Demand Generation Subteams

The key ingredients of a successful campaign launch are below. This is focused on what's within your control to ensure it is full proof. * Tracking. Do you have event tracking in place? A way to measure revenue and or contribution to pipeline? * Clarity on desired outcomes. What success metrics are you tracking towards? What are you trying to learn from the campaign? Clarity on this from the start is critical. * KPI measurement. How are you going to communicate outcomes? Do you have a dashboard that measures performance? * Documented process. Do you have a project/campaign plan? Having a campaign blueprint enables the campaign to be as full proof as possible (or within your control).

First, I’d like to define a B2B campaign as a set of tactics that will drive pipeline revenue for a particular solution or a market segment. The campaign timeline can span over a quarter or 6+ months. To launch a successful campaign you first need to answer these 5 questions. * What are the campaign goals * Begin with the end in mind. * Keep your eyes on the prize and optimize relentlessly * Who is the Target audience * Persona - Business and technical buyer * Segment - Enterprise, Mid-market, SMB * Geo - North America, EMEA, LATAM, APAC * Verticals * What is the value proposition * What are the buyer pain points * How can our solution help solve * Why should they choose us over competitors * What is the content mix by persona and buyer jobs to be done * Buyer jobs to be done including problem identification, sol exploration, req building, vendor selection, validation and consensus building. Be sure to include different formats such as e-books, checklists, analyst content, video demos etc * By persona - business buyer and/or technical buyer * What is the budget * This will guide the channel/tactic mix * Define the tactic mix including both * Paid media - paid search, paid social, third party programs, trade shows * Owned media - website, email nurture, webinars, blogs Once you have the answers you are ready to plan and launch a solid campaign. Pro tip: Don't wait for everything (ads, emails, landing pages etc.) to be perfect. The mantra is to launch and optimize :))

The visual design and messaging is integral because it taps into emotion. You want people to feel the emotion from the story you are telling from the words you use through to the visuals they see. These elements also bring the story together across every touch point. Some people are visual learners others are readers. Using multiple mediums helps reach your audience where they are at. Have you ever interacted with a brand where the emotion you feel is consistent? Perhaps they make you feel like you are having fun doing a task or motivation to get something done. This is where loyalty is built.

* Messaging and content should be funnel specific and aligned with the buyer jobs to be done. I have used the Gartner B2B Buying methodology which is based on the foundation that the buyer’s journey involves a common set of “jobs” that must be completed to their satisfaction before they decide to buy. To enable buying, marketers need to meaningfully help buyers complete a set of specific buying “jobs” including: * Problem identification - Thought leadership content, blogs * Solution exploration - E-books, E-guides * Requirements building - Checklists, Cheat Sheets * Vendor selection - Analyst content such as Gartner MQ and Forrester Wave * Validation and consensus building - Success stories and customer testimonials * Webinars work across all of the above * Visual design plays a crucial role in making sure the buyer experience is cohesive. The way I have ensured this is by looping in the creative team early on and sharing the campaign strategy and timeline with them so they can see the big picture and can create consistent visuals

Here are the four most important parameters that determine your Channel strategy when designing an Integrated Campaign.  1. Who? - Audience * Are you talking to developers, end-users, or decision-makers?  * How large is the buying group for your product?  * Is your product a single or multi-department purchase? 2. Why? - Marketing objective Is your campaign objective creating awareness, building pipeline, or accelerating pipeline? Each objective dictates the count of audience you have available to target which in turn informs the decision to choose channels.  For example, if your objective is to accelerate pipeline, you might be limited to using targeted Social (custom audience), emails, closed-door events, and direct mail. However, if your objective is to create awareness, your channel coverage needs to expand dramatically because you are now trying to reach a broader audience to inform them of your existence. Now you are thinking Display, Content syndication, 3rd party tradeshows & publishers, etc. 3. What? - Average Contract Value (ACV) or ARPA What kind of product do you sell? Typically, it's safe to assume that a product with a higher ACV needs consideration and involvement from senior decision-makers across LoBs. Note that the same decision-makers are not easily accessible via conventional channels such as Paid social, email, Paid search, etc. Therefore your channel mix needs to evolve to match where they pay attention to. In this scenario, your channel mix might include direct mail, exclusive invites to 3rd party events, etc.  4. How much? - Available budget If you are well-funded, go ahead and explore multiple channels until you have a mix that delivers predictable lead volume and Qualified Pipe.  If funds are tight, you might want to prioritize channels based on 3 factors -  - Does that channel have your buyer's attention? (qualitative assessment)  - What is the Cost per reach per channel? - Based on rough funnel math, can this Cost per reach ultimately deliver a respectable Pipe per $ spent over the duration of your sales cycle?  Overall, two variables determine the effectiveness of this strategy -  1. Do you have a sufficient volume of buyers who you can target? 2. Are you able to effectively and efficiently access those channels to reach them?

