Resource Reality Small SaaS: * Limited budget means every dollar must work twice as hard * Pie-shaped marketers who juggle multiple channels Large SaaS: * Brand feeds into Demand. Demand gen has a tailwind. * Deep pockets fund specialized teams * Can afford to be wrong longer (but often is) Strategy Differences Small SaaS: * Narrow ICP focus is a feature, not a bug * Depending on your category, product-led growth isn't optional – it's survival * A number of one-off marketing 'activities' not fully tied to demand goals Large SaaS: * Runs parallel GTM motions because they can, not because they should. Think ABX, Partner & Sales-led. * Complex buying committee. More expensive to sell into. * Activities begin to get bucketed under campaigns, programs or themes Content That Works Small SaaS: * Takes contrarian positions that make prospects sit up * Founder-driven thought leadership that can't be delegated * Raw truths are celebrated Large SaaS: * Sometimes you trade authenticity for polish (usually a bad trade) The Channel Truth Small SaaS: * Doubles down on organic channels that compound over time * Knows that focus beats optionality in the early days Large SaaS: * Spreads attention across too many channels because FOMO * Maintains expensive field marketing programs that are rarely measured correctly Most large SaaS companies waste significant % of their demand gen budget on ineffective channels they're afraid to cut. Meanwhile, the best small SaaS companies turn their constraints into advantages – creating focused, authentic demand programs that connect directly with their ideal customers. Most times, the winners in demand generation aren't those with the deepest pockets, but those who ruthlessly align their plan with their ‘actual’ market position rather than their aspirational one. These companies thrive by placing disciplined small bets and using structured experiments to quickly validate or kill their hypotheses, allowing them to double down on what works and abandon what doesn't before burning significant resources.

When I think about measurement gone wrong, my first question is typically about the marketer, not the KPI. All KPIs can be useful, assuming your measurement is scalable (i.e., it doesn’t take a week to do the analysis) and you are using them appropriately (i.e., context is everything). That said, here are some metrics that I generally find less material to understanding the health of the business: 1. Impressions/Followers/Engagement: In a world overrun by bots, ad impressions, social media followers, and engagement metrics have become less relevant. You’d be surprised how many companies with massive social media followings built their audiences by purchasing cheap likes from engagement farms. 2. Frontend Email Metrics: Between email preview panes skewing results and well-documented issues stemming from privacy updates introduced in iOS 15, open rates have become far less relevant in recent years and are no longer sufficient to understand if your message is resonating. 3. CPL & Raw Lead Metrics Without Context: Lots of marketers fall into the trap of driving down CPL at the expense of lead quality. There's no faster way to lose the trust of your sales colleagues than flooding them with low-quality leads & expecting them to convert.

Soft skills are more critical when joining a new team, especially in Demand Generation, where collaboration is key. This role requires working cross-functionally with product marketing, creative teams, operations, sales, and paid media, making the ability to lead through influence essential. Strong candidates can build alignment, negotiate effectively, and rally teams behind a shared vision. Emotional intelligence plays a major role in success. Reading the room, understanding team dynamics, and adapting communication styles help drive initiatives forward. Executive presence is equally important—engaging confidently with marketing leaders and sales stakeholders fosters credibility and ensures buy-in on strategic initiatives. While technical skills are valuable, they can be taught. Core Demand Generation competencies, such as campaign execution, analytics, and optimization, can be learned over time. However, soft skills like leadership, collaboration, and adaptability take longer to develop. A candidate with strong interpersonal skills can quickly gain the necessary technical expertise, but even the most technically skilled professional may struggle without the ability to navigate team dynamics and stakeholder relationships.

I have lengthen explanation in the other questions digging into each channel and the importance of it. For the sake of time, here are the channels that are critical to demand gen: 1. Organic/web 2. Paid digital 3. Email 4. Events 5. Webinar 6. Direct Mail 7. Field events 8. CxO & Top Accounts

Misalignment at the top. When marketing and sales leaders are not aligned, it will trickle down to confusion, frustration and a lack of efficiency for the business. While you cannot control who is in each seat and their opinions/relationships, you can do your best to vert it out during interviewing for new opportunities.

