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 ;)
Demand Generation Stakeholders
2 answers
Director (Head of) Global GTM & Demand Generation, Shopify • December 5
Head of Growth Marketing, Observable | Formerly Issuu, OpenText, Webroot • February 6
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?
1 answer
Head of Growth Marketing, Observable | Formerly Issuu, OpenText, Webroot • February 5
I believe the key to this question is to be very intentional with your time
allocation. It’s a balance of managing defined priorities while also being
flexible as needed. Be sure to communicate clear expectations for projects and
ad-hoc requests. When is the deliverable needed? What is the priority of the
deliverable compared to other deliverables?
I’ve also found success with planning for the next day. For example, evaluate
the status of your projects at the end of your day. Think through how you are
going to approach them the next day. Find the project management process that
works best for you. Be realistic with yourself about what is doable. The more
experience you have with this the more accurate your estimates will be for
managing ad-hoc requests with your projects.
3 answers
Director (Head of) Global GTM & Demand Generation, Shopify • December 5
This is a bit tricky, especially if the feedback provider is an exec. One of the
tactics that has helped me in the past is to outline what is in scope versus
what is not. Be clear on this and have your approvers align to it. When
suggestions that are out of scope and could impact your timelines, reference
that initial proposal/project brief, “great suggestion, we would love to
incorporate that in the next phase, edition, general availability, etc. but it
is not in scope for this phase of the project”.
Thinking of this through a project lens, I have seen DACI or RAPID frameworks
help by assigning clearer roles and decision-making responsibilities. The
project owner then knows who they need to involve to gather input from, who they
need to keep informed, who can contribute to the decision, and who can block it.
I've seen this approach work well with a product launch, for example, which is a
huge cross-functional effort. It allows demand gen teams, product marketers,
content teams, PR and others to be clearer about their role, provide input, and
share the dependencies and deadlines that need to be adhered to in order to
execute their part of the project.
My second tip is to avoid decisions by committee -- it's paralysing! I would try
to limit the number of people who approve/sign off on a project.
Finally, to manage stakeholder input, be conscious of people's time - it's a
finite resource. Large group meetings going through status updates are generally
not valuable to anyone. Gather the updates in advance and use the time together
to review blockers and agree on the next steps.
Head of Growth Marketing, Observable | Formerly Issuu, OpenText, Webroot • February 4
From the beginning of a project, set clearly defined objectives and goals. I
believe the key to managing stakeholder input is to lay the foundation from the
beginning. It’s much harder to manage stakeholders and their feedback if the
structure is not set from day 1. If each interaction anchors to this then your
stakeholders won’t experience surprises.
Clear communication is going to be necessary as well. My preference is to get
ahead of the questions. Define how you are going to communicate progress and
measure performance. You’ll find it is much easier to manage timelines if your
stakeholders have an expected cadence for communication. This also helps manage
the opinions that are received from multiple channels at multiple times (which
makes project management difficult).
Lastly, documentation is important. Will everyone read it? No, but it serves as
a point of reference for stakeholder management. As input is gathered and
documented, you should also define if it is in scope or part of a future phase.
Acknowledge the input and show it as captured and not forgotten, but also
reinforce what will be incorporated now versus what will be part of the backlog
for prioritization.
3 answers
Chief Marketing Officer, Calendly • August 16
No matter where I am in my career, I always consider my work in the context of
how I’m making the company more successful in achieving its goals. In other
words, rather than focusing on my personal priorities, I spend my time thinking
about how the problems I am solving show up across the organization, and how I
can partner with key stakeholders to solve them.
As a marketer, our challenge is often understanding how our work supports sales.
I learned early on in my career that partnering closely with SDRs and AEs will
make my team more effective and the company better. So I make sure to build
strong relationships with the sales teams (at every level, from our Head of
Sales down to individual reps) so that we build trust and connection right away.
