051. Building a High-Performing B2B Demand Generation Team

All right, it looks like we got a little loop on the introduction here. I have no idea what happens, but I'm sure Gavi will figure it out later. So how is everyone? This is Emilio Garcia, your host at the Mangen Studio. And with me, as always, is Gavi. How are you, Gavi?

I am Iliope. You're fine. That was really funny.

Yeah, I. The first time he was like, yeah, maybe it's just a glitch. And the third time he's like, no, this has got to stop. This has got to stop right away. Thank you everybody, everybody, everyone for joining us today. I'm really happy to, as always, have a opportunity to share with you some of the things are going on. The demand generation space, demand gen space. And today we are going to talk about something that Gabby brought to my attention. I think it's a great, great topic. Really related obviously, as always, to what we do as demand generation professionals and B2B marketers. But he's talking about the structure of the team. Right. If you want to implement a demand gen program in your organization, it is really important to understand the roles because it looks like, yes, for very small operations, you can get a jack of all trades, someone that is knowledgeable in all the aspects that you need to manage from for launching a demand generation program. But it's probably something that you will not be able to do quite successfully on a larger organization. If you have a larger endeavor, probably you will need to source people that have, you know, more skills, deeper skills on some aspects. That doesn't mean that you have to hire them in house right away. Right? That's not what we're proposing, but at least it's important for us to know what are the roles so you can understand which roles you have in house and which roles you need to outsource or freelance or hire a company or an agency to help you complement what you have already in your company. So I think that's, that's a great topic for, for discussion today. So let us dive right away and as always, we want to give some context on why we want to talk about. How do you structure that team? Definitely for those of you that are either new to demand generation or that you know some specific aspect of it, one thing that I can tell right away is that it is typical to compare demand generation to just digital advertising. Right? That's, that's something common and I will argue that it's understandable because most of what demand generation do is tied to performance. And performance meaning how many opportunities or how Many new deals or even, you know, qualified leads you get from a specific marketing effort. So this understandable because most of what you do on digital advertising is only also tied to performance because you are paying the search engines and social media platforms to deliver traffic to your website or to your property and assets. But it's not just digital advertising. The more the broader concept of demand generation is that you are working on the marketplace to make sure that the message about your company, who you are, what is your positioning, what do you think about the problems and solutions that you focus on are deliver delivered to the right people. And because it's related to B2B usually that delivery happens because you choose channels where you can, if not guarantee at least improve the chances that the message is heard. So in that broader perspective, for example, it means that having someone knowledgeable of the digital advertising is not enough because you also need the content that you will present or that you will show on those platforms. So that content component as well as the way that you present the message, which require you knowledge of how to make content and images and videos attractive or at least attention grabbing so you can start having the chance to deliver that message. And means that you can't rely on just one person most of the time, right? And also the other big reason is because demand generation is broader definition encompass not just, you know, unaware users or people that have never heard of your company, but it truly caters to the whole buyer journey, right? So people that have never heard of your company, people that is, you know, aware of it, people that is engaging heavily on your website and of course people that is already part of your database that opt in for communications and are, are, you know, are having conversations with you, even open opportunities and current customers can be part of your demand generation efforts if you, if you sit in this broader effort of how do you increase revenue and sales velocity, right? So it is really, really important to understand that, that the broader definition of demand generation is part of the reason that you want to build a team. Because you will have to cover the whole buyer journey and you will have to cover these two pillars that are related to what content do you create, the stages of it and the channels that you will use to distribute that content. And not all of those channels are going to be pay ones. Some of them are going to be pay one free, right? So you paying anyone, but you will still invest resources and time to, to make it happen, if that makes sense.

I guess that's something really important to mention too is that obviously the team that you are going to build, right. It needs to cater to the, let's just say the challenge of another thing within demand generation in B2B, which is the typical roles that you will encounter with members of a buying committee. And those are the ones that actually are going to be. You're giving answers, right? So I guess that something really important to mention too is that when you build a team, you have to consider that those roles actually can provide those answers and provide that content. Like you said, the ones that you mentioned to the different stages at a, at the buying committee, committee purchases or the ones that are going to provide information for those, those people.

