Samantha Lerner

This is a great question! Demand generation marketing and content marketing should work hand-in-hand to achieve broader marketing objectives. When identifying KPIs and metrics to measure demand generation and content marketing together, you should consider the type of content being distributed and the channels through which it's being distributed. This will help determine your KPIs. For example, a blog post may not have the same KPIs as a gated piece of content or a video. The channel mix of promotions will also factor into KPIs. Is this a larger integrated marketing campaign that will require a more extensive mix of promotions and budget? Or is this a smaller campaign, perhaps targeted at a specific/smaller audience, that won't require as much external distribution and promotion? Once you understand these components, you can determine your KPIs. Here are some general KPIs to consider: * Number of site sessions to a blog post * For gated content: Conversion rates, form fills * Number of video views * MQLs, SQLS, sourced opps and/or influenced opps from the content being promoted (how many deals/opps were generated or influenced by this content) * Impressions * Share of voice * SEO metrics - keyword rankings, organic search traffic to the content

Managing and tracking KPIs by goals and channels can vary from team to team, depending on team structure and organization. For example, your organization may have a dedicated role or team for marketing analytics and reporting, while other teams may be structured differently, with the campaign manager or channel owner responsible for managing and tracking KPIs and goals. In any case, I recommend developing a scorecard with the top-line KPIs and goals you want to achieve for a specific time frame. Share this scorecard with your larger stakeholder group in advance for feedback. You could create a quarterly scorecard that is updated and refreshed at the beginning of each quarter and shared with the necessary stakeholders. Then, monitor progress on a weekly basis throughout the time frame to stay close to progress and the pacing towards your end-of-quarter goal. This approach allows you to focus more energy on what's working well and quickly identify underperforming KPIs. You can then audit and determine what's causing the drop in performance.

Socializing KPIs before and after a campaign is important. It allows all stakeholders to align, prioritize work that impacts these KPIs, and understand performance, including the reasons behind the performance. Before creating KPIs, it's important to understand the following: * Know the campaign messaging and call to action you want users to take: What do we want people to ultimately gain from this campaign? Do you want to drive users to a specific page on your site? Increase free trial sign-ups? Increase demo requests? Is this a top-of-funnel play where you'd want to measure engagement like impressions? It could be a mix of these depending on the campaign, in which case you'd want to account for these various KPIs accordingly. * Have a strong understanding of the different channels promoting the campaign: For example, if email is a large part of the promotion strategy, you'll not only want to include email metrics as KPIs but also include the percentage of sourced traffic from email versus other channels. Aside from determining KPIs, it's also important to establish goals and benchmark comparisons. To do this, you can review performance from similar marketing initiatives or research industry benchmarks and set goals based on these insights. With many moving pieces, it's crucial to communicate your KPIs once you know which ones you want to track and measure. I recommend sharing your KPIs in an easy-to-read template well ahead of your campaign launch to provide time for stakeholders to review and provide feedback. Once a campaign is launched, you can provide an end-of-day KPI performance readout, an end-of-week readout, and an end-of-month readout. Depending on the campaign's longevity, you could also provide additional KPI readouts. For instance, if the campaign is seasonal and only running for a specific amount of time, you'll want to do a final KPI readout once the campaign has ended.

Effective OKRs for demand gen are measurable objectives that drive impact or growth in key areas such as acquisition, pipeline, awareness, and engagement. Before creating OKRs, it's crucial to have a firm grasp of not only your team's specific goals but also the broader company objectives. This ensures that your marketing efforts and the OKRs you develop will ladder up to these higher-level objectives. This approach elevates your OKRs from good to great and enables you to tailor them more effectively, making them more specific and relevant. For instance, if launching a new product is a top company-wide priority, then your OKRs should be refined accordingly. Here are a couple of examples: * Decent OKR: Source X% of site traffic * Better OKR: Source X% of traffic to the new product site page * Decent OKR: Source $X in sourced opportunities * Better OKR: Source $X in sourced opportunities, with Y% being new product opportunities

To determine the KPIs you want to track, it's important to align with stakeholders on which KPIs matter most. While there may not be an inherently "wrong" KPI to track, some may require more analysis to understand the full picture. Here are a couple of examples: 1. Email open rates can indicate interest in a topic or message, and can be useful for benchmarking overall email engagement. However, open rates aren't always the most accurate due to bots, email client blocking, or privacy features. Instead, I'd recommend click-through rates if you're looking to get a better understanding of how people are engaging with your emails and taking action based on the message 2. Website visits are certainly an important KPI to measure, but they should be analyzed and segmented, especially from a demand generation perspective. For instance, if your organization has recently released new open roles, it may cause a spike in website visits, but these visits may not necessarily convert into customers