I also ensure that my team co-creates the marketing roadmap with sales so that
we feel like equal partners.
By putting the work in up-front to build trust and relationships, when it’s time
to influence the sales team (who I definitely don’t have authority over) they
are more willing to listen and act because they know I’m coming from a place of
shared goals, respect, and empathy for their needs.
Director (Head of) Global GTM & Demand Generation, Shopify • December 5
Last year I led a mission that was outside of my discipline. The greatest
challenge of leading without authority in my career:
* I was successful because we had alignment at the exec level that ‘it’ was
[one of] the most important things we needed to accomplish.
* When we asked leaders and individual contributors from across the
organization to join and contribute to the mission, we ensured the goals,
expectations, timelines, deliverables were clear.
* If the individuals had conflicting priorities, we got buy-in and worked with
their leaders to delegate those conflicting priorities so they could focus
only on the mission for a defined time period.
* When we were successful in the mission, we celebrated, reflected by getting
feedback from everyone involved- we encouraged every member to have a voice
throughout.
The key here to leading outside of reporting lines was certainly leading with
confidence, but more importantly, with empathy (and there were times where I
messed this up).
I had buy-in and a sense of authority from the powers above, but you cannot be
successful with authority alone…you need more. You need to establish trust with
those you are working with- people don’t do their best work because they are
told to, they do it when they are aligned to a common goal, are excited about
the work, and motivated by the people around them to deliver. So on that note,
make sure you are having fun, too.
Head of Growth Marketing, Observable | Formerly Issuu, OpenText, Webroot • February 3
My current role has a focus on growth marketing and is all about influencing
others without authority because of the cross-functional nature of the role.
Depending on the org structure, you’ll need to work with product marketing,
customer success, sales, engineering, design and many other departments. I do
not have authority across all of these departments. Yet the cross-functional
nature is imperative to reach our united business objectives.
I recommend you lead by example. This makes it much easier when you need buy-in
on other projects. Be respectful and proactively communicate. This ultimately
comes down to building relationships. A big part of demand generation is about
collaboration. Perhaps if you reframe this and see it as building trust
throughout many micro-moments, the getting buy-in part comes much more
naturally.
3 answers
Senior Director - Global Demand Generation, Freshworks • July 26
Strategies usually get defined bi-annually or annually and most of us don't have
complete influence and control on what gets defined. So allow me to stray a bit
and take this opportunity to share some 'tactics' that have worked for me.
1. Do you use common vocabulary? You will be surprised how many salespeople in
your organization don't understand the difference between an 'acquired contact'
and a 'marketing qualified lead'. Many times, this could be attributed to a
combination of a lack of commonly agreed definition and lazy communication from
Demand gen
2. Are you measuring the same thing? Acknowledge that solving their problem is
your problem. Your success and reputation depend on whether your programs are
planned to help them achieve their goals. In the PLG world, it could be a
commonly agreed definition of what is a PQL. In the ABM world, it could be the
definition of 'Engaged accounts'.
3. You know their 'stated position' but do you have a pulse on their 'interest'?
A stated position from sales is usually concrete and explicit. For example, it
could be 'I want more leads'. But look for the underlying interests, which are
usually unexpressed. For example, it could be 'I need better quality leads -
leads that display engagement on the website or inside the product or both'.
When you appeal to the 'real interests' of your sales teams and succeed at
meeting them, you will build trust and emerge as stronger partners.
4. You need to be okay with not being able to resolve 'all' issues. There will
always be a few 'open' questions and opinions about the other team that might
never get resolved. For example, as a Demand gen marketer, you'd want a
multi-touch attribution model to be instituted but sales might never refer to
it. In fact, they could vouch for the clarity provided by a last or a
first-touch attribution model. Another one - Sales might have feedback on why
marketing needs to do more of a certain kind of content (because the competition
does) and deep down, you know that it is a nice-to-have, not a must-have.
