Demand Generation Team

* 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. 

* These are the core OKRs that I've tracked in various forms throughout my demand generation career: * Objective: Drive pipeline * Key Results: * Raw volume merics: * Leads: Net new names added to the database * MQLs: Marketing qualified leads, or folks who have reached some kind of behavioral, predictive or demographic threshold * SALs: Sales accepted leads, or folks that BDRs/AEs have accepted to work * SQLs: Meetings booked. This can be either an SQL # or an SQL $ value, depending on your business. * Funnel efficiency metrics: * Lead:MQL CVR: What percent of leads generated this quarter turn into MQLs? This is an indicator of how well you are taking the new folks entering your database and engaging them with marketing materials to reach a score threshold, and/or how strong your targeting is in terms of bringing in folks with the right firmographic and demographic criteria. * MQL:SAL CVR: What is the quality of MQLs that you are sending to BDRs? Are BDRs disqualifying too many MQLs before they even reach out? You want to keep a really close eye on this metric if it is less than 75%. * SAL:SQL CVR: How well are BDRs converting the folks they are working into meetings. This is a little out of marketing's control, but marketing can support BDRs with enablement, email sequences, best practices and more to drive this number up. * In addition to the above, if you have a broader focus on awareness as well as pipeline, you should look at metrics that relate to website traffic, SEO (top keywords, traffic from SEO), etc. * As you get more sophisticated, you probably want to have a sense of how the pipeline you are generating turns into revenue for the business. Depending on the segments you serve, marketing should plan to provide anywhere from 25% of pipeline/revenue (Enterprise business) to 75%+ of pipeline/revenue (self-serve/SMB businesses). * When I take a look at the current quarterly OKR list for our entire marketing team, we have about 60 KRs we're looking to track - my team is responsible for about 30 of them. SO, as my team has scaled we've gone beyond the core metrics above.

Demand Gen should have annual and quarterly targets for qualified pipeline and revenue. They are always at the top of the list and the main KPIs Other leading indicators to consider MQLs, newly engaged accounts, efficiency gains in MQL to Opp conversion

Increase high-quality web traffic.  Increase traffic conversion rate.  Increase lead to opportunity rate. Demand generation is all about creating demand and capturing it.  Increasing your website's traffic with high-quality traffic (target ICP) is the best way to build actual awareness as users self-educate on your website. Then you need to really focus on good, clear CTAs and incentives for users to convert on the page(s) you direct them to. Once they are in your funnel, help the sales team by putting them into nurturing emails and teasers for what the product can help them achieve to increase the lead-to-opportunity conversion rate. 

* In a self-serve world, you don't have the traditional sales funnel stages of MQL, SAL, SQL and closed/won to manage. You are probably focusing more on things like traffic, sign ups, activations, product engagement and invoices/customers. * The levers you pull here are probably more around website optimization, paid ad programs, email + lifecycle programs and in-product optimizations. In a sales-driven world you'd be talking more about offline channels (events, direct mail, lead gen programs, etc.), and you'd be more focused on BDR and AE enablement. * You might also think about the concept of product-qualified leads (PQLs) in a self-serve funnel, but with no sales team to work these leads, these PQLs might just be folks in your free trial or freemium flow who you should try to get to upgrade via onboarding + in-product signals and triggers. * In the organizations that I've been in most recently, we've had both sales & self-serve funnels. In some places those funnels are completely separate, and in others, they overlap a bit. You'll want to be really intentional and careful about how you define your funnel stages in a world where there's a blend between folks who come in or who convert via self-serve, vs those who convert via sales.

Self serve is slower so you really need to keep a close eye on time to activation, lifetime value, and usage data to revenue ratio.  Self serve requires a lot of attention through automation and email marketing to ensure these self serve users are aware of how to use the product and understands the values of paying for the premium.  It's similar as a traditional b2b tech demand gen function that you need to build awareness to each feature, and ultimately get them to convert for a demo or trial and then keep nudging them to buy. The caveat is this is all done with little to no human execution. 

Own all of the lead generation because no one else can do it besides DG. Have a stake in opportunity creation (% of your pay with accelerators), pipeline generation, and inbound revenue. I would not own organic social media and only ask to own SEO if you have a dedicated head or agency for it as that's a slow burner and needs a decent amount of attention. 

