AMA: YouTube Integrated Marketing Strategy & Planning Lead, Pamela King on Demand Generation Soft and Hard Skills

So hard to nail it down to three! But these are the three attributes I find critical when hiring: * Analytical mindset: The ability to read data, analyze it and tease out challenges or areas for optimization are incredibly valuable. This is probably the biggest gap I see in some Demand Gen marketers. They often don't know which data to pull or where to go and * Communication: This role calls for strong cross-functional partnership, so communication is imperative to ensure: 1) Teams are aware of the Demand Gen strategy, 2) The Demand Gen team is getting what they need from other teams (e.g. - content, target audience insights, etc.)., and 3) The Demand Gen team is sharing back learnings with others teams + leadership. * Problem-Solving: Every week, something goes wrong in the Marketing funnel (e.g. - leads drop off at a certain step, a different audience engages with a campaign vs. the intended target audience, a certain channel is not pulling its weight as anticipated). So this role must be able to roll up their sleeves, identify the challenge, and develop creative solutions to test. And there's a level of creativity that should be involved here as hypotheses and tests should constantly be apart of building a Demand Gen campaign. 

This is a great question and a tough one to answer! Every org should develop this based on need. If I were to design a Demand Gen org for Global, it would look like this: * Demand Gen Strategy & Operations: You need one (or multiple people depending on the size of the org) to own the general Operations for the team. Meeting scheduling, global team interlocks, OKR setting, etc. * Demand Gen Analysts: This team will own the campaign data and so your focus can be on deriving insights and demand gen orchestration. * Global Interlock Lead: This person should own the relationships with the regions and the process of how assets get localized and delivered to the global teams. Is there a regular meeting cadence? How do you introduce new campaigns to the global teams so they are aware? * Campaign Leads/ Orchestrators: These are the Demand Gen warriors who own building their campaigns end to end. You can consider dividing this team up by segment type (Prospects vs. Customers, specific target audience segments, etc.). * Content Strategists: This team can own building the content and ensuring they are including global insights to make it relevant for global teams. Often the pitfall when building global demand gen teams is that the teams build for the region they are in and are not considerate of how to extend the message to be global. This team can own building assets such as infographics, webinars, etc. 

The one lesson I learned the hard way as a Demand Gen leader was that I was not as knowledgeable about my target audiences as I thought I was. I kept seeing different people respond differently to various assets and did not understand why. I learned that it was important to thoroughly understand the audience before building or when optimizing the campaign. It can't just be work from a 3rd party paper (e.g. - Forrester), it has to be true on the ground insights (from Sales or a Research team). This was so important to me because I sometimes did not see the results I had hoped to see. Moving forward, I kept in constant contact with Sales to understand what they were hearing from prospects/customers. 

There are a few ways to think about asking for an increase in budget. It's important to connect the ask to a strategic result. Here are four ways you can consider thinking about this: * Provide a new MQL goal: If you want to increase budget, one of the first things you'll have to focus on is how you can delier highe results. This means you'll want to work on building a forecast of how much it would take if your team wants to increase the MQL goals. Use this as a baseline -- look at the Cost per MQL aquisition and multiply by your increased MQL goal to derive the higher budget needed. * Increase your content budget: If you have seen certain types of content assets perform better within the funnel or engage a specific target audience well, then talk to your Leadership team about increasing your content strategy budget. * Optimize your Tech Stack: Are there new tools that you want to bring into your Demand Gen program that cost money but can yield higher results? This can be a way to position increasing the budget while driving improved results. Be sure to forecast what results this new tool(s) can deliver -- increase in MQLs, streamlined user journey, etc. * Collaborate with Sales: Demand Gen is a partnership between Marketing & Sales as Marketing is poised to deliver a certain portion of leads & help progress leads through the funnel. One way to think about increasing budget is looking at alternative ways to increase Sales support. Are there ways to increase the number of Outbound Sales Plays Marketing can support? Are there different tactics (e.g. - Direct Mail) that you can pilot that require additional budget? 