6. Divide and conquer. collaborate with your counterpart in Product marketing
who can help ease off the pressure on you by helping sales win and keeping up
the momentum. They make sure Sales are engaged and are enabled with a winning
message, collaterals, and direction.
7. Cultivate a champion in the sales team. Do you have someone from Sales who
helps validate your Campaign theme and messaging, and vet prospect emails so
they don't read marketing(y)? This is the person who will stand up and speak on
your behalf when things get tough for you (which they do occasionally).
8. Identify opportunities to build alignment. Invite champions from your sales
team to build the buyer journey and the persona map along with you. Collaborate
with them when you conceptualize the PQL logic for your PLG motion or define the
segmentation strategy for your next campaign.
8. Build an Always-on feedback loop - given the nature of the roles, it is
possible that the Sales-Demand generation relationship could get transactional
very fast. Avoid this at any cost. As Demand gen marketers, the onus is on us to
elevate the discussion (and our relationship) and ask higher-order questions
from a place of curiosity (I know this is super difficult and I'm also
learning). One way to do this is to find the right opportunity to pose strategic
questions such as 'what is good for the business' and 'do we need to revisit our
Ideal Customer Profile' as against 'You are not touching these leads fast
enough'. Strive, as much as possible, to attain the right balance in every
conversation.
1. Communication! Shared Slack channels, meet regularly and ask your sales team
for input so they feel engaged and involved in decisions. Be transparent
about how the marketing budget is spent and what is working and what isn't.
2. Shared KPIs. The biggest mistake is disconnected goals. Having a marketing
goal of driving leads and a sales goal of driving revenue rarely works out,
in my experience. At a minimum, Demand Gen/Marketing needs a sales-qualified
pipeline target to fill the top of the funnel. At best, it's a shared
revenue target.
3. Having marketing champions on the sales team can make a big difference. A
sales leader who advocates for and voices their appreciation for marketing
sets the tone for the rest of the sales organisation. Invest time in
building those relationships.
4. Listen back to sales calls and hear the types of objections and discussions
they are having. It can often give you ideas for new pieces of content that
will resonate well and that your sales team will appreciate.
5. Avoid jumping in to fulfil every request of the sales teams. In all
likelihood, you will become much more tactical than strategic and ultimately
deprioritise things from your plan that may have had a greater impact. It's
always better to provide a rational explanation as to why you believe their
suggestion isn't the right thing to do. For example, with event suggestions,
I usually find that the target ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) isn't quite
right.
6. Have fun! Lunch chats, socialising together, connecting over the coffee
machine, finding shared interests. All help build up a more personal
relationship that ultimately builds a deeper connection and better working
relationship.
Head of Growth Marketing, Observable | Formerly Issuu, OpenText, Webroot • February 2
My advice can apply even outside of Sales - try to frame your interactions
around the question - how can I help? Even more so lately, people feel
overwhelmed with a constant shortage of time. Time is money for Sales and when
possible, you want to establish this relationship from a lens of empathy and
partnership.
Here are three of my top strategies to drive alignment with Sales:
* Share insights. What better way to drive alignment and nurture a relationship
than with ongoing information sharing? What knowledge, data or reporting do
you have that Sales could use to better serve customers? What nuggets of
information could you share that could open up a new door for them?
* Ongoing communication. You won’t be able to forge a relationship with Sales
via one-off conversations. Try to establish ongoing communication in some
medium (e.g., 1:1s) and make the discussion useful for both sides. Could you
help them with better tracking and reporting? Could you assist with message
amplification via a tactic such as ABM?
* Anchor on your shared goals. Ultimately you share a common ground of wanting
your efforts to ladder up to revenue. This is only possible with customers
who experience value. How can you approach this goal from your two different
perspectives? You’ll be able to reach your goals faster as a team even if you
sit in different departments.
