AMA: Calendly Head of Demand Generation, Mindy Servello on Demand Generation Strategy

Before going to market, I believe any strong demand generation practitioner or leader needs the segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP) crafted. An STP is a three-part formula to help marketers segment their audience, target the right buyers and/or influencers and position their solutions in a way to make the biggest impact. An STP will allow demand generation to understand who (company and person) they are targeting and what they are saying to them. Not only that, but it drives alignment between demand generation, product/solution marketing, sales and marketing leadership. Crafting an STP requires collaboration between these groups and (in an ideal world) it is driven based off focus groups, customer conversations and data so that there is confidence in it. When this fundamental step is skipped, I find that there is misalignment between who we should be going after and what we should be saying to them. The alignment driven by the STP process allows for everyone to be on the same page, demand generation can stay on strategy because there actually is one and demand generation practitioners get confident in who they are targeting and why - leaving less reliance on solution marketing which drives business efficiency. My guidance would be to research STPs and build your framework out from there.

When creating a GTM strategy for a SLG company, demand generation should be pulling in sales, marketing leadership, solution marketing, content marketing and potentially others depending on the business structure. Once there is an STP crafted (see other question on strategy) between demand generation and solution marketing, it's time to run it by sales. Getting their feedback is vital because they are the feet on the ground and have qualitative insights you cannot pull from a data warehouse. This alignment on who you are going after and what the audience cares about is vital to be aligned on because if you take similar approaches, they will be complimentary in nature. It's like steering one boat together instead of tugging at the steering wheel in opposing directions. From there, I incorporate their feedback and run the draft STPs by marketing leadership to gather their feedback. During all of this, it's vital to align with content marketing because you need to make sure you have content that speaks to this audience or get a plan in place to create it. And of course - looping in your digital marketing agency as well so they are treated as an extension of your team. For a PLG company, this process may not include sales, but include growth marketing/lifecycle marketing, product marketing and more.

Before getting to results, there should be an expectation set with the demand generation team that everything must have a hypothesis crafted before going to market. Then you report on that. I have found many marketers do not do this foundational step which can result in just doing work for works sake, not really knowing if something really performed to expectation and data dumps are the norm rather than clearly articulated expectations vs. results. Having a hypothesis crafted allows this tactic to have a purpose, allows you to triage the health quickly and zero in on learnings. If you thought it was going to do X, but it did Y - is that good or bad? What do you do next?

When creating a go-to-market strategy, first follow the data to nail down the bread-and-butter channels that produce the results needed. From there, back out of your goals (ex: ARR through leads) to understand how much investment (whether time or money) you need to make in order to hit your goals with those alone. The second bucket is experimentation! While knowing your mature channels that have been optimized to generate ARR is important - diversification is just as vital. You never know when a disruption will occur or the business will change which requires demand generation marketers to always be experimenting. I set aside time and money every quarter to test new vendors, channels, etc. in order to always be learning. This will expose new channels to drive ARR and make you less reliant on what 'has always worked'. All that to say - I have lived the start up life where we don't have channel performance data to go off since everything is brand new! If you are at a start up or a business that recently pivoted strategy, not having any data to know 'what works' is often the reality so just test, test, test and get scrappy. Watch the performance - pour gasoline on what is working and pivot away quickly from what is not. The channels that are 'fundamental' really depend on the business and company goals, but I'd say across from companies of all sizes I've worked at I've always driven impact with email, face-to-face events, organic (SEO) and webinars. I have worked at companies where paid search is king and others where we couldn't crack the code for the business model / audience. Depending on the business goals, we can't forget about key awareness digital channels like audio, CTV, display, paid social and other aspects of OOH. The mix truly depends on company goals, the industry, target audience, etc.

Test, test, test. Have those fundamental channels built out so that you feel confident you can hit your ARR/pipeline goals with them alone and always save a bucket or time/money to experiment. That is the only way you'll learn what work for your business, stay relevant and push the business forward. when something shows to be promising, pour gasoline on it. When it doesn't, kill it fast. This testing to prove out what does/doesn't work also requires you to understand the data of your organization so become an expert in your attribution model, lead scoring, lead/op statuses, lead routing etc. - all revenue operations - so that when you have the data, you understand how it all landed there and you can pivot faster.

This truly depends on business goals. I typically have seen business goals broken out by both net new business and expansion. I consider weight of the ARR/pipeline goals per motion when planning out my team's time, strategy and budget, but it isn't the only factor to consider. There are so many areas outside of demand generation and marketing that can drive expansion - customer success, sales, etc. - so it can be more organic. That said, if expansion is a huge business priority, I have also had an entire headcount dedicated to just that so it is all really driven by the organization's goals.

Trust is just as vital in B2B as it is in B2C. I think trust is built with many factors and having a great corporate marketing function greatly helps, but one main driver that demand generation can focus on is validity. Specific third-parties and customers are great for showcasing your organizations validity, competence and capability. For third-parties - analysts quickly show the validity of your company and product which increases trust. Prospects/customers already have trust built with certain analyst firms like Gartner. So when they see your org as a leader within a Gartner Magic Quadrant - trust increases. Another example is channel marketing. When you can tie your brand with another reputable brand/leader, you can capitalize off the trust they have already worked to build. For example, if you have an integration with Hubspot - try to collaborate on co-marketing materials like joint display ads to drive awareness, joint webinar where you can tap into their database, etc. This is a huge opportunity that I have seen many businesses look over in the early days. Leveraging a customer voice really moves the trust needle. Whether through testimonials on your website, customer case studies, customers at speaking in-person or virtual events that prospects are also in attendance of and/or leveraging awards from platforms like G2 your marketing mix - elevating the customer voice whenever and wherever you can build trust. So in summary - always elevate customer voices, leverage channel/technical partnerships where possible and incorporate key analyst firms.

When it comes down to it, revenue goals are what demand generation targets should be based off. When it comes to sales quotas, it's important to keep tabs on them because it signals the health of the sales organization which demand generation should always have a pulse on. When there is a territory or AE that is struggling to hit quota, demand generation can use this to start a conversation and see where they need support. Depending on how the team is structured, you'll often find trends. For example, if territories are split based off region - maybe the struggling West Coast reps are working with a particular industry (like healthcare) which may have a much smaller average deal size compared to the other East Coast region that's main industry is finance. Or maybe an AE in Texas comes up against the oil and gas industry constantly, but marketing don't have that within our demand generation strategy - should we? Maybe! Maybe not, but there usually is always some way to help support - fund a oil and gas face-to-face event, run a industry specific webinar. It may be off strategy, so it could be labeled as a low lift experiment to test a new industry with the bonus being that is also support the AE. It's snippets like that which are super important to learn from sales conversations because they drive a true partnership between the two areas of the org.