When designing an integrated campaign, I recommend starting with the business objective or goal. What are the desired outcomes from the campaign? This is your north star that will guide your strategy and the channels that are needed to support it. Next, identify where your customers hang out based on your desired outcomes. In X scenario, we would find our customers at Y and Z. Do you have budget needs for these channels? What stakeholders would need to be involved? Lastly, ask yourself, what measurement, data and analytics is needed to measure the desired outcomes? How will you measure performance across channels for the integrated campaign? How do you take into consideration how each channel impacts the other? There are many other variables that may need to be factored in depending on your business model, go-to-market strategy and the sophistication of your offerings; this is a general framework. These questions are foundational though and you’ll find the need to layer on additional questions specific to your use case.

The key variable that affects the choice of channels is -- target audience. 1. Audience type - Is this a new business campaign or install base, cross-sell / up-sell campaign? New business campaigns are heavy on paid media and install base campaigns are heavy on owned media 2. Market segment - Is this an SMB/mid-market campaign or an enterprise campaign? New business SMB/Mid-market campaigns are largely driven by inbound tactics such as paid search, website, SEO whereas Enterprise campaigns require an ABM strategy Other key variables that affect choice of channels are of course pipeline goals and budget.

Your buyer's journey as well as your demand funnel, play a key role in this decision. * First set of channels & tactics: A rule of thumb that has worked for me when launching a campaign is to select the channel(s) that provide the widest audience reach. I've consistently observed that 'Audience reach' & 'Frequency of reach' have had a clear impact on overall campaign performance (qualified lead volume and pipeline).  But the way I think about 'Reach' is that it is a necessary, not a sufficient condition.  So what else matters? Curating the right 'offers', and the right 'format'. For example, Linkedin (the channel) offers a reasonable reach per month for most B2B SaaS players. What offer you choose to launch the campaign with is equally important? Should it be a global virtual summit headlined by Top influencers or a Playbook with interviews from well-regarded industry practitioners? Here two very different offers are served on the same channel.  * Next set of channels & tactics: As you start thinking about the Demand capture phase of your campaign, you'll work with channels that reach fewer audiences. These channels include SEO, Paid Search, In-product journey, SDR engagement, etc. Most of these channels involve high-effort, and a high-volume of output, so prioritization is key. A way to allocate budgets toward these channels is by prioritizing them by reach, expected buyer engagement & intent.

It is important to recognize that the B2B buying cycle is not linear. Various buyers can be in different stages of the buying cycle and the best way to address this is to have: 1. Always-on tactics such as paid search, paid social, and email nurture. These are by nature evergreen campaigns and must be optimized quarterly or based on performance 2. Time-sensitive tactics such as webinars, tradeshows and in-person and online BOF events such as executive round tables That said, it is important to have the MOF/BOF tactics such as email nurture and SDR outreach sequences live before you launch paid media campaigns. This will ensure the right follow-ups are triggered the moment the first content lead or the first demo lead or the first event lead hits the CRM.

It all starts with communication as simple as it sounds. Understand the customer journey and the various touch points you'll have with your customer. This takes preparation even if you are the sole person running the tactics. Have you ever been on the receiving end of an ad placement that didn't make sense? Perhaps I pay attention since I'm a marketer, but it isn't a delightful experience on the consumer's end. Stress test your strategy. Be mindful of how the tactics interact. Is the messaging aligned? Does it tell the same story? The customer journey is not linear so preparation is necessary to ensure cohesiveness.

