What are some common challenges or barriers you've encountered in aligning product marketing and demand generation, and how have you overcome them?

Product Marketing over-indexes on the qualitative elements of marketing, while Demand Gen over-indexes on the quantitative side... when, to truly do marketing effectively, you need a harmonious balance of both.

Ever meet product marketers who geek out on positioning and messaging, nitpicking the quality of and wordsmithing 1 landing page or slide but ask them about how marketing is doing on pipeline and they look at you with a blank stare?; how about a demand gen marketer who makes decisions purely off a spreadsheet model, or one program at a time and have absolutely zero clue what the eBook they just set up a campaign for is about?

This happens all too often, and only creates siloes in each team working on their own "specialty areas." Just like in life, marketer can strive for better balance whether you're growing your career through product marketing or demand gen.

Some structural moves to mitigate this:

• Include demand gen in product launches; product launches aren't just a PM<>PMM thing anymore, get Demand Gen and Marketing Ops involved early and often in the weekly syncs

• Include all of marketing in enablement sessions; ensure that demand gen can do the basic first pitch just like any SDR or AE can; every marketer can do their jobs better with better understanding and context of the product, not the other way around

• Even if the Demand Gen team is org'ed by region or channel, assign each member a product, area of functionality, or some such so they have a vested interest in learning about and keeping updated about what you're selling, which incentivizes frequent syncs with PMM