I’m the first Demand Generation hire in my company. What advice would you give to someone tasked with establishing this function in an existing business structure?

Make sure reporting is set up to measure what’s important and is agreed upon across sales & marketing You can’t wait till the martech stack is built or the website is perfect or your strategy is complete to start generating demand. You’re going to have to build the race car while you are racing. You need to capture/generate demand while you are standing up new process, getting new martech in place, etc. Set up a regular cadence of communication with your stakeholders- actively setting and ma ...Read More

Focus on small, incremental improvements with frequent check-ins and meaningful status updates for the whole org.  Focus on the teams you will be presenting your results to and fully understand the audience and their OKRs. Make sure what you share aligns to their OKR otherwise you will lose them and their partnership.  For sales, their objectives are to close deals -- you should share with them 1. The work you're doing to educate potential buyers of what we do 2. The work you're doing to get vis ...Read More

Depending on your business model and offering, I recommend first and foremost partnering with your cross-functional stakeholders and building trust. For example, in a traditional B2B sales led go-to-market motion, you should make it a point to become best friends with your sales leadership team and understanding what is most important to them. If you're not aligned with what is important to sales, it'll be very difficult to see success. If you're part of a self-service SaaS go-to-market motion, ...Read More

Align With Sales First: Meet with sales to understand their goals, the ICP, and what constitutes a qualified lead. Build trust early. Audit the Funnel: Assess what’s working in current lead gen efforts. Are there quick wins (e.g., better nurture paths, small targeting adjustments)? Start Simple: Focus on a few key campaigns and prove value before expanding. Build Infrastructure: Invest in tools that provide visibility and scalability (e.g., marketing automation, lead scoring). Show ROI Early: Pr ...Read More

Here are some ways to get started Align on goals and how success will be measured for you Input tour from your partners and stakeholders to inform your plan Create your vision/strategy for how to deliver on your goals/targets to align and socialize with your manager and stakeholders (your marketing team and sales as focus points) Be open to feedback and incorporate the feedback as you socialize your plan. Spend time is developing and setting up my measurement frameworks. This is how you're going ...Read More

Congratulations on this exciting opportunity! What a wonderful opportunity and an exciting ride that you're about to embark upon. As someone who has been in a similar position, here’s some of my advice: Don’t underestimate the work culture.Demand Generation is a structured discipline, often relying on data, metrics, and a systematic approach to driving leads and revenue. Your colleagues with creative or brand-focused marketing backgrounds might find this way of working unfamiliar. Take time to u ...Read More

As you take charge of the function, Start with understand the current landscape across the business and marketing – what is currently working, what is the need of the business, etc. The next order of business would be to establish short term and long term goals. Short term goals, will help you establish credibility with the business and show some quick wins. Long term goals, is where you will get to establish the function and show significant impact to the business. As you go about the above, ma ...Read More

Congrats on being the first demand generation hire! I recommend focusing on getting a lay of the land, prioritization and iterating as time progresses. You won’t be able to do everything immediately, but don’t let that stop you! Communication. Be sure to establish clear communication with your stakeholders. Understand what is currently working and what isn’t working in the business. Establish an ongoing cadence to sync up cross-functionally. Understand your customers. To create a successful dema ...Read More

The biggest mistake demand gen hires make is jumping straight into campaign planning. Start with what the company thinks it knows. You’ll be surprised by how much disconnect you uncover once you dig in. Who is the buyer… really? Go beyond the boilerplate ICP doc and understand intent, behavior, and internal motivations What pain are they actively trying to solve? Why do deals actually close or stall? Your CRM can give you some really great insights Before you build any campaign, audit previous o ...Read More