It’s a Good Time to be a Demand Generation Marketer
This is the era of post-click marketing and one of the most popular disciplines happens to be demand generation. Steve Gershik, co-founder of Demand Con, gives us some advice on how to break into the industry.
I was speaking with a recruiter recently who specializes in placing marketers with demand generation expertise at mid-sized and larger companies (note: if you’re looking for a job and have marketing automation expertise, drop me a note and I’ll connect you with him – lots of openings!).
He said that the laws of economics are really evident in the B2B job market these days. Marketing professionals who have demand gen backgrounds are scarce, which means that they are getting hired more quickly, given loftier titles and higher salaries that marketers with comparable years of experience but have more traditional backgrounds. He said that he can immediately place directors of demand gen in the Bay Area, Austin and Boston markets and that marketing managers can often make the move to a Director title as part of their negotiation to come on board. He told me that these revenue marketers are making 10 to 20 percent more in total compensation than their marcomm and product marketing equivalents.
Woo hoo!
So if you don’t have years of experience in marketing automation technology and demand generation discipline, how do you get in on the sea change?
1. Read. Read a lot. Most of it’s freely available online in the form of blogs and white papers. The major technology vendors like Eloqua have lots of educational material available online. Forrester and Sirius Decisions also are a good source of information on the industry, as is the Demand Gen Report.
2. Get your hands on a marketing automation platform and start to explore. You can get free access to Pardot and Genius.com to check out their offerings for free. Marketo offers a trial (though you may have to be at a company already to sign up). Salesforce.com offers rudimentary marketing automation functionality, but if you are a competent SFDC marketer, you’ll have no trouble landing a great job, either.
3. Follow thoughtful demand generation leaders on Twitter. Here are some of the folks you should add to your list:
@aaker @draab @abneedles @cahidalgo @bkardon and everyone from @siriusdecisions including @megheuer @JoeGalvin and especially @jblock.
4. Go to as many educational and networking events if you can. I’ve started a new show called DemandCon (which I’ll write about in more detail in a post next week), which strives to bring together demand generation focused people from tech companies, services organizations, consultancies and academia, as well as authors and experts. If you’re a student studying marketing, you could be eligible for a free pass to the conference. Email me at steve (at) demandcon.com if you’d like more info.
It’s never been a better time to be a demand generation marketer. Or to become one.
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Gary
