What strategies have you found most effective for aligning product marketing efforts with demand generation activities?

The biggest key is alignment on priorities and goals. We can't run a campaign for every single feature update or asset, particularly if we have a large portfolio of products.

So, we need to know which product(s) are the priority for each quarter, half, or year. And we need to know which goals are most important for those products.

If we're announcing a brand new product, awareness might be the biggest goal, and we might have a larger budget to put into paid media, since we're trying to drive a net-new conversation.

If we're facing headwinds from a specific competitor, we might need to focus more on enabling the sales team to handle objections or be strategic in our conversation with key accounts. Retention and expansion might be more important in this case.

Next, quarterly planning rituals are key. The teams need to be talking to each other, meeting regularly, and aligned on which narratives are driving the goals for each quarter.

We use Confluence templates for this, including these:

https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/templates/project-plan

https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/templates/marketing-campaign

https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/templates/marketing-plan

Finally, Product Marketing teams should keep message houses and persona information up-to-date to inform Demand-Gen deliverables. These are key to helping the demand-gen team know who to target and which messages resonate with each audience.