What is an important KPI that you see demand generation teams completely missing?

1. Cost per $1 of pipeline

I see a lot of teams simply focus on cost per lead, then cost per opp, then cost per closed won -- but when you look at cost per $1 of pipeline, or even better, cost per $1 of annual recurring revenue, you will start to understand how efficient your demand gen machine is and where you need to turn the dials for maximum efficiency. ie. targeting more up market to pay a higher cost per lead, and higher cost per opp, but a lower cost per $1 of pipeline because the deal is larger.

2. Customer lifetime value

It's important for businesses to understand and track CLV so you know how to allocate resources and optimize their efforts to maximize the return of a customer. If it costs you $500 to acquire a customer that pays $250/yr but you know they churn within the first year, you are actually in the negative. Way more than just the dollar amounts listed above -- there's overhead that doesn't always get calculated -- the cost per rep managing the account, the hourly costs of reps trying to work the deals etc. It's important for teams to not focus on short-term goals but think longer term about the growth and trajectory of the customer for the true overall health and success of the business.

From a product-led growth (PLG) perspective, I don’t see enough emphasis put on identifying and tracking toward an activation or “aha moment” KPI. What is the one action a user or team needs to take to make your program exponentially more successful? Is it adding members to a team account? Is it performing a certain action?

Demand gen teams can no longer solely focus on the acquisition side. While it can be debated whether metrics such as retention fall under demand gen, I urge you to go one step further in quality.

From a product-led growth (PLG) perspective, I don’t see enough emphasis put on identifying and tracking toward an activation or “aha moment” KPI. What is the one action a user or team needs to take to make your program exponentially more successful? Is it adding members to a team account? Is it performing a certain action?

Demand gen teams can no longer solely focus on the acquisition side. While it can be debated whether metrics such as retention fall under demand gen, I urge you to go one step further in quality.

ROI and marketing attribution is the most challenging KPIs for startups in the technology space; most of these companies do not measure CLV and instead, they measure results on an annual basis, depending on factors such as average sales cycle, average deal size and market maturity, reporting returns of marketing investment in the short term is challenging. One important KPI that demand generation teams may overlook in fast-growing technology companies is the customer lifetime value (CLV).

CLV is a metric that calculates the total amount of revenue a customer is expected to generate for a company over the course of their relationship. It takes into account factors such as customer acquisition cost, average purchase value, and customer retention rate, and provides a more accurate picture of a company's revenue potential than simply looking at short-term revenue or leads generated.

By focusing on CLV, demand generation teams can prioritize their efforts on acquiring high-value customers who are more likely to generate long-term revenue for the company. They can also identify areas where they can improve customer retention and increase the overall value of each customer.

Overall, CLV can provide a more comprehensive and strategic view of a company's revenue growth potential and help demand generation teams make more informed decisions about their marketing and sales strategies.

The biggest thing that many demand generation teams miss is a Revenue metric.

Typical ones to think of are:

• ARR
• Customers
• Pipeline ($ based)
• # of Opportunities

For many demand generation teams, there's a tendency to believe that their job is done when the lead is there (MQL, PQL, etc.). The reality of the situation is that the job of the entire function is to drive impact across customers and revenue. If we're providing low quality leads that doesn't ultimately translate into pipeline and revenue, then we're missing the intent of our job.

Brandformance.

Brandformance is the idea of driving brand awareness to improve performance and conversion rates.

Most demand gen teams are laser focused on clicks and conversions. It is important to take a few steps back and look at the big picture. Easier said than done for sure. We all know the importance of brand awareness and the impact it has on clicks and conversions. That said, it is not easy to prove the ROI of brand campaigns which makes budget approval tougher.

I would encourage demand gen marketers to continue to test the impact of brand on demand gen campaigns especially on LinkedIn and YouTube. Collaborate with LinkedIn customer success teams and get them to help you prove the success of LinkedIn brand campaigns on LinkedIn demand gen campaigns. YouTube team can help with the brand lift study. Be sure to launch a concurrent search lift study to prove the impact of brand campaign on conversions.

A fully burdened CAC/LTV (cost of acquisition vs lifetime value) model. This is very hard to do and even harder to do right but it is the only way to truly understand if the investments you're making are paying off. If you can't do it on an ongoing basis at least revisit it a few times a year. Make sure that what you're bringing in is net positive to the company within a reasonable payback period.

There are a couple of KPIs that can do with some love:

• Customer Lifetime Value: We don’t see enough emphasis on CLV, which is an important metric in improving customer retention. Without tracking CLV, we are constantly in a state of monitoring tactical metrics even for large enterprise accounts. A focus on CLV will yield rich dividends in retaining the top strategic customers, converting them into advocates for your brand.