3 answers
Chief Marketing Officer, Calendly • August 16
We care a lot about clarity, both for our customers and our internal teams. So
it’s important for us to build clarity into every step of the planning process:
* First, we align on goals: We don’t start any project until the team is
aligned on the project’s goals and how they ultimately ladder up to our
company’s key objectives and mission. On an individual and team level, goals
help everyone understand why their work matters and what they should be
working towards.
* Next, we answer the big questions: We create a clear project brief and set
up a kick-off meeting including key stakeholders, always pointing back to the
project’s objective and how it’s moving the business forward.
* Then, we figure out who’s on first: Once we’ve agreed on the brief and the
goals, then we assign tasks and owners (in Asana of course!). The project
owner’s job is to hold everyone on the team accountable for their deadlines
and deliverables. With distributed/remote/hybrid teams, every decision and
action item has to be written down and agreed to ahead of time.
Finally, we communicate with urgency and purpose: The project owner’s role is to
constantly check in with key stakeholders on progress, report out regular
updates to the team (usually monthly at the beginning of a project, and weekly
or even daily as the deadline approaches), and help reshuffle timelines and
scope if workloads and priorities change.
Director (Head of) Global GTM & Demand Generation, Shopify • December 5
Context: I work in a relatively matrixed organization and see a lot of
stakeholders across the organization come together to deliver on a shared goal,
mission, or solve a problem. See below for my lengthy, tactical response.
In short- the key to successfully navigating the pivot from collaboration and
ideation to execution and accountability is to establish and align on clear
goals and priorities, identify a SINGLE champion, break the project down into
manageable tasks for workstream leads, and provide support and direction to team
members in a structured cadence of status updates, roadblock sharing and
mitigation, and where required, escalations to pre-identified decision makers:
If you don’t already have a framework in place, I highly recommend investing
time in developing a common framework on how multiple groups come together to
work on a project, develop and launch a product, campaign, etc; a process with
various tasks, identified owners at a discipline level, checkpoints, and
approvers. Now, let’s be real, even if you have this, we all know that process
doesn’t always perfectly apply!
Regardless of where you are at in your collaboration effort, I recommend getting
the idea into a brief or proposal template, even if it’s a v1 draft/outline:
* Problem to be solved
* Why it's worth solving
* What will it accomplish
* What does success look like
* Resources required
Once the group is aligned on the idea proposal, approvals are in place (if
required), you move to execution (again, I cannot stress this enough- if a brief
or proposal is not created, create one. You cannot execute if you aren’t on the
same page on what you are trying to accomplish).
Intentionally shift the discussion from ideation to execution, hold a
conversation and title it “Execution Phase, Build Sync”, something that makes it
clear what you are aligning on (this can be done async or in a meeting).
Reiterate problem statement and success criteria that the group has aligned on,
and then pivot to key priorities, deliverables, and respective work back
schedules.
From here, apply the RACI or RASCI model (or a similar model):
* Assign a project sponsor or accountable owner.
* Assign a single champion for the overall project and breakdown the project
into smaller projects, or workstreams. This creates one champion for the
overall project, and multiple workstream owners responsible for smaller
aspects of the project- making it more manageable to work in parallel and
move faster.
* The project champion: this individual is responsible for keeping the team on
track and hosting the project rituals; this person represents the workstream
owner’s progress, escalates roadblocks and communicates overall progress to
the relevant stakeholders.
* Note: I recognize this could be awkward….i.e. if a group of peers is
coming together to decide this, you should be comfortable in nominating
and aligning on the most suitable champion. If you cannot do this (and
there could be many factors at play), you may need to bring in more senior
decision makers to help make this decision and that’s okay. In group work,
transparent escalation can be a powerful tool (more on that in a later
response).
* Once you have done this a few times, process, templates, tools, can help
reduce the awkwardness.
* Workstream leads: assign workstream owners with their deliverables and
workback schedules (i.e. if for a campaign, you might have a content
workstream owner, a channel workstream owner, creative design owner).
