage. Have a testing mindset. You aren't trying to scale anything just yet, try several things and measure the impact before you go all in.

Once you start finding some success and give yourself a little buffer room on your goals, you can start thinking about scaling the team or scaling programs. As you scale, so do processes, which means more overhead, more administrative, more "work" managing the work.

It’s common to have demand generation teams that are lean. Don’t let this overwhelm you. Essentially, it comes down to being really crisp on the goals and aligning your efforts to support these desired business outcomes.

Here are a few tips to get you started:

• What is the priority? Be sure to be very clear on what the priorities are. Let this help guide prioritization of the workload.

• What do you specialize in? It will help optimize the process if individuals specialize in a specific area and/or product.

• What are your automation opportunities? Are there mundane tasks that you could automate with a tool such as Zapier?

Ultimately, this comes down to being intentional and strategic. Your efforts should be for a purpose and support the overarching business goals.