Demand gen is responsible for every stage of the funnel but accountable for stages where they have ~50%+ of the influence on that stage compared to sales. For example,  Demand generation at the awareness stage is 100% responsible for delivering that message to the masses by driving the DG machine to those target accounts.  Demand gen can support leads that come in by educating them through email and display even while sales reps work that lead.  Demand gen also supports leads down to stage 2-3 SFDC by displaying social proof campaigns, and email campaigns about social proof, and even host events to invite prospects and clients to close big deals.  Every stage after that is beyond demand gen in my opinion. There are ad hoc cases where custom landing pages, custom sales decks, and custom ROI packages are created and delivered but that's a tight partnership with sales so both marketing & sales are accountable for that. 

* Quarterly/annual OKRs: * In an ideal world, you have a joint financial planning process between demand gen + Sales that outlines the sales bookings targets you need to hit for the year, and then broken down by quarter. * From there, say your quarterly sales bookings plan is $5M. * The finance and sales operations team (sometimes it is finance, sometimes it is sales strategy/operations, sometimes it is a revenue operations function), should then have a good sense of where that booking needs to come from * Is it all new business? Is there some expansion? * Do you have different AE teams (either segmented by region, product line, company size/deal size)? Generally, the answer here is yes, and so you have a sense of the quota roll-up for each of these sub-teams. * From there, then you can break down the sources of revenue: marketing-driven inbound, marketing-driven outbound/ABM, BDR-driven outbound, AE-driven outbound, channel sales, etc. * Ideally, you want a good sense of your typical win rates + average transaction sizes, so you can get to the number of opportunities (deals, or SQLs, or even SQOs in some organizations) that you need to generate * Don't forget about latency! In some enterprise organizations, you need to plan for 6-9 months between when an opportunity is generated and when it will close. Make sure you have a sense of your typical latency. If it is more than 30-60 days, make sure you are baking this into your plans. * The ultimate output of this exercise is a quarterly target of what your demand gen team is responsible for at the SQL level. * Once you know your SQL targets for each quarter that the business is asking of you from a top-down point of view, ALWAYS make sure you do a 'bottoms-up' pass based on your historical performance, how much investment you are getting in headcount, and operating expenditures, what strategies you'll be leading, and any information or intelligence you have on market trends. * If there's a big gap between the tops-down business number and the bottoms-up trends number, this is where you need to (1) think about re-allocating resources or re-prioritizing your strategies, or (2) see if there's room to negotiate your targets. In the case where you think the targets are low/achievable, then that's where you might go in and offer to raise your targets to take pressure off another area of the business. * Tying targets back to projects/initiatives: Then you definitely want to tie the SQL target to (1) your marketing funnel of leads, MQLs and SALs, and (2) make sure that you have key strategies and initiatives that ladder up into hitting those targets. Not every initiative will drive results for each stage, but you want to ensure that you have strategies to drive results at each stage of the funnel. You also should think about building a roadmap for the year and sequencing initiatives over time: Maybe you have more ability to pull a lever fast to drive more leads in the short term, but it will take you a long time to build really great full-funnel nurture campaigns to drive MQLs --> closed/won. Ensure you are not trying to take on too much in a given quarter.

The main OKR for demand gen will always be growing qualified pipeline and revenue so we know going into any given quarter what our targets are. To connect targets to campaigns or tactics we go through a lead forecasting process. We have historical benchmarks on how marketing channels or tactics perform and can estimate based on the marketing mix planned in a quarter if we are on track to hit our number or if we need to bulk up our campaigns. If any one of those tactics doesn’t perform as expected we are able to adjust.

The goals are always tied to revenue goals. What is the company's revenue goal for the Q and year? What % of that needs to come from marketing? From that %, what % comes from inbound vs upsell? From there, you work up the funnel based on each stage's conversion rate to get to a lead goal. That massive lead goal is then sliced and diced into smaller chunks (ie. if we need 100,000 leads, we will run 10 major campaigns this year, and generate 1,000 leads per campaign). Then you factor in seasonal ups and downs from past years and determine which campaign (based on time) will generate 10-20% more or less and compensate for that appropriately. 