Yes. And diving right away into how you should think about that team, I want to break it down into basic camps, right? So if, if you are limited in resources, of course, think about, you need one demand generation specialist, right? You can't afford just one person is not ideal, but that's the first thing, right? And then if you can afford two people, then I will break it down into the person that creates content and the person that distribute content, right? So, well, that will be the first split, if you want to call it that way. And then there will be further splits on that, right? So, but the first one, the important one, it will be you have someone that is responsible for creating the content and you have someone that is responsible for making sure that that content gets in front of the right audiences. That will be the first split. Now, if I focus on the on the content part, skills that are required to create content can be further split on specialties. One is the research that goes behind deciding what type of content you're going to build, right? So that's more strategic, if you want to call it that way. And usually that strategy goes into a third person that is responsible for defining what type of content and what distribution channels you will use. But it's important to also think about that just the content creation process itself has a strategy, right? So that's where you have your research into the audiences that you want to cater to, the format that they like to consume that content, the questions that they ask, the answers that they will be looking for, the objections that they might have for a potential solution. And so all that research has to be done by someone. And so in the content creation part, you have that understanding of the strategy of the content that you're going to create and obviously the actual creation itself, and that you can further divide depending on the type of content that you're going to build, right? If you're going to create blog pieces, then you will need a skill set. If you're going to create audio or video, you will need a completely different skill set, especially depending on how you're going to create that content, right. Are you going to make up a podcast where you will have people that will come and interview and ask them questions and you need a strong moderator if you're going to do it in house. Then you need a subject matter expert that will be the one talking about the topics that you feel or do you have research are important for your, for your buyers. So the depending on the type of content that you're going to build, you will need one or more people understanding that. Now on the distribution channel part, it's a similar thing. You can break it down in the strategic part, right? Is what is my where are my go to channels? And those distribution channels don't. The first question that you have to ask is are all of them digital, right? Some of them won't, won't need to. They can be in the, what I call, you know, sometimes I refer to as the real world, right. So you can say, well, we are going to be present on trade shows, we are going to be present on conversations with people, we are going to sponsor events, or we are just having, we are just having phone calls and conversations with potential buyers. But most of these, you know, most of the time nowadays markers will lean more into digital channels. That's understandable. But even on those, then you will need to understand what will be your strongest distribution channel. Is it going to be email? Is it going to be organic social media? Is it going to be organic search, paid search? So that's where you can break down those roles depending on how many channels you want to cater to. And at the same time you will probably need an expert for each of them and that's pretty common. Typically, while you can get away with someone that will be your omnichannel person, typically you want, if you are going to rely heavily on one of them, you want the expert on that channel, right? If my distribution channel is organic search, then you want an SEO expert. If you are going to focus on paid and it matters if you stay search versus pay social, then you want someone that is knowledgeable about that. Because on the, on the pay social display side, not just the campaigns are configured differently, you rely way more on creatives. So you want maybe even the combination of having someone that is responsible for, for managing the distribution channel and someone else that is responsible for creating the assets, meaning the images, the copy, the landing pages and so you can see how this can explode into multitude of people on the distribution channel side. Obviously it will depend on the case, but in general, you want to be mindful of how you are drilling down into that right now. I will say that I will always start simpler and resources will be limited. So start with one person, then break down the content creation process versus the distribution channel process and then you drill down even more as you are seeing performance and as the need arises. For example, you don't need from the, from the first day, unless you're a very large organization already, let's say an optimization rate expert, right? Someone that will be responsible for improving conversion rates across the website and that will be doing a B test. Because those kind of experiments are required only in situations where you have tens of thousands of visitors and you are getting hundreds of conversions per month or sometimes even per day, right? So you need a very high volume to justify an extra like that. Because the incremental changes that they can do will have a outsized impact, right? But if you just have a handful of visits per month and a handful of pages, someone like that will bring little value and will cost you a lot, right? So expand the Team, I think is very similar to this book, E Myth, I think it's called, where the author suggests that if you're an entrepreneur, you laid out the org chart chart of your whole organization as you envision it in 10 years, in 20 years, right. How many people are going to be working and what will be the roles and all that. But at the beginning, your name is in every single job title, right? Because you are the only person. You are the person that pick up the trash and you are the CEO. So in a similar way, it's important to lay out the org chart of your demand generation program. But at the beginning it's going to be just you and maybe someone else that help and you will distribute all those titles and as you progress, you start delegating more and more of those tasks. Right now. Yeah. You're going to say something?

