How does your PMM team work with Demand Gen? Who drives ideas for campaigns?

TLDR

In the large majority of B2B SaaS companies, PMM owns messaging/positioning for products/solutions and demand-gen/performance marketing owns the deployment of that messaging appropriately into acquisition channels like paid social, paid search, web, webinars, events etc. 

Campaign ideas can and should be encouraged from anyone -including folks outside of PMM/demand-gen

Campaign execution and ownership can be a gray area- keep reading below for the nuances

Detail

In an ideal world, both PMM and demand-gen (along with brand/comms teams) should collaborate and jointly build an integrated marketing plan for the year/quarter/month. The integrated marketing plan covers things like --> Who to target, what to say, in what channel, at what time and frequency. All of this comes with clear and defined KPIs, owners and collaboration models. An integrated plan is also key to identifying how much to invest (resources, $). Nailing this upfront is key to strong PMM and demand-gen collaboration. 

e.g. PMMs build messaging based on understanding the customer pain points, personas, segments etc. That same foundational understanding is key to demand-gen building their plans on which assets and channels to optimize for. An enterprise focus may often put some onus on webinars and ABM while a PLG focus puts more emphasis on web and content. The integrated plan identifies the channels to go after, with the right messaging , the right KPIs and informs who does what in this plan. 

The rest is about execution which includes monitoring and iteration

Campaigns are a gray area. An ideal campaign involves the following

(A) Picking a messaging theme (e.g. intelligence, security, growth etc. ) that is unique and distinctive to help the product/brand advance

B) Building a campaign architecture - hero content or landing page, channels for paid/organic/social/SEO , form fills and lead captures (or not), nurturing plans, CTA, retargeting etc.

C) Execution - with heavy elements of monitoring and iteration

Ideally, A) is PMM owned and C) is demand-gen owned. B) Can be owned by either of the two groups and is very much dependent on org and functional maturity and individual skill set. 

Whatever model you follow, it is really important to have someone thinking about the campaign architecture to make sure the campaign is tightly integrated

Demand gen needs a strong POV to differentiate the company in noisy channels. Content from subject matter experts can build trust while evangelizing the brand. Here are ways PMMs can participate with campaign ideas:

• Company narrative takes based on industry/market research 
• Customers who are succeeding with the product
• Content from SMEs that would be useful and demonstrate credibility