Do you believe a demand gen manager can be successful without budget for ads to pair with their strategy?

• Yes! I actually had this experience for a few years. We had a pretty healthy ad budget as a business, but the focus wasn't specifically on the sales funnel. It was more focused on driving self-serve. My remit was driving pipeline for the sales organization, so we had to get smart about how we were bringing people in and engaging them.
• What we did in that scenario was focus on building a really strong inbound engine: Creating content based on the pain points of what our target audience was searching for, and then pulling folks to us via SEO, website optimization and lead capture mechanisms. Ad budgets can add fuel to a strong inbound program and add volume, but you can drive quality lead, MQL, SAL and SQL volume without a paid budget. In that scenario, you need to invest in SEO, content development, website operations + optimizations and have a really strong email nurture program.
• We were also in a position where we had an existing database of leads / email addresses to draw from. If you don't have that database, then you HAVE to find a way to start there: Whether it is an ads budget, lead generation programs, or events, you need a database of folks to reach out to in order to drive any kind of demand.
• And, don't give up on getting a paid budget. Just figure out what pitch / proposal / test / results you need to show in order to unlock some level of investment.

Do I believe a demand generation manager can be successful without a budget for ads? Yes!

Generally speaking, there are many ways to meet your customers where they are from an organic perspective. Although I personally leverage paid ads often, they are not the sole golden ticket. The key is having a deep understanding of your customers, where they hang out, and alternative methods to meet them where they are at. This could result in having a strong SEO presence, a social media presence, email marketing, and other lifecycle marketing motions, as examples.

I believe there has to be a certain culture to support paid ads. A culture of iterative experimentation to understand outcomes from paid ads. Without this, you’ll find you are right back at the stage of pausing them.