What’s in a Name?: Demand Orchestration vs. Demand Generation

Challenge: Does ‘Demand Generation’ Reflect What We Do?

Over the past 10+ years, my functional marketing role has been called ‘demand generation,’ and certainly in the tech community, this term helps quickly communicate where we fit within the marketing org.  However, recently I was speaking with a prospect the other day about a project, describing my typical engagements, how I work with clients, etc. When I was summarizing the typical activities, I found myself describing what I do as ‘demand orchestration’.

Let’s look at the functional areas managed by the “demand generation” leader:

• Marketing KPI’s, Dashboards and Attribution
• Customer Persona and Lifecycle Definition
• Lead Flows and Processes
• Marketing-Sales Interface and Handoff
• Marketing Campaigns, Programs and Themes
• Third Party Demand Programs
• Webinars, Field Events & Tradeshows
• Paid and Organic Search
• Website Design and Conversion Rates
• Martech Stack and Team Enablement
• Lead Nurturing and Qualification
• Lead Engagement, SLA and Qualification
• Lead Development Rep Training and Playbooks
• Account Based Marketing
• ….and so on…

However, as a demand team leader the most important responsibilities are actually more like this:

1. Align with Sales on Business Plan Targets & Splits w/ Marketing
2. Build Forward Looking Demand Model for Opportunity and Lead/Account Targets
3. Create KPI’s, Dashboards and Measurement Processes
4. Design Bottom Up Demand Plan Across Various Channels
5. Build Out Demand Team and Assign Functional Areas
6. Create Planning Process Leading to Program Execution
7. Track and Optimize Programs Ongoing
8. Ongoing optimization of people, process, programs and systems: weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually

So what struck me at that moment in our conversation was that demand gen leadership is really about orchestration. The areas that most frequently rise to the top of my attention are:

• Do we have the right mix of programs to address top, middle and bottom of funnel?
• Do we have the right skill sets on our team?
• Are we optimally executing against our plan?
• Are there opportunities to optimize demand funnel volumes and conversion rates?
• What is our prospect/account user experience and how can we improve?
• How are we assisting with customer lifetime value in retention rates, upsell, and cross sell?

These activities essentially have to do with orchestrating people, process and systems to accelerate growth, therefore the role is more accurately described as orchestration. In my experience, I contribute most to an organization in the orchestration of these resources to ensure the team meets and exceeds pipeline and won business targets.

Should we call the function Demand Orchestration? Does that more accurately describe what we demand leaders do?  Does it even matter what we are called? What probably matters most is that demand generation leaders focus on the people, process and systems to optimize performance and growth. Let me know your thoughts.

Lesson: As demand generation leaders, our focus is to orchestrate people, process, programs, and systems to optimize revenue generation that meets or exceeds business goals

Author: Larry Stein at TechMarketingStrategies

For the last 20 years, I have led demand generation teams supporting high growth technology companies. Now working as an independent consultant, my responsibility is to apply best practices in the creation of these programs. My goal is to enable marketing teams to become self sufficient with a data driven culture of KPI's, test and measurement in service of achieving company revenue targets. My approach is to work with senior management identifying objectives and wildly important goals. With these in mind, we work together to build programs, processes and systems that will reach these goals along with the measurement KPI's to evaluate progress. Along the way we will enable the team to manage and maintain these systems so achieving these goals becomes a natural cadence of the marketing organization. View all posts by Larry Stein at TechMarketingStrategies