In my role as Sr. Digital Marketing Recruiter at Versique, I work on a variety of searches for my clients. One of the most in-demand skill sets on the current market is demand generation. In this post, I’ll share more about the role of a demand generation leader who works with marketing automation, and tell you why it’s in-demand in the marketplace. This post is a part of my “2015’s Most In-Demand Marketing Careers” series. In my last post, I wrote about another in-demand marketing job to keep you eye out for in 2015 – Vice President of Digital Media. Watch our blog for more posts in this series!
What is Demand Generation?
Demand Generation is a combination of IT, sales, and marketing, and is a very in-demand skill set on the market today. Essentially, demand generation is just that – creating demand for a product or service, and it typically involves multiple marketing programs working together coupled with a structured sales process to achieve sales goals.
What are the responsibilities of a Demand Generation leader?
There are two distinct aspects of demand generation – one technical and one strategic.
Technical: The more technical roles involve working within marketing automation platforms like Eloqua, Marketo, Hubspot, etc. These “super users” pull lists, build workflows, score leads, and create landing pages, along with other tasks.
Strategic: The strategic side of demand generation involves rolling out top-of-funnel strategy, launching campaigns, determining a lead management process, and working with multiple departments to execute the strategy.
Another way to look at the role is someone who can lead the strategic efforts to fill a company’s sales pipeline with an incredible number of extremely well qualified and educated prospects. Responsibilities can include everything from administering the company’s marketing automation system, to creating email marketing and lead nurturing programs, to coordinating various tradeshows and events. There is typically plenty of opportunity to make a huge impact on the direction and marketing strategy of the company in these roles, but a prospective candidate will want to do his or her homework to ensure the company has the right resources and internal support in order to be successful.
What’s the trend with Demand Generation?
In recent years, there has been a large spike in Fortune 500 companies that have purchased big-ticket marketing automation platforms that integrate with their current CRM systems (Salesforce.com, MS Dynamics, etc.) and allow their sales and marketing departments to work together more efficiently. A deep understanding of both the creation of an integrated strategy and the technical execution is necessary for anyone managing such an initiative.
We’ve been asked to conduct searches for Demand Generation Directors, Demand Generation Managers, and other titles that essentially mean the same thing. What makes these people tough to find is that it’s a relatively new title and someone might not even realize this is what they do – they might still refer to themselves as a sales leader or a marketer at heart. In the coming year we’ll continue to see more companies hop on the demand generation bandwagon.
As we continue into the age of digital marketing, what questions do you see these roles facing? Let’s talk in the comments below.
Watch for the next segment in this series coming soon and read more about Marketing trends on our blog.