I look at historical conversion rates or make an educated assumption on conversion rates, and then I look at my demand generation budget and back into the expected performance from that budget. I then compare that to the total sales or business Target for the year. I socialize that percentage as the marketing generated revenue number. If the company wants me to contribute a higher percentage to the total revenue then I need more budget. And that's really clear based on the model

* Start With Company Goals: Align OKRs with overarching business objectives (e.g., pipeline targets, new market penetration). * Set Cascading OKRs: Break down the company’s goals into actionable demand gen objectives. For instance: * Objective: Generate $2M in pipeline this quarter. * Key Results: Launch 3 campaigns, achieve $500k pipeline per campaign, drive 100 SQLs. * Project Mapping: Each OKR ties to specific initiatives. For example, a webinar might target pipeline generation for a specific segment.

Sharing in a central wiki or company repository (we use Notion at Sentry), at the same time as other teams to give them the same level of attention. I am a big fan of async communication. Connecting ahead of time with other business stakeholder to see how these KPIs fit in their pictures and serve their need. Connecting ahead of time with the Demand Gen DRIs for each KPIs to request their feedback and how they would prioritize these differently. On a regular basis, organizing weekly pipeline meetings to track trends and collect feedback on these KPIs.

Typically a content marketing function is measured on the engagement with the associated content put into market via paid, owned, earned tactics (i.e. content/asset downloads, social media engagements, webinar views, etc.), however when associating that content to demand generation programs and campaigns, It's important to understand how that content is impacting and driving the business. Essentially, how many MQLs did that content produce and ultimately what is pipeline associated to the content. I think it's also important to understand how marketing content is driving business outcomes via a direct attribution, as well as influenced attribution as customers will engage with multiple pieces of content throughout the customer journey. However, if your company is not at the state of having a sophisticated multi-touch attribution model that provides a weighted measure of the content's impact, you'll have to align on a first-touch or last-touch model to determine which content gets "credit" for driving downstream impact. It's also important to understand the type of content your organization is creating and the purpose of that content. For example, thought leadership content is not typically intended to drive short term pipeline, but it can impact a weighted multi-touch attribution model. Content on a company's website also has a very different purpose which is to engage and convert customers/prospects to the next action in the customer journey. Therefore it's very important to align on clear expectations of the purpose of the content being produced before it goes into market.

Demand Generation Managers work between many teams to bring to life a GTM strategy to meet key business objectives. Therefore, the skills I measure my team on include the following: * Collaborative Project Management: The ability to execute a high-caliber program that resonates with your audience is critical. This means you need to motivate cross-functional teams to work with you by communicating clearly and often. * Strategic Mindset: You have to be someone who can see the forest beyond the trees. Beyond your programs, you must understand how your program relates to larger OKRs, where it sits in the customer lifecycle, and how to drive your prospect or customer to the next step in their journey. * Truth-Seeking: Demand Generation requires balancing the budget, resources, and time allotted. Since you can never have everything, you need to understand how to prioritize across all your asks to drive efficiency and meet your business's KPIs. You need to be able to use data to drive your decisions and help others understand why you are prioritizing some aspects of your plan over others. * Ability to Influence Stakeholders: Demand Generation does not work in a silo. You have to bring along all your stakeholders to see the value of working with you, to feel ownership of your joint projects, and to feel accountable for the results. Furthermore, as you become more senior, you need to be able to bring along senior leadership to agree to your plans. * Team Leadership: Leading cross-functional teams and motivating them to follow you. Be a leader within your own team, helping train, coach, and grow our overall team’s abilities. * Growth Mindset: The ability to have an agile learner mindset. Someone is constantly trying to grow and improve with what and how they do things.