• Account based marketing (ABM): Not 1 specific metric, but all metrics tracked through the ABM lens. Basically, everything account related from page views, to MQLs, SQLs, Opportunities. We don’t track it well enough and hence lose that edge when it comes to account based marketing. This also includes unknown visitors to the ABM pages, signups from personal email-ids, etc. For ABM, everything should go through the account lens, with a razor sharp focus.

Net new expansion revenue. Most demand gen teams are positioning at the top of the funnel and driving net new logos. I think more demand gen teams should be focused on customer expansion and given the resources to do so, such as:

• Targeting capabilities

• Customer data and CRM

• Predictive modeling

• Personalized communication

• Alignment with CS teams

Today, some Demand Generation teams still work off of leads and not pipeline/revenue. Leads are only a leading indicator to revenue - they should not be goals or tied to compensation plans. While marketing cannot directly impact revenue (this is sales' job in most cases), they can directly impact pipeline build with campaigns, tech, processes, and sales enablement.

Tracking lead targets should be a step on the road as you build out your revenue reporting - not the final goal.

Great question! To me, it would be what I call 'MCI' (Marketing Customer Interaction) or 'MAI' (Marketing Account Interactions). The goal here is to track marketing touches at the account level.

By tracking all campaign touches—whether it’s for a prospect account or an account ready for expansion—you can assess some level of intent. For instance, let’s say one account had 5 people attend a webinar, 2 people meet us at an event, and 10 others open and click your newsletter. This would give a total score of 17 interactions for the week, which is a clear indicator that the sales team should reach out.

MCIs allow you to prioritize these accounts based on urgency. Sales teams love this!

While KPIs such as MQLs, SQLs, Marketing generated pipeline are typical, I think KPIs that allow marketing and sales to get more granular into what is actually happen with lead disposition is critical. Often times marketers will have a laser focus on those standard KPIs (which is not a bad thing) that they often times don't have the right insights to determine why leads may or may not be converting. For this I believe it's also important to look at KPIs and data points associated to different lead attributed. Meaning, speed to lead (how long on average is it taking a marketing generated lead to be followed up with), the average number of touch points made into a lead before it's converted or disqualified, as well as disposition statuses (i.e. qualified, no-answer/no-connect - disqualified, not interested - disqualified, etc.). In addition to lead disposition measurement, it's also important to understand WHO your marketing team is engaging with and passing over to sales. For this it's important to align on "decision maker" or "C-suite" level leads vs. influencers and how many your organization is generating each week/month/year and the investment aligned to each lead persona. All of these additional demand generation KPIs help provide powerful insights and tell a story off the value marketing is adding for Sales.

An often-overlooked KPI for demand generation teams is your company’s brand strength 🌟. It’s easy for demand generation professionals to focus solely on bottom-of-funnel activities—tracking last-touch actions like demo requests 📩 or understanding immediate drivers of pipeline growth 📈. However, this can lead to neglecting the critical role that branding plays in long-term success.

Your brand is one of the strongest sources of inbound leads. The number of people actively seeking out your company is a direct reflection of how strong your brand is 🏆. While demand gen teams typically prioritize short-term wins, it’s essential to think bigger and invest in building brand equity over time.

Here’s how to address this:

1. For Smaller Organizations 🏗️: Focus on meaningful, targeted ways to build your brand within your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Engage in activities that resonate with your audience and increase awareness.

2. For Larger Organizations 🌐: Collaborate closely with teams like social media 📲, creative 🎨, and branding 💡 to ensure your demand gen efforts contribute to strengthening the company’s overall brand presence.
   

By integrating branding into your demand gen strategy, you’ll create a more reliable and scalable source of inbound leads. Strong brands are what drive sustainable growth, making brand strength a KPI no demand generation team should overlook 🔑.

In any demand generation role, you are very clear on the "must-have" KPIs e.g., ROI, MLQs, conversion Rate, CPL, etc. This is all about being "efficient," but you also need to be "effective", and to me, it's

80% (efficient) / 20% (effective) = Complete KPI

Effective means are more qualitative, such as how well they interact with the sales, product, and customer success teams to support and collaborate.

This comes to getting regular qualitative feedback. E.g., "Please provide an example of a recent interaction or collaboration you had with the sales team, product teams, or customer success team. How would you rate this interaction's effectiveness (1 to 5), and what could have been done differently to improve the collaboration and support provided?"