Demand Generation ManagerRole Profile

Everything you need to know about the key role of Demand Generation Manager for your B2B or B2C Marketing team

What is a Demand Generation Manager?

The Demand Generation Manager on a SaaS Marketing team is responsible for driving brand awareness and generating new leads through a combination of inbound and outbound marketing strategies and tactics. 

This role is most commonly found on B2B marketing teams (usually SaaS marketing) and focused on building scalable, long-term customer relationships. Lead gen strategies will vary based on the company and their marketing goals, and can include everything from PPC and social advertising campaigns, building campaigns around assets such as eBooks and blog posts and other content, to building automated email “drip’ campaigns, organizing webinars, responding to questions on social media and Quora, and launching PR initiatives. 

Depending on the size of the company, this person may report to a Director of Marketing, a VP of Marketing, a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), or in some cases in smaller companies, directly to a founder.

According to this graph from Google Trends, the Demand Generation Manager position is a pretty new role originating around 2010. Overall, search interest has steadily grown since then.

When should you hire a Demand Gen Manager?

The Demand Generation Manager is one of the most important roles on a SaaS Marketing team. As you build out your B2B or B2C marketing team, he or she will likely be one of your first six marketing hires, and will be a huge influence on your lead generation numbers. 

Here are some signs that you are ready to hire: 

• You have some initial sales and/or marketing traction 
• You have raised a Series A funding round 
• You’re looking to scale your volume and quality of new leads rapidly  
• You have a CRM and marketing automation platform, and are looking to use it to its fullest 
• You have at least a couple of dedicated people – either in-house or contract – creating marketing content

Demand Gen Manager Compensation

According to our report, the average annual salary of a Demand Generation Manager can range from $90,000 for more inexperienced candidates in smaller cities to around $140,000 for experienced candidates in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City. 

Pro Tip: View our compensation guide for more information on all marketing positions.

What are a Demand Gen Manager’s responsibilities?

The day-to-day responsibilities of a Demand Generation Manager may include: 

• Create and execute a demand generation plan and strategy that aligns with key business goals
• Increase new leads through a combination of inbound and outbound marketing tactics 
• Track, analyze, and optimize marketing campaigns on a regular basis 
• Work closely with the marketing and sales teams to ensure lead generation campaigns are aligned 
• Build out and improve marketing automation processes, lead scoring, and CRM integrations
• Grow owned and paid distribution channels, including email, PPC, social media, and website/blog 
• Present to sales and marketing executives to get buy-in, secure necessary budgets, and report on results

What does success look like for a Demand Gen Manager?

Whether you’re starting with a dozen leads or several thousand, the metrics you look at will stay pretty consistent. 

Since Demand Generation is focused on building long-term, sustainable lead generation growth, you’ll want to measure this position based on a combination of engagement, performance, and monetary ROI KPIs.

Here are some examples of engagement metrics, including: 

• Website traffic
• Email open rates 
• Click-through rates 
• Unsubscribe rates 

Here are some examples of performance metrics, including: 

• Number of marketing qualified leads
• Number of sales qualified leads
• Marketing funnel progression  
• Conversion Rate (for landing pages) 

Here are some examples of monetary ROI KPI metrics, including: 

• Total revenue 
• Cost Per Acquisition for each channel 
• Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)  
• The lead-to-customer ratio for each marketing channel 
• Average time to close a deal

What skills does a Demand Gen Manager need to possess?

In our experience, many B2B marketing teams focus too much on finding someone with experience in the tools that they use and not enough on finding someone who can craft and execute an effective, long-term lead gen strategy.

Here are some skills to look for: 

• Strategic – A Demand Generation Manager needs to be able to think critically about both the marketing team’s goals as well as the core business objectives. Then, they need to devise and execute a strategy that meets these needs. 
• Analytical – As a strategic role, a Demand Generation