* Regular status updates, approval points are key to ensuring timelines are met
- if the timeline is tight, consider short daily standups with mid week deep
dives, and if it’s overly complex, each workstream might have their own set
of rituals too (ideally avoid this- too many silos can create duplication of
work, miscommunication).
Clear goals, priorities, a single threaded champion, dedicated workstreams with
workstream leaders, regular syncs and checkpoints are essential to ensuring
everyone is working towards the same objectives, and can help to keep the team
focused and motivated as the deadline approaches.
Head of Growth Marketing, Observable | Formerly Issuu, OpenText, Webroot • February 1
I believe the key to this is to set clear expectations from the beginning.
Communicate the project framework in your kickoff or initial call. If this
foundation is laid from the beginning, it won’t be interpreted as a pivot. It
will be interpreted as carrying through what you initially outlined.
There needs to be a clear owner of the project, collaborators and identified
individuals who need to be informed (or a similar framework). Proactively keep
the team informed. Celebrate successes along the way. Provide performance
readouts on an ongoing cadence.
Lastly, I view this question from the perspective of clearly communicating and
continuously getting ahead of questions. I believe laying the infrastructure or
foundation in this way gets ahead of many concerns that could surface.
2 answers
Director (Head of) Global GTM & Demand Generation, Shopify • December 5
1. Build relationships and build trust- get to know the people you want to
influence- we are all human and want to do great work with people we know,
like and trust- invest in this.
2. Listen- you may not agree with your stakeholders, but understand their
perspectives, what drives them- incentives, how they are compensated, goals,
career aspirations, super powers.
3. Communicate- clearly, often and transparently. Oh, and don’t use fancy
language, $1000 words or tech jargon (sorry if any of my responses do this,
I might not even notice when I do sometimes, but always ask to be called out
on it).
4. Back everything with data and/or proof points. Math doesn’t lie (quoting my
data science partner).
5. Persistence Pays- sometimes you have to be able to sell internally- winning
hearts and minds takes time and effort.
Head of Growth Marketing, Observable | Formerly Issuu, OpenText, Webroot • January 31
To influence people across different functions and teams you need to focus on
our common denominator of being human with our individual perspectives. Here are
my five tips to accomplish this:
1. Lead by example. Embody the type of person that people respect even if they
do not agree with you. Show up in the way that you would like others to show
up for you.
2. Empathy. Put yourself in their shoes and approach interactions from this
lens. It’s important to be respectful even if you have to agree to disagree.
3. Clear communication. It’s important not to only communicate, but to ensure
it is transparent, clear and ongoing. Clear communication should be the
norm.
4. Data-informed. Ensure your information is backed up by data. While
perspectives are important, influence is better driven when it’s not just an
opinion.
5. Adaptable. When trying to influence stakeholders, it’s critical to be
adaptable and flexible. This will help you build rapport.
2 answers
Chief Marketing Officer, Calendly • August 16
This is a tricky one! First, you should assume that both stakeholders have good
intent and that they’re willing to work together to resolve the issue. It’s
critical to go in with a positive mindset! Then, try to create a shared fact
base so that you’re all working from the same data. Once you have a shared
understanding of the facts, then you can begin to build shared goals. Ask lots
of questions to find shared goals between the stakeholders, and help them work
towards a compromise that meets both of their goals (or at least as many of
their goals as possible!)
Head of Growth Marketing, Observable | Formerly Issuu, OpenText, Webroot • January 30
This is tough to navigate but absolutely doable. I recommend that you actively
listen to both sides. Try to meet them where they are at. To do so, you’ll need
to empathetically listen to their perspectives. Identify a common ground for the
executive stakeholders backed by data. It’s harder to argue against facts. Let
the data help navigate the discussion and bring you to a compromise.
I also recommend that you assume good intentions. Keep stakeholders focused on
the bigger picture and its associated business goals. This will only be possible
with clear communication and healthy debate.
