How do you collaborate and communicate with other teams and stakeholders involved in demand generation?

The best thing about being in demand generation is the opportunity for cross-collaboration with other functions like sales, product development, partner marketing, and more. Their frontline insights add immense value to your demand generation strategy and execution. Don't overlook the importance of engaging product marketing partners and other marketing colleagues to create a positive team environment, which ultimately reflects in the experiences you craft for prospects. And remember to keep management in the loop by socializing your plans, ideas, and progress to showcase the impactful work being done in marketing.

In demand generation, the magic lies in working closely with sales, product development, and partner marketing teams. Their unique perspectives are gold for crafting effective strategies. Don't forget the power of collaborating with product marketers and fellow marketers to build a strong team camaraderie that shines through in every prospect interaction. And, always keep management updated on your initiatives to highlight the incredible work happening in the marketing realm. Together, we can create impactful experiences that resonate with our audience.

It's essential for any organization embarking on a content-led or looking to reframe its content to strategy to establish a clear set of objectives. Socialize these objectives with the broader GTM teams to challenge the thinking. Your goals can be one of the below or all of them. Use objectives to drive alignment, transparency and accountability. 1. Build brand awareness | Boost engagement 2. Change behaviour | Drive engagement 3. Demand creation | Demand capture 4. Rank higher in search | Increase web traffic | conversions 5. Increase customer value 6. Increase brand authority 7. Improve retention, loyalty & advocacy 8. Build Community Once goals are established, KPIs and SMART goals should be set to monitor progress.

Before making and sharing content, you should know what you hope to get from your content marketing. Think about your goals and make sure they're SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-sensitive. These goals should help your bigger plans for getting more customers. You might want to make more people aware of your brand, get more leads, help potential customers learn more, teach your current customers, or get more sales.

Ten voices, ten definitions of "success" after launch. It was like blindfolded orchestra conductors, each leading a cacophony of instruments. Turns out, our vision of triumph was a tangled yarn ball, everyone clutching their own unshared thread. The culprit? Skipping the pre-flight alignment check. Before igniting the engines, get every astronaut on board – marketing, sales, even the CEO – humming the same data-driven tune. Forge shared key performance indicators, etch them into your launch manifesto like cosmic commandments. Clarity becomes your hyperdrive, blasting everyone towards the unified nebula of success. Trust me, the only discord you'll hear then is the joyous rumble of a well-oiled, multi-team engine hitting escape velocity.

It's essential for any organization embarking on a content-led journey or looking to reframe its content to start with customer research of your ICP. Customer research translated into an ICP card that outlines criteria for targeting and building value-driven relationships. With the ICP card, it's critical to establish North Star elements for your content strategy. North Star elements should also be used to stress test your content. 1. Write concisely and clearly - no jargon. 2. Infuse emotion [it's about the prospect | customer] 3. Be conversational. Your goal with content is to build trust, authenticity and a relationship. 4. Time to value, [ are you delivering value?] 5. Be differentiation-obsessed [you are competing with yourself].

Aligning your content to the buyer’s journey is akin to providing the right fuel at each stage of a long road trip—ensuring they don’t run out of energy before reaching the destination. Map out your buyer’s journey and create content tailored to each stage, from awareness to decision, to guide prospects smoothly through the funnel.

An good rule of thumb to follow here is: - Focus only on value-add at the top of the funnel. How can you make your prospects do their jobs better? - At the middle of the funnel, focus on problem creation. - Only at the bottom of the funnel should convince your prospects why they should go with you.

Understanding our audience's needs at each stage of their journey allows us to craft targeted content that moves them closer to a decision, enhancing the overall effectiveness of our demand generation efforts.

By aligning goals, understanding the buyer's journey, integrating tactics, and collaborating across teams, demand generation efforts can be more cohesive and impactful.

A simple framework I have used with my GTM teams: 1. Understand customers 2. Create value 3. Deliver value 4. Manage value 5. Re-learn to deliver more value

Not included here is making it useful for your Sales team's outreach. Stuff that is useful to drop into 2nd, 3rd, 4th touch points - content with data for different industries or personas, case studies that are written to have relevance in the given context.

Here’s a formula I use: ?? Learn ?? Create ?? Distribute ?? Analyze ?? Optimize ?? My goal is to think fluidly across tools and channels and apply relevant “content market fit.” For example, does a video I just created relate to a blog post for that same audience? Insert a snippet, update content, and boost SEO.

A cohesive strategy where each tactic informs and supports the others can create a more engaging and compelling narrative for your audience. For instance, the insights gained from SEO can guide content creation, ensuring it's not only informative but also discoverable.

Integrating content marketing with tactics like SEO, email marketing, and social media ensures a unified approach, maximizing reach and impact across all channels.

Cross-functional collaboration can be challenging. Please clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each team member involved in demand generation campaigns. This helps prevent overlap and ensures that all tasks are covered. Use tools like RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) charts to clarify who is responsible for what.

Effective communication and collaboration are the backbones of successful demand generation. By working closely with sales, product, and other departments, we can ensure our content strategy supports overall company goals and drives growth.

Effective communication with teams is like rowing a boat—if everyone rows in sync, you’ll glide effortlessly towards your goals; otherwise, you’ll just go in circles. Implement a shared project management tool to streamline communication and ensure transparency, accountability, and timely collaboration across teams.

One of the most valuable ways you can adjust your content to speak your buyers' language is by listening to what they care about and how they're framing their challenges. You can do this by doing things like: - Listening to podcasts that feature your target audience as guests - Reading trending LinkedIn discussions that are relevant to your business or industry - Following community forum posts - Listening in on discovery calls your sales team has with prospects

From my perspective, the importance of content marketing lies in its ability to foster teamwork and open lines of communication across various departments. It's not just about creating and distributing content; it's about creating a shared vision that aligns with the overall goals of the organization.