AMA: Sendbird Head of Marketing, Jack Wei on Product Marketing / Demand Gen Alignment

While Demand Gen is responsible for lead, MQL, and pipeline target attainment when it comes to evergreen marketing programs, Product Marketing gets join in on the fun and think about lead and pipe generation more directly and holistically when it comes to product launches. Product marketing can set a lead, pipeline, or revenue target within 30-60-90 days of launch (this is the KPI, depending on your business type and stage) Leading up to launch date, key cross-functional stakeholders sync to ali ...Read More

There is 1 foundational action PMMs must complete before touching ABM: Define a clear ICP (ideal customer profile). That ICP (which should comprise of target persona at companies of a certain segment / vertical / geo / compelling event) can then be expanded upon by demand gen, sales, and ops into a target account list. The target account list should be realistically manageable based on the size of your marketing & sales teams. A list more than 100 means you're not choosy or specific enough. ...Read More

Product Marketing over-indexes on the qualitative elements of marketing, while Demand Gen over-indexes on the quantitative side... when, to truly do marketing effectively, you need a harmonious balance of both. Ever meet product marketers who geek out on positioning and messaging, nitpicking the quality of and wordsmithing 1 landing page or slide but ask them about how marketing is doing on pipeline and they look at you with a blank stare?; how about a demand gen marketer who makes decisions pur ...Read More

Not clear on this question... do you mean "describe" instead of "define"? The relationship between product marketing and demand gen is symbiotic. And at my organization thankfully the relationships is highly collaborative. It wasn't always this way. When I led product & customer marketing, I should have set a better example for the PMM team by synching with the head of demand gen more frequently and voicing my concerns more aggressively. Why should PMMs be more tightly connected to demand ge ...Read More

Messaging framework all the way. Designate a 'source of truth' messaging doc that everyone at the company (not just demand gen) refers to, and therefore writes/presents derivatives of. This source of truth can be as simple as a starred google doc, or a published confluence page, notion page, pinned/bookmarked in Slack or MS Teams, etc. At smaller companies I've seen demand gen marketers request product marketing to write emails, ad copy, and campaign briefs in order to start a campaign. IMO thos ...Read More

I've seen Content: Stand as its own team Roll up under PMM, or Roll up under Demand Gen. But I've never seen either PMM or Demand gen report into Content. Which goes to say, I don't think content aligns PMM or DG. It's the other way around.When Content's OKR/KPI is traffic and leads, my preference is to org Content under PMM in order to solve for messaging accuracy and content quality, establish basic SEO first. Once that is nailed, where traffic isn't falling off a cliff upon landing on the web ...Read More

Get the teams to recognize that they need each other to succeed. Sure, marketing has grown and become more specialized over the years where there are many teams within a marketing org or department (which at times cause internal competition), but at the end of the day, the north star KPI or OKR is to grow the business through leads, pipeline, and/or revenue. If team members culturally or structurally cannot collaborate and align, some tactics that have forced at least an understanding and empath ...Read More