Talking with people in different demand generation positions in SaaS companies, I realized that the roles are mixed up quite often. In most cases, it’s Demand Generation Manager vs Demand Generation Specialist.
Demand Generation Manager vs Demand Generation Specialist: What Is the Difference?
Short answer: the manager owns the plan and the number. The specialist owns the execution. A demand generation manager decides where the budget goes, how marketing and sales connect, and what gets stopped. A demand generation specialist builds and ships the campaigns, the content and the reporting inside that plan.
| Demand Generation Manager | Demand Generation Specialist | |
|---|---|---|
| Owns | The plan and the number | The execution |
| Main job | Strategy, budget, channel mix, sales alignment | Campaigns, content, tooling, reporting |
| Reports to | Head of marketing, CMO or the founder | The demand generation manager |
| Judged on | Pipeline, revenue contribution, cost of acquisition | Campaign performance and conversion rates |
| Decides | Where the money goes and what gets killed | How a campaign gets built and shipped |
| Team | Usually leads one to five people | Usually an individual contributor |
| Hire when | Channels are running but there is no plan | There is a plan but nobody to run it |
In this article I elaborate on the similarities and differences between the two roles, so you can see what each one brings to your organisation.
You look at them and it makes you wonder – is there a difference between the two?
Is it the same as the difference between any Manager and Specialist?
A fair question to ask.
Let’s start with this: They both do different things in marketing to generate leads.
Why You Need More Than One Demand Generation Expert
Since demand generation deals with every element of the sales funnel, it’s not possible for a single person to handle every demand-related activity without burning out. Yes, the effectiveness of demand gen is measured against sales-based KPIs such as:
- Pipeline velocity
- Pipeline value
- Average deal size
- Revenue
However, demand gen activities usually encompass a broad range of marketing practices — social media, email, content, paid ads, and much more.
When you got a dedicated demand generation team, they can concentrate on aligning marketing and sales activities to retention and revenue. This way, they become a much-needed bridge between the two departments. They also make sure every strategy is concentrated on going beyond consumer expectations.
Now, let’s explore how demand generation managers and specialists can form the basis of your demand generation team.
Demand Generation Manager
Demand generation managers promote and increase brand awareness of your company and its services or products.
They often come in teams who build new strategies for reaching more customers. Moreover, they aid businesses in appealing to their target audience. In this position, managers handle developing market segments, campaigns, and strategies for every group.
They also need to connect company goals with campaigns. Plus, track and identify metrics that prove ROI. More experienced demand generation managers manage demand for a company through a range of sales and marketing tactics. For instance:
- Managing development
- SEO
- Content Marketing
- Digital PR
- Measurement and analysis of the success of campaigns
Demand generation managers will also analyze sales data and report what they found to marketing VPs and the rest of the C-level.
Ultimately, they will work with sales and marketing teams to make sure the marketing message is consistent across all channels.
Defining Demand Generation Specialist
Demand generation specialists lead demand gen strategies and initiatives across various channels to increase the acceleration of new purchases across your market.
Their usual responsibilities are:
- Developing and updating content
- Copywriting
- Ensuring marketing goals are accomplished
- Analyzing and maintaining marketing software and database for usability
- Analyzing and choosing platforms for marketing campaigns
- Implementing and measuring results of marketing campaigns
Of course, in different companies, they may have more responsibilities.
Based on the needs of the business, demand generation specialists can also handle other marketing activities, like partner or account-based marketing.
They also have to possess a particular skill set to be effective in their role. Based on the current research, demand generation specialist usually come with the following hard and soft skills:
Soft Skills of Demand Generation Specialist
They’re willing to experiment. Demand gen is half art half science. This is why marketers in this role are comfortable with trying out new techniques or experimenting with existing ones.
Also, they need to be able to develop marketing hypotheses about various tactics, strategies, and campaigns.
Demand generation specialists adapt according to data. They keep a pulse on metrics and how they follow overall marketing objectives. Moreover, they adapt campaigns based on data.
Demand generation specialists communicate.
Since they interact with sales and marketing, it’s crucial that demand gen specialists not only communicate about campaigns but also reinforce that campaigns focus on what truly matters to ICP.
They’ll talk to sales daily, or at least weekly, and identify pain points and important trends they hear from consumers.
Hard Skills of Demand Generation Specialist
Data analytics. Since demand generation specialists have to experiment and adapt based on data, they need to deeply understand metrics.
Those dealing with social media — following, brand mentions, engagements. And those dealing with websites — visitors, sessions, traffic sources, etc. They need to understand how customers behave in these places.
Ultimately, they will need to use Meta Business Suite, Google Analytics, Scrollmaps, Heatmaps, and other tools for this.
Excel. Since metrics are a key element of demand generation, demand generation specialists need to be able to swiftly use Excel for making reports.
Demand gen specialist concentrates significantly on tracking and gauging metrics. In some situations, this involves knowing how to use marketing analytics dashboards that pull data from different sources to support reports.
