What are the pillars of your demand-generation strategy? Key channels and approaches? How to you align the different stakeholders in these processes?

I am focused on B2B marketing to create, drive and capture demand with the end goal of creating a pipeline for sales teams (well, ultimately to acquire customers!). From my perspective, the pillars that feed into the strategy for driving pipeline include:

• Knowing our target audience
• Creating compelling narratives, value propositions, and messaging
• Developing best in class point of view content to educate the market while establishing our brand as trusted thought leader in the space
• Integrated campaigns and multi-channel strategy: getting our message to the right audience at the right time, in the right place (buying journey is complex and requires multiple messages, solutions, tailored to multiple personas at different stages, at any given time, via multiple channels- from digital, to in person events, to social and more)

Aligning stakeholders in these processes is typically done by following an established framework I mentioned in a previous question. In summary- a single project or campaign champion would create a proposal for the project/campaign in the form of a brief that is circulated amongst stakeholders. Alignment and approvals take place with the right decision makers, from there, workstream owners or channel owners are identified and brought into a project/campaign kick off. Shared goals, metrics, targets are established, timelines and workback schedules created, and regular check ins/status updates to ensure we are on track, or to remove roadblocks. Once the project/campaign is complete, a retro is conducted with all stakeholders- this can help ensure best practices are identified, key learnings are addressed, or failed initiatives are deprecated ;)

The audience I target are primarily Fortune 500 C-Suite. In this case, we take an account first approach and weigh events more heavily than digital in our marketing plans. For integrated marketing plans, bringing in the functional experts to inform the strategy from the start is critical. Generally I recommend having a clearly articulated goal/vision with clearly articulated outcomes of success. Then opening the space for ideation to build the strategy jointly helps create the initial alignment needed for your demand gen strategy.

What are the pillars of your demand-generation strategy?

The foundation of a demand generation strategy starts with tracking, measurement and reporting.

You need to have a deep understanding of your ICP (ideal customer profile). Before you can select the channels to target your ICP, you first have to empathize with where they are coming from. Where does your target audience hang out? How do they prefer to consume information? What are their pain points?

Once you have an understanding of your ICP, map out the buyer's journey. What touchpoints will you have with your target audience?

Key channels and approaches?

I prefer to tailor the channels based on the goals. That being said, I consider email and SEO as must-haves. From a performance marketing perspective, this is going to be dependent on where your audience hangs out. For example, how you target a developer versus a realtor would be different approaches.

How do you align the different stakeholders in these processes?

Clear communication, getting ahead of stakeholders’ questions and an ongoing cadence of reporting will all aid in managing stakeholders. Here are a few additional responses on the topic:

• What is the best cadence for gathering stakeholder feedback in preparation for a launch?
• How do you align internal Stakeholders?
• Tips for managing stakeholder input: are there any templates or best practices for when to gather input and how to incorporate (i.e. whose feedback to incorporate vs. ignore, etc.), especially as it relates to a timeline?