Yeah, sure. Yeah, I guess that something that is really important. You say that you, you can cover the, the essential walls, but also, even, even though, if they're really, really essential, I guess that we, we need to highlight the, the importance of cross, multifunctional, cross functional collaboration within those team. Within the team, right? With those roles. Because I guess the way that can make an example of is because effective demand generation is just the responsibility of a single role, right? It has to be the result of the collaborative effort between those people. And that's what cross functional collaboration brings to the table. And it will ensure that the strength of a single role can be even stronger with the help of the other one. Right. And I guess that that's really optimal if you achieve that in within your organization.

Yeah. And I will tie together two ideas that we were planning to discuss. You know, meaning hiring and onboarding. Plus how do you define the goals and KPIs? Because you are touching a very important point which is the challenge that not just organizations that are trying to launch a demand generation program, but any marketing organization might have is that if they don't define the right goals and KPIs, they might run the into the issue of having silos and people fighting for propping up a distribution channel or a content creation strategy or tactic instead of going together for the same or common goal. So this is something that is very important to have in mind and the only way to to make sure that it doesn't happen that people are not trying to justify your paid channel versus trying to justify organic versus trying to justify the blog versus justifying the podcast is to have common goals at the highest of levels, right? Opportunities created, deal velocity and keep the the team aligned to that. That doesn't mean that you will not have specific metrics right. For each of the efforts to judge efficiency. But it's important not to get into the trap of trying to justify each channel. We need to have knowledge about what is the supposed, you know, the expected impact of some of them. So two specific things here are one, be careful with attribution and two, be careful with both content types and distribution channels that are catering to people that have very high intent versus very low intent. And let me put you examples here. If you do social media or even display advertising, for example, you by definition usually don't have a lot of intent behind that. There are some tools that you can use to improve the chances that you're in front of someone has intent, but because they are not searching for whatever you're offering, then by definition they will have very low intent. And if your KPIs are geared toward judging the ability of that channel to create leads, for example, on a last touch attribution model, you are dooming that effort from the beginning because those channels will not bring, you know, comparable leads if you compare that to your branded search volume or your branded search, your branded pay search. So it is not a fair comparison, right? And if you use the same metric for the team that is doing the social media effort versus the team that is doing paid search The PACER team is going to win, but you're going to give away the opportunity to be in front of people before they show intent. Right? That's for example, one thing that you have to have clear that in that particular case a better way to compare that is to use the cost per impression or the cost of reaching someone. And it's a very quick experiment that everyone can do and maybe we will someday dedicate some time that on our webinars. Look at the cost per impression or the cost per reach for reaching 1000 accounts or P persons or people for display and for LinkedIn and for any other social media display platform, even you know, real world examples like how much does it cost to reach 1,000 people on a TV advertising commercial and compare that to search, right? Go and pay search and try to get the CPM cost and you will be amazed of how, how much, how different they are. Yes, there's difference on quality, it's not the same. You get an impression on a magazine that you get on an airport, that you get on display on a website versus the one that you will get from an app or mobile. But it's a good proxy for what we are trying to measure here, which is delivering a message when someone is not searching for it. Right? So that's one example. On the content creation part, an example that I can give you is trying to use the same metrics to compare bottom of the funnel content or bottom of the funnel pages versus top of the funnel content or top of the funnel pages, right? So if you are just using the same KPI for performance, let's say for example traffic, then you will rarely build bottom of the funnel pages or middle of the funnel pages like case studies, testimonials, portfolio, how your solution works for specific industries because they will bring very little volume. There's not a lot of people searching for specific case studies or for demos or detailed explanation managing objections about your product. There's a ton of people looking for simpler answers, understanding the problems that your company solves. So if you use that metric across the board, you will only be creating block pieces. You will only be creating, you know, podcasts, podcast content or things that will bring you a lot of traffic but still are very educational in nature. But when that prospect shows intent or more interest on your offer, they will find that you don't have a lot of social proof on your website or in your general, in your collaterals. And, and you need that content to start educating people and bring them them to know what you do better. Right? So yes your get a demo. Your objection handling your testimonial pages, your case study pages will have very little volume compared to your what is what you do pages. But you need to dedicate some time to them. Right. So obviously there's appropriate proportion. But that's another way. What if you, if you measure the whole team on a KPI that doesn't take into account the intention of the content or the distribution channel they are using, then you will set them up for fail, you know, for failure for sure. If that makes sense. So be, be mindful of that. Right. So having those common goals rather than isolated one I think is one of the greatest ways to make sure that your team work align in the same goal. Right. So that's important. Obviously another thing that is relevant is equipping them with the right tools and the right technology. And just as we were saying here, the word of caution is just be mindful with attribution models. That's probably the most important comment that we can highlight here. Yes, your team needs the tools especially for the research. You want tools that allow you to research audiences, to research competition, to research keywords and topics and intent and behaviors and interests. And you also obviously want tools that allow you to facilitate content creation and distributing content across the channels. Another big word of advice here, and we have been calling this gavi heavily in the last few weeks, is AI. Right, Right. I, I think you need to strike a good balance here. Right. Is you don't want to stay away from it. It is helpful, allows you to automate and reduce time on the more time consuming tasks. But still the intentions behind the business are with us. Right. So you, you don't want to use it to just create content that is, you know, vanilla and average. You wanted, you wanted to use it to help you understand to, to bring ideas to the table. But it still has to say what your company thinks, your positioning, your offer, what makes you different, your competitive advantage. And that is not in the hands of ChatGPT. Right. That's in your hands. That's, that's your proposition to the marketplace. So. And the same applies to distribution channels. Yes. There are great tools nowadays that allow you to test. Right. Multiple messages at the same time, multiple assets. I'm starting to see that, you know, AI is capable of starting to even make some variations and changes on the assets that you have in real time. So you don't have to invest time creating variations on your assets, but uses, use them with a grain of salt because if not, you will be, you will be trapped in this, you know, faulty idea of getting viral just because. Getting viral, you know, what I mean is, yes, you can find an asset or a way of presenting things that will make you engage with a lot of people, way more people that usually you have. But if all that group of people is not really that relevant to your offer. Right. It is muted. Right. It's like these great ads sometimes that everybody talks about, but. But they have no business impact. They win awards and all that, but they don't necessarily bring business. And I know there's a balance there, right. If you're being talked about, that's. That's better than not. But just be mindful that sometimes AI, for example, in this particular case for digital channels, is optimizing for what you tell it for, and that not. Is not necessarily business. Right. So I think that will be the. A word of caution there.