* See my answer on how I recommend setting targets - I think it's really really hard but really really important to get past the uncertainty, and set some kind of target.  * In my 10+ years of building and launching demand generation programs, I honestly can't remember a time when I have wished I *didn't* at least try to set a target. I find most marketing leadership and startup leaders are flexible and understanding when you get a KPI wrong the first time. Don't make it a pattern though - because you want to build a reputation as someone who learns from past experiences and gets more accurate over time in forecasting.  * The first step is building the forecasting muscle, and then you want to get good at forecasting accuracy. This is true of startups overall, going from a private company with a few investors to a public company with a ton of eyes and scrutiny on your performance.  Some tips: * Even if you are entering a new market, you are still likely selling a product or service to a person or group of people. There is a way to find some kind of comparable data or benchmark as a starting point. If you have TAM (total addressable market), you should be able to do some guessing as to your SAM (serviceable addressable market), and then take a look at what resourcing you have internally. If you are in a totally new space, but you only have 1 sales person so far, you aren't going to be able to capture 10% of the total market share in a quarter or two.  * You should use tops-down (high-level business growth targets) and bottoms-up modeling to try to triangulate to a target. * Another thing that I try to do in a situation where I don't have a ton of historical data or benchmarks to guide me is to build a few models: An aggressive model, a moderate model, and a conservative model. The best practice is to only change ONE assumption between those models. I like building simple calculators in excel or Google Sheets so that as you are reviewing with your stakeholders, you can make copies of the model and make changes in real-time and see what might change in your calculations. 

KPIs and OKRs should not be arbitrary. Developing strong OKRs/KPIs requires a lot of research both internally and externally. How did you company do in the past and what were those KPIs in the past? Based on where the company is today (employee count, sales coverage, target ICPs, etc) how much more effective is your team supposed to be? Then add 10% to that to ensure your goals are not too easy, but realistic, and aspirational.  The realistic goals should also follow the SMART format (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) which can be loosely based off of some industry benchmarks you can find online. 

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.

There will likely be a crossover in a few KPIs between DG and PMM. This however is not a bad thing, it ensures your PMM counterparts are invested in making sure GTM activities are successful. For example both groups might take an opportunity target. For DG this is our bread butter. For PMM it helps drive behavior around not just putting assets and programs into market but marking sure they are helping to drive quality leads all the way through the funnel. PMM will likely focus on, to name a few: * Delivering customer references and case studies * driving product adoption and enablement * site visitors or web traffic to specific pages or within a target audience * execute product launches * various thought leadership items like favorable AR endorsements DG will likely focus on: * Funnel performance * Responses/form fills * MQLs (quality/quantity) * Opportunities (count/ $ value) * Upsell/cross sell

The KPIs and responsibilities between demand generation and product marketing tend to get a bit blurred depending on your business model. I’ve noticed this most often with product-led growth (PLG) and growth marketing. I believe the reason for this is because a customer’s journey is not linear; we tend to have responsibilities that are for the purpose of having defined swim lanes which is also helpful. I’ll respond to this question from a PLG perspective. Product marketing KPI examples: * Feature engagement and time to value or “aha” * Conversion rate of sign up to paid * Upsells * Downgrades * Churn Demand generation KPI examples (these metrics start to fall into growth marketing): * Conversion rate of sign ups through to retention * Performance of growth loops * Revenue * Customer acquisition cost (CAC) * Customer lifetime value (LTV) by source This definitely is not an exhaustive list. While some KPIs do fall further on one end of the spectrum, you’ll also see that there is some overlap and partnership that is required to have a repeatable and scalable PLG model. Be sure to clearly define the overlap and the swimlanes for each.

Some of the key processes I’d set up when expanding my demand gen team from 1 to multiple people include evaluating and addressing the following questions: * Documentation. Take inventory of the documentation that currently exists. What gaps are there that need to be filled? * Tracking and reporting. What reporting and dashboards are currently in place? What tracking can be enhanced? How can you establish smarter reporting? * Clear swimlanes. The importance of clarity around roles and responsibilities is often understated. With clarity comes accountability and ownership. Empower others to be responsible for their programs and enable them to move faster with accountability. * Communication. Establish an environment that promotes communication, healthy debates, and transparency.