Building a Demand Gen Team
What your team should look like in 2024 and beyond
Over the last several months I’ve helped a client take their demand gen team from a traditional structure (one that was built to support a lead gen motion), to a modern ecosystem built to support the fuel and the engine required in 2024 and beyond.
Heading into 2023 this team was lead by a Director of Demand Gen who served a Marketing Development Rep, Inbound Marketing Manager, and a Webinar Specialist. They also had an outsourced SEO agency, and a second agency dedicated to paid media. To be fair this team structure was supporting business objectives and hitting goals….until it wasn’t.
We all know the way buyer’s buy has changed, and will only continue to change exponentially faster now thanks to the introduction of AI.
And buyer’s behaviors and practices for seeking new software solutions isn’t specific to one industry or persona—this is industry-agnostic. It effects us all.
H2 of 2023 this client started to feel those shifts directly in their pipeline and revenue numbers and that’s when they brought me in. This magnitude of change for an org to make a shift to demand gen is never easy, but proves out to be effective for both efficiency and scale time and time again.
And no org structure is rinse and repeat from another so before heading in blindly to recommend structure changes, start with the data. Getting to know the business model, margins, ICPs, existing program insights, etc. happens first. Org design can then follow an informed manner.
To fast-forward to today, here’s where the design is.
I’m imagining it is more helpful to provide a framework vs. explicitly spelling out levels and reporting structure—as I mentioned every org is different. But this should be a helpful guide to consider against your own business goals and objectives as you think about how to build your team.
Alright, let’s get into it:
Demand Gen
Purpose: Drive qualified pipeline to sales through targeted allbound efforts
Role in Sales-Led GTM Motion: Primary source of marketing qualified pipeline
Role in Self-Serve Motion: Secondary source of qualified signups / pipeline
Funnel Stage Focus: Awareness > Qualified Pipeline
Primary Channels: Outbound Email/Automated Outbound, Events, ABM Campaigns
KPIs: Qualified Pipeline, Inbound Conversion
Growth
Purpose: Drive traffic to a website through organic and paid efforts & convert to qualified pipeline or signups
Role in Sales-Led GTM Motion: Secondary source of marketing qualified pipeline
Role in Self-Serve Motion: Primary source of qualified signups +pipeline
Funnel Stage Focus: Awareness > Qualified pipeline
Primary Channels: SEO, SEM & paid, social, referral traffic, website/CRO
KPIs: Web traffic, qualified signups or leads, conversion
Partner Marketing
Purpose: Source, collaborate, and execute comarketing campaigns with partners to drive qualified pipeline through targeted efforts
Role in Sales-Led GTM Motion: Tertiary source of marketing qualified pipeline
Role in Self-Serve Motion: Tertiary source of qualified signups +pipeline
Funnel Stage Focus: Awareness > Qualified pipeline
Primary Channels: Events, Email, the Channel
KPIs: Parnter-source pipeline and revenue growth, Partner engagement and satisfaction, Effectiveness of marketing campaigns in the channel
Content
Purpose: Be the storyteller for the brand. Understand how to adapt content in all of its formats. Journalistic subject matter expertise.
Role in Sales-Led GTM Motion: Curate and concept content that serves as the fuel for the holistic demand gen engine.
Role in Self-Serve Motion: Curate and concept content that serves as the fuel for the holistic demand gen engine.
Funnel Stage Focus: Full funnel
Primary Channels: Content creation for all distribution channels
KPIs: Marketing sourced qualified pipeline, Content engagement, Brand recall
Lifecycle Marketing
Purpose: Nurture leads or users throughout the funnel to increase conversions, upgrades, expansion revenue, or retention
Role in Sales-Led GTM Motion: Enables sales & customer success throughout lifecycle
Role in Self-Serve Motion: Nurture users throughout lifecycle to drive product engagement
Funnel Stage Focus: Lead > Closed Won > Upsell/Expansion/Retention
Primary Channels: Email, Sales & CS Enablement, Onboarding, In-product marketing
KPIs: Full-funnel conversion, Product engagement, Upsell/expansion/retention
Ops & Analytics
Purpose: Manage tools and analytics to support growth marketing in driving full-funnel growth
Role in Sales-Led GTM Motion: Focus on supporting outbound efforts, marketing automation, marketing to sales handoff
Role in Self-Serve Motion: Focus on marketing automation & website
Funnel Stage Focus: Full funnel
Primary Channels: Email (sometimes)
KPIs: System success & delivering reports, Conversion rate improvements
In 10 months we’ve taken the org from 3 employees to 7 (actively recruiting the 8th now), have built a demand gen team that now contains the fuel and the engine, and we’re running the most effective payback period the business has ever experienced.
I hope this helps in your next org design process—here’s to growth.