Yeah. I want to mention something there about the equipping the team with the tools and technology that we. That we need. Me, as an example. I can say that for all the work that we do within the company, the right tools will always need to be strategical, too. Right. You cannot be paying and paying tools that you're not going to use. And something that I like about. I'm gonna talk about Bandify is that all the time, you are, like, searching for new tools. Like, tools are gonna make our work even better. Our work not. I wouldn't. I wouldn't say that easier, but obviously optimal. And that's something that happens all the time. Emilia's always giving us information about new tools, about new ways that we can make our work or make improvements. And that's something that, obviously talking about the.

The.

How you build that team, how that team is being. Let's just say that a satisfaction type of fringe. No, like an employee satisfaction, that will bring you, like, the certainty that you are. You're being taken care of sometimes, you know, like that. That will. That will give that feeling. And that's really important to mention because it means that your work is important and you're focusing on trying to make everything better. And that's something that I really appreciate about. About our company and the way that you make those things and move those pieces into our work. And obviously, if you have employees are satisfied with those things, you will never have trouble with nothing, because the tools that you provide and the way that we work with those tools are always going to be optimal for us and for the company.

Yes, I agree completely. Obviously, that's also very important that you, as you say, gavi provide with the team. Right. Tools so they have kind of success. Right. Sometimes people say that you. The worst thing that can happen is that you get responsibility without authority. Right. Or without control. So you are responsible for something that you can change. And that's very frustrating. You want to make sure that you give people both, not just one. Thank you for highlighting that. Now just to finish here on some of the recommendations we have discussed again that while it doesn't have to be only that demand generation is typically tied to performance. And that means that we need to work in close alliance with the sales team. Right. So when you are hiring for those roles, be mindful that you want people that also had that mindset of collaborating with sales team. You don't want to sacrifice. The scope of marketing is not short term. It's not for the next month, the next quarter is for the next year, for the next decade. Right. You are building the brand. But. But it's also important to make sure that that brand building is geared toward the industries, the buying committee that sales cares about so you can maximize the impact. Right. Very similar to what happens in physics. Right. So instead of having one, one vector of force pushing in this direction and the other one in the other one and canceling out, you want them to be together so they go in the same direction and they contribute and amplify their efforts. So it is not about doing the same work. It's not about being, you know, giving up the marketing mandate instead of, you know, for sales. It's more about making sure that we are going in the right direction. So that's something that you obviously need to keep in mind now finally to close it out, of course. Right. And tied to what you were saying, Gabby, about keeping the right tools and technology. All I used to say that especially marketing, but I don't think anymore. I think all areas of knowledge nowadays, they are going at such an incredible pace that there's no way that just with the infrastructure, you know, with the knowledge that you get from college and especially for areas like digital marketing, where probably what you are learning at school is already, if not obsolete, already behind what's going on in the marketplace. So you need to have the mindset and make the space for your team to continuously learn new things and adapt. Right. And it's not just because, you know, the latest trend. It is, it is a never ending thing. It had been evolving for decades and it will continue to do so. You need a good combination on that, improve in that continuous learning of fundamentals. And on top of that the trends. And that's something that I have learned in the hard way because I think I share with you sometimes. I'm not a marketer by trade, so there's a lot of things that I learned about the fundamentals in very weird ways. Right. Sometimes we get into this business or this industry by chance because we, we are interested on some specific aspect of it. In my case was the numbers. It was the ability to. And especially that I caused people about attribution. It was the idea of attribution that brought me into the, into the space. But as the year has, has gone by, I have rediscovered things that probably are fundamental to marketing for decades already, way before we have digital. So really, really important that you have you strike a good mix for your team of learning the new trends, learning the new spaces, learning the new ways that people consume and digest content, but also making sure that you go back to the basics which are rooted in our nature as humans. They. They are ha. They have nothing to do with technology. Probably has. Has to do more with psychology than anything else. Right. So important to, to really also pay attention to the aspect of the marketing activities and in this case demand generation. So I don't know Gabby, if you have anything else to contribute, but I think those are the most important aspects.