The Benefits of Having a Demand Generation Team
Rather than thinking about sales funnels, demand generation teams focus on increasing revenue, implementing a holistic marketing approach to drive growth.
To do this, they use all the tools they can — marketing automation, data analytics, reporting, various campaign strategies, and more.
The demand generation approach is developed to reach prospects throughout the sales cycle, providing solutions to their issues based on where they are in the buyer’s journey. To be more specific, demand generation departments come with the following benefits for your business:
- Improves your SEO: Demand generation experts got skills in researching. They can help you develop efficient keyword strategies to boost your content development efforts and explore audience intent. They’ll research the demographics, psychographics, and firmographics of your audience. As well as the channels they use the most. They’ll also explore other SEO opportunities by talking with your sales teams about consumer’s questions, pain points, and objectives.
- Omnichannel marketing support: Demand gen is based on a holistic, unified strategy encompassing several channels. Demand gen experts will not only develop campaigns for particular channels (LinkedIn, Meta, X), they’ll also integrate content across all touchpoints.
- Continuous tests and optimizations: Demand gen teams test various strategies to find out precisely which tactic is working. This encompasses headlines, emails, Google Ads, paid social, website design and copy, and more.
- Place your brand in front of your ICP: Demand generation doesn’t focus on bringing low-quality leads. They’ll deeply research your audience and precisely articulate the value your service or product brings.
Of course, different companies have different approaches. But these are some of the basic benefits complex demand gen strategies bring.
How to Have an Effective Demand Generation Department?
Developing interest and driving awareness is the foundation of demand generation. But successful demand gen also acts as a bridge between sales and marketing activities.
Marketers are constantly faced with new challenges. Your consumers expect significantly personalized valuable content. As well as a smooth experience encompassing all channels and touchpoints. Today’s marketer needs to concentrate on KPIs such as:
- MQL/SQL
- Pipeline influence
- # of engaged accounts
The latest tech and evolving customers’ expectations have reinvented the relationship between sales and marketing. Once, marketers captured high-value leads and passed them to sales.
Today, demand gen is a more integrated, holistic approach focused on developing sustainable customer relationships and building and maintaining demand for the brand.
The Relationship Between Organizations and Demand Gen
Demand gen is a part of a broader marketing team. Technically. But it also concentrates on strategies that enormously support the business’s overall sales objectives.
With this in mind, you can look at demand generation as a modern marketing approach to B2B marketing. One with a sales enablement function and that powers the sales cycle.
Whatever the case may be, demand generation teams work closely with marketing and sales.
Making sure marketing delivers the highest ROI.
The demand gen department can give real-time feedback and insight to the marketing team.
Enabling the marketing team to make content based on the narratives that drive consumer loyalty long-term.
Demand gen teams also help with repurposing content for various channels and personas. This is becoming more and more important since content creation was never more expensive and time-consuming.
Should You Outsource Demand Generation?
Back in 2020, Demand Gen Report called it the hardest year for B2B marketing. More screen time also produced advertising and marketing fatigue. That’s why lots of value from demand generation comes from them doing a better job at understanding, identifying, and engaging the company’s target audience. Moreover, according to Ascend2 research at the time, only 36% of companies relied exclusively on in-house talents for managing marketing.
As we spend more and more time in front of screens, marketing strategies will have to become more and more complex.
That’s why there’s a trend of companies using a hybrid model where in-house teams work with outsourced demand generation experts.
When you outsource demand gen, you get access to a wider range of skills and expertise. It usually does represent a cost-efficient alternative to hiring a full-time demand generation team.
But remember that outsourcing demand gen isn’t the same as hiring a content writer on Fiverr.
Demand generation is way more complex than that. Its success also depends on an in-depth understanding of your audience and brand. Outsourced demand gen teams have to closely work with marketing and sales. So, take care with who you hire.
Demand generation manager vs specialist FAQ
Is a demand generation manager more senior than a specialist?
In most companies, yes. The manager sets the plan and answers for pipeline. The specialist executes inside that plan. In smaller teams the titles blur, and the manager often runs campaigns as well.
Can one person do both?
For a while. Under roughly thirty employees one person can plan and execute. The moment you run more than two channels seriously, the planning stops happening because execution always shouts louder.
Which role should you hire first?
If nobody in the company can say which channel produced last quarter’s pipeline, hire the manager. If the plan exists and things simply are not shipping, hire the specialist.
What does a demand generation specialist do day to day?
Builds and launches campaigns, writes and updates content, keeps the marketing automation and CRM data clean, runs tests, and reports on what each channel produced.
Related reading: demand generation vs lead generation, how to build a demand generation strategy, and revenue acceleration.
This article is from the Funky Marketing blog archive. The work continues at Funky Enterprises: positioning, demand generation and commercial systems for B2B companies.
If you want to look at your own commercial system, book a 30-minute needs assessment. New conversations with people who build revenue are on the Funky Enterprises Show.