2 answers
Director (Head of) Global GTM & Demand Generation, Shopify • December 5
Understand how each of you are wired. Personality tests are helpful here,
especially as it relates to how someone makes decisions, and how they like to
receive or give feedback. And then, I prefer to rip off the bandaid, meet face
to face (screens are okay too) and share objective feedback. If you need to work
together to be successful, it’s worth the time and effort to understand the
situation, behavior and impact each of you has had on each other. Both parties
need to accept the feedback, even if it’s brutally hard to hear/accept. Once you
have shared the feedback, take the time to digest, have a follow up conversation
and align on a path forward, what needs to happen in order to build trust and
commit. If you aren’t committed or genuine, this won’t work. High degree of care
and candor is essential.
Head of Growth Marketing, Observable | Formerly Issuu, OpenText, Webroot • January 29
It’s challenging to improve a historically tense relationship. It takes time and
mutual respect. The key is to create an environment that is a safe space. Model
and foster an environment of communication, transparency and empathy. Know that
you will need patience as you work to create a more collaborative relationship.
It’s important to meet people where they are at. Why has there been a tense
relationship? What’s within your control that you can do to help improve the
situation? How do you help support others to improve the relationship? Think
deeply about the answers to these types of questions.
3 answers
Chief Marketing Officer, Calendly • August 16
I love this question. When you’re a small company, the stakeholders are a pretty
small group: You’ll work with a small number of sales reps who generally serve
similar customer groups and operate using the same sales strategy. As a result,
the type of demand gen work you have to do is generally pretty consistent and
straightforward (not that it’s easy!).
As companies grow, customer bases expand and evolve, making Demand Generation
work increasingly complex. For example, companies will begin serving additional
geographies, each of which require their own programs. On top of that, sales
reps will sell into new customer segments, which adds another layer of
segmentation to consider. When a company shifts from private to public, we start
to have conversations with even more stakeholders, including investors, analysts
or perhaps your company’s board of directors.
To tackle the complexity that comes with a growing business and also evade the
temptation of doing everything, prioritize the programs that are the most
scalable and will help make the company most successful as a whole.
Communication is also essential: The big thing I teach my team is to never say
no to sales (it feels draining and demoralizing to always say no, since we all
know sales is always clamoring for more support). Instead, say yes AND agree on
which program you will deprioritize as a result of adding the newly requested
one. In other words, make program prioritization a shared responsibility. As a
marketer, our job is to work with sales and understand which programs we can
jointly drive to make an impact together.
Director (Head of) Global GTM & Demand Generation, Shopify • December 5
There are more of them! Identified stakeholders, approvers, owners need to be
clear, and having a consistent framework to work allows for better
documentation, tracking, alignment which in turn would ideally ensure projects
are aligned to greater company goals and priorities. Identifying who should be
involved right at the ideation stage makes this a lot easier. I.e. if it’s a
product launch, product teams should be identified and brought in early to the
project. Sometimes you learn this by making mistakes- iterating on your launch,
campaign or go to market framework in process comes with time (and more data
points).
Head of Growth Marketing, Observable | Formerly Issuu, OpenText, Webroot • January 28
The key stakeholders from other departments change due to the needs of the
business changing. The swimlanes for demand generation typically become more
defined. There are more processes and procedures in place based on what you
manage. You’ll probably find that you go from wearing many hats with less
clarity on your stakeholders to a more narrow focus with clearly defined
stakeholders.
Fast forward from a startup environment to an SMB or enterprise and the only
constant is change. You may go from working directly with the CEO as a
stakeholder to working with procurement and finance teams. You may find that a
performance readout happens in a weekly standup to a QBR with various teams from
around the world participating.
With growth comes complexity, new markets and challenges with data. All of this
may need to be navigated with new team structures. And with all of these shifts
come new stakeholders or people who you’ll need to collaborate with and inform.