This is where using Account Based Marketing and Demand Unit Waterfall (DUW) comes into play, especially for B2B Mid-market and Enterprise segments. Integrating a solution like Demandbase into your tech stack will help you identify accounts based on how they engage with your campaigns and execute channel tactics based on the DUW stages * Target Demand * This stage is all about sizing the market and identifying your Total Addressable Market or TAM based on your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). * Which accounts are most likely to buy your products/solutions/services? * Pro Tip: Execute TOF (top of funnel) campaigns on paid social and third-party media partners * Active Demand * Of the TAM, how many accounts are in-market to buy in the near future * Pro Tip: Present TOF and MOF (middle of funnel) content via paid social and email * Engaged Demand * How many accounts have interacted with your website, campaigns or content? * Pro Tip: Continue the buyer’s journey with MOF content served up by paid social, email nurture and webinars * Prioritized Demand * In this stage, you’ll take all the target accounts that have engaged with you and prioritize them by Account Score. * Pro Tip: Build dedicated Outreach sequences for Sales Development teams / SDRs to use * Qualified Demand * SDRs have to start multi-threading to key contacts within the account. * Pro Tip: Work with SDRs to execute a targeted, high-touch direct mail campaign via solutions like Alyce or Sendoso * Pipeline Opportunity * More and more marketers are getting involved at this stage * Pro Tip: Execute brand campaigns on paid social, YouTube and display to stay top of mind

Let's first define an 'integrated campaign' approach.  * At its core, the 'Integrated' approach implies three things - knowing and using the buyer's journey as the premise to building the marketing strategy, aiming for consistency in marketing across touchpoints & sequencing your messaging across these touchpoints * A 'campaign' is nothing but a coordinated set of assets & tactics to help your buyers progress from Awareness to Consideration to Decision. The other underrated impact of a campaign is its ability to corral organizational focus, time, and efforts toward a single goal and theme (sales, product, customer success, marketing)  An Integrated Campaign strategy is an amalgam of these concepts. So do all businesses need an integrated campaign strategy? Yes. But does an integrated campaign strategy look the same for all businesses? No.  The need for a Series A startup to craft an integrated campaign strategy is as much as it is for a Series C & Post-IPO business. The nature and scope of integration, however, vary significantly.  These factors might help as you think through this. 1. Have you achieved Product-Channel(s) fit?  * If are a Seed stage startup and have reliably managed to scale one or two acquisition channels, you have other things on your mind than 'integrating' these two channels. That is because, today, you do not have the channel width to capture a large part of the buyer's journey (community, email, in-app, review sites).  * If you have a larger business, you might already have the channel width that covers a large proportion of your buyer's journey. This is the right time to think about an 'integrated campaign' strategy. Some of the questions to ask are - a) Do I know my buyer's journey with a fair degree of confidence b) Are they experiencing the same 'messaging theme' across touchpoints c) How can I sequence my tactics & messaging based on the demand funnel  2. What is your GTM motion?  * Are you PLG or Sales-led or both? If you are PLG, you focus on specific channels that drive inbound demand - SEO, Paid Search, Content, In-app virality, Community, Review sites & Emails. If you have a Sales-led motion, you (mostly) focus on channels that go beyond these to also include Webinars, Events, SDR messaging, & Content. In both scenarios, your buyers want to experience your business in a way that is consistent across these touchpoints and takes them through a journey (sequencing in messaging) irrespective of whichever touchpoint they are in. 3. Do you have an established Brand marketing strategy within your organization? * If your org runs brand marketing campaigns, you'll need to redefine the architecture of your demand-gen-led integrated campaigns. In this new scenario, you'll have to view the buyer's journey together and build out common areas of leverage. For example, a Brand marketing campaign usually targets a large proportion of 'Problem unaware' buyers. So how can your demand-gen team nudge these buyers down the funnel via an integrated approach? Here, the role of demand-gen shifts to nudging these buyers to the 'Consideration' & 'Decision' stages using the same messaging theme and leveraging tactics (such as collecting a retargeting pool of qualified intent, etc.) that capture their engagement and intent for your category or business. 

