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 managing expectations with your stakeholders is key to building trust.

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 visitors on your website or your targeted ICPs to convert into a lead

3. The work you're doing to help move prospects down the funnel while sales is working them in parallel

This will get you some strong, enthusiastic partners and alignment with the other leaders. 

Understand what's currently working when you come in, and accelerate it.

If you're in an established business, they must be doing something right to be generating demand and revenue right now. Understanding what that is will help you from a prioritization and early impact standpoint. 

Over time, understanding why helps you identify other areas of impact that you can spin up that match where prospects are and the internal GTM flywheel.

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, make sure to set up regular reporting so that everyone is aligned and aware of the goals you are working towards.

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, partnering with Product leadership will be critical so you can work together to understand product dependencies that lead to successful customer acquisition while decreasing product barriers for customers.

Here are some ways to get started

1. Align on goals and how success will be measured for you

2. Input tour from your partners and stakeholders to inform your plan

3. 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)

4. Be open to feedback and incorporate the feedback as you socialize your plan.

5. Spend time is developing and setting up my measurement frameworks. This is how you're going to point to value and impact from #1

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:

1. 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 understand the existing culture and their style of work—how decisions are made, how success is celebrated, and how teams collaborate.

2. Know that you live in a bubble.
   As a Demand Generation expert, you bring specialized knowledge, but you may quickly realize others in the organization don’t fully grasp the terminology, concepts, or value of what you’re building. Before you launch your programs, invest time in educating stakeholders and peers. Provide presentations to explain what Demand Generation is, how it works, and how it aligns with the company’s goals. Show teams what success could look like with concrete examples from similar businesses or industry benchmarks.

3. Take everyone on a journey, but know that time is against you.
   It’s essential to bring colleagues along, especially other parts of the Marketing organization as well as cross-functional partners like Sales, Product, and Customer Success. Build rapport, seek input, and actively campaign for their buy-in. But don’t wait for perfect alignment before getting started—prioritize quick wins to build momentum. For example, launch a pilot campaign targeting a low-hanging fruit segment and share the results to demonstrate early success.

4. Communicate often and clearly.
   Your role and its impact may not be immediately apparent to everyone. Regular updates—whether through team meetings, email updates, or dashboards—are critical to keeping stakeholders and colleagues informed. Share not just your activities but also your progress against goals.

5. Emphasize the critical nature of your work.
   Demand Generation is the lifeblood of pipeline creation, and your programs will directly impact revenue. Frame your role as a key partnership with Sales to fuel business growth. Use data to illustrate this connection, such as projecting how your campaigns will contribute to pipeline targets or revenue growth. Position Demand Generation as one critical component to the company’s success—without it, scaling will be nearly impossible.

6. Set up strong foundations.
   Before diving into tactics, focus on laying the groundwork. Define clear goals and KPIs, establish alignment with Sales on lead definitions and qualification criteria, and ensure your tech stack (e.g., CRM, marketing automation) is ready to support scalable programs.

7. Celebrate small wins and learn from failures.
   Building something from scratch is a marathon, not a sprint. Celebrate milestones like your first campaign launch, the first MQL that converts to an opportunity, or the first deal influenced by marketing. These moments will help rally the broader team around your efforts. At the same time, learn to fail fast. Be prepared for setbacks and treat them as learning opportunities.
   

Your success in your new role will set the tone for how the company views Demand Generation in the long run so stay curious, adaptable, and focused on driving impact.

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 demand generation strategy you need to have a deep understanding of your customers. Listen to sales calls. Speak with customers. Truly understand what problem you are solving for your customers.
• Reporting. You’ll need to do an inventory of tracking, reporting and gaps. This will be necessary so that you can facilitate read-outs of the demand gen programs you run.
• Documentation. As the first demand gen hire, people are going to be curious and ask questions. Document processes and frameworks that would be helpful to communicate with others.

This list is not exhaustive, but it will give you a solid foundation to grow from.