Those are the most important aspects. And I will say that again as an employee of Von Defy, I will say that this part is. It's really important too because it will keep you on this culture mind. Mind mindset about what you have to be not only doing, but what you need to do in the future. And that will give you a step ahead. Right. And that's really important because that will give you the certainty that you're working in the. In the right direction too. You're actually doing that effort to be better and to stay ahead of everything that comes next. And that's really important to have that certainly as a collaborator, as a part of a team and sharing that ideas with the other teammates and knowing that we are in the same channel, that's really important too. And something that I want to mention too that actually I guess that we've been passed on the hiring and onboarding matter is that having that like a meeting with the employees like you do on the onboarding every, every quarter, it is really important too because it's a one on one and, and you are asking the. Your team members if they're satisfied with anything or they are not. If there's something that you want to improve, there's something that they, they want to do next. And that's really something that I think we didn't mention, but you do too. And, and I guess that being a, again, an employee is really important to have that space to share that even though there's not your teammates around to listen or know whatever you, you have in mind. And that's something that I want to share too.

Yeah, I, I completely agree. And we, we went very, you know, quickly over that. But it's true is I ascribe to the idea that, you know, work relationships are one, two way relationships for sure that yes, sometimes employers hold some power over employees in an unfair manner, but most of the time that shouldn't be the case. And that you, you as an employer, as, or as a company want to, you know, get value from the people that work for you, but as much as you can deliver value to them as well. And an important part of that is that people want to grow and they want to have success in the areas that they are accomplishing the most. Right. And so the company needs you in some place now that we were talking about roles, but you also have to have in consideration what the employer, the employee wants to learn and focus and feels fulfilled. Right. And recognize if they have the tools to accomplish just that. So yes, when you are doing that, onboarding is very important at the beginning, establishing the rules of engagement, for sure, but also making sure that you have ongoing conversations about how they feel, things that are not working the way that they should. And at the beginning, you do that very frequently because there's a lot of feedback to get in and out of the relationship. But as you progress, then you can space it out but never let it go completely. Right?

Yeah.

We have, as you said, Gabby, many opportunities to have conversations, especially because, and it's important for us, especially because we are a remote team. So we need to have those meetings to realign ourselves. We don't have the luxury of being together in, in the same room. But even in those situations, you don't have the time or the mind to go into those deeper conversations about how do you feel in your work and what is the company going on. So you need a space where, where the employee can speak as freely as possible about what matters to them. And that's why we do those quarterly, quarterly reviews or one on one conversations where, where we follow that structure. Right. What you have done good, what can be improved, what do you need from us? Right. This is where we are going. Any, any other questions that you might have. So they're really, they're really helpful to keep you aligned in tune into what's going on with the, with the team for sure. So definitely, definitely something to pay attention to, but, well, I think we have covered everything that we, we wanted today. I want to thank you everybody who is listening or watching this now or later, and Gabby, as always, thank you for setting this up. And until the next one.

Until the next one. See you. See everyone.

See ya.