When determining whether an integrated approach is the best campaign strategy for your org, I recommend considering the following aside from the standard factors such as budget: * What are the desired outcomes? An integrated campaign may help accelerate the impact you are trying to drive. Would this fit into the mix? * Do you know what your ideal customer profile (ICP) is? If this is clearly defined, you could better target the mix of tactics that can get you to your desired outcomes, faster. * What does your team look like? Depending on the scope of the integrated campaign, you may need additional headcount or you’ll have to manage the workload of those executing and reporting on this campaign.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I don’t believe there is one set way in which tactics should go live and end. I prefer to tailor this based on the mix of tactics, seasonality, goals and desired outcomes. How are you measuring these tactics? Are you measuring them or is this more of a creative brand play? The key to this is to customize based on the strategy. I don’t recommend approaching this from a “one-size-fits-all” perspective. If you are doing true measurement, think about how the sequence of tactics impact one another as well. How do you want to approach the lift measurement? Lastly, it’s about assessing the experiment and then responding based on the results. See how a set sequence just would not work?

I believe that all integrated campaigns should exist to drive pipeline & revenue (there is an exception though: when this is not true is when you are creating a category). The biggest difference between these two goals is the volume and the type of buyers you choose to ignore or add to your campaign strategy. For example, an integrated campaign strategy that is focused on meeting pipe goals (assuming limited funds) is focused (more) on two buyer stages - Consideration & Intent. It therefore already assumes that the majority of buyers are aware of the product category and the existence of possible solutions in the market.  * Your biggest leverage point here is to make yourself known in specific buying situations (eg. 'we are an affordable alternative to XYZ', 'we are easier to use compared to ABC'). Think of these as inputs to your ad creatives, content assets, etc. * You contain these seemingly disparate buying situations into a 'Campaign theme', a singular go-to-market messaging that focuses the collective energy of all GTM teams in your organization  * You now create the right mix of offers that get your buyers to self-select themselves into the demand funnel. What is the type and number of webinars, owned vs 3rd party events, content assets, Demos, Free Trials, Free for forever plan, etc? * You develop a media plan that lays out these offers in a certain sequence, and the time period and is promoted using specific tactics. Since your focus is pipe-gen, it's important to have an educated pov on gated vs ungated content strategy. This, usually, is not as big a concern area in a Brand marketing campaign.

The strategy will differ by the tools, tracking, and performance reporting you’ll use. Since the desired impact differs (revenue versus awareness), the tactics too will typically differ. Here’s my perspective: * Pipeline revenue: The type of tactics I recommend for this would be more mature and higher converters such as SEO. It is rare to see an SEO program that does not support revenue successfully. * Increasing brand awareness: The type of tactics I recommend for this would consist of a mix of awareness touch points. I would answer the question of, where do our customers like to hang out? Where do we need to have a presence to get in front of that type of audience? I’m personally not of the belief that there is only one approach to this. There are so many variables I would customize my recommendation based on the perspective above.

From my perspective, it's not about the amount of tactics but rather how impactful the channel is based on your goals. More channels does not mean better results. Rather than thinking of a count of tactics, ask yourself the following: * What is the goal of the campaign? * For each tactic you are considering, what is the estimated outcome or impact you believe it will drive? * How are you layering in organic efforts? I recommend getting your bang for the buck based on this criteria. Select your mix of tactics based on what is smart for your goals.

I recommend thinking about demand generation as having a toolbox. Depending on the goal, you will select the appropriate tactics. Here is how this impacts the areas outlined in the question: * Company's industry: Some tactics are more appropriate for specific industries. This is also dependent on regulations and more sensitive privacy concerns. Where do your customers hang out? Is it somewhere that can be targeted? I recommend viewing this from the perspective of how do you meet your prospective customers where they are? * Products/services: This also will impact the mix of tactics you select. Is this a local or SaaS type of product as an example? Are you offering an enterprise solution that may be a request for contact or is it a self-serve PLG model? * Organizational goals: This is arguably the most critical element. What outcome are you trying to drive? How will you measure performance? Do you have an experimental budget? If not, you'll need to select tactics that you are more confident about that can drive results. Lastly, I recommend continuous performance reporting. Respond to the data and adjust accordingly.