In order to drive accountability, teams within the Demand Generation organization must have three things be clear by their Leadership team: * Goals: What are the results each team is set up to deliver? Do the teams share goals? There needs to be clear expectations set in order to make teams understand what they have to do. * Measurement: How are we measuring the goals set? Are the metrics defined the same way for everyone? Is there a consistent dashboard or reporting tool(s) teams can use to track how they are doing meeting their goals? * Roles & Responsibilities: This often gets blurred and various teams do not understand their charters. Leadership needs to set clear expectations on which team owns what, who will provide feedback, and who will be the final approver(s). This can cause a lot of confusion and if those remits are set upfront, it will help eliminate many questions down the road. 

In order to be a Demand Generation leader, you want to be both left and right-brained. Often people think Demand Gen is all about analytics and architecting user journeys that deliver leads. But these journeys are targeting consumers, and consumers engage best with compelling content (e.g. - videos, images, etc.). This is where the right brain comes in to deliver creativity. When I think of the list of Hard skills (aka Must Haves) vs. Soft Skills (Nice to Have's), this is where I land: Hard Skills (Must Have's): * Analytical mindset/Data manipulator: This role calls for interpreting data and connecting the dots. How can one look at a Marketing funnel and identify gaps or ways to optimize the flow to produce more leads? Where are leads dropping off and why? * Tech Stack Guru: Mastering the Tech Stack used within an org is critical so * Curiosity: A true leader will want to explore what they do and develop hypotheses for tests to pilot. E.g. - if they introduce a new content asset, will that increase engagement? Is there a different audience to try targeting? What are other competitor brands doing in the space that can provide learnings? * Problem-solving: With Marketing, there are constantly challenges that arise (e.g. - leads dropping off, etc.). A great leader is constantly figuring out ways to fix and build upon these challenges presented. * Customer-first mindset: Having a strong understanding of the target audience and their painpoints and key motivational drivers is critical to ensure the Demand Gen program is successful. * Cross-Functional Communicator: This role sits at the center of Product Marketing, Sales, Content Strategy teams and more. Having a thorough understanding of those teams' work and how to leverage it would be important for a Demand Gen leader. Also communicating out the Demand Gen strategy to those teams will be important in relationship-building and ensuring all teams are aware of what's happening. Soft Skills (Nice to Have's): * Creativity: B2B can often be a bit stale, so it's nice to inject new ways to execute (e.g. - new channels, new content types, etc.). * Org Design & Communication: Make sure your team understands their remit, goals and any new company developments that affect their roles. 

I think the relationship with Sales should be seen as a Partnership where both sides have insights to deliver to one another (not just a one-way relatinoship where Marketing delivers Leads). This partnership should be built on trust and understanding. I was lucky to have done a Field Marketing role prior to leading Global Campaigns when I was at Google, and what I learned during that initial role is that Sales knows the field better than anyone. They understand what content resonates with prospects/customers, what competitors are doing to appease these audiences and what our brand's key differentiators can be, and what a target audiences' true painpoints are. Some best practices I found in striking a strong relationship with Sales are: * Have common goals: At the end of the day, Marketing and Sales all have the same goal -- increase revenue for the company. How each team goes about that is where we differ. Ensuring there's a strong handoff from Marketing Qualified Lead to a Sales Accepted Lead is critical. Also making sure Marketing is providing the right tools for Sales to take that Lead to the finish line is where the Marketing/Sales partnership can either fall flat or succeed. * Educate them & Make them a co-partner in your work: I co-created a Sales Council that met monthly where it was a two-fold experience: 1) educating Sales on what Marketing did so they understood we did more than just Events and 2) gathering their feedback on messaging, upcoming campaigns, and more. * Lean on their expertise to improve meessaging: I was charged with building Sales scripts for Inside Sales teams as a first touch for a Marketing Qualified Lead. I was the expert in the campaign but not necessarily the expert in the ideal length of a LinkedIn InMail or a first-touch email. So I often went to Sales colleagues I had a strong relationship with and would ask for them to review the messaging and gather tips on how to improve it. * Keep them in the loop: I would often meet with Sales Directors and other Sales Specialists to share campaign reporting and where we were looking to pilot or optimize the flow. Often times, Sales does not fully understand the Marketing funnel or how it works. So it's great to educate them on general reporting and areas that need improvement. Sometimes I would find myself brainstorming tactics with them that we employed in the campaign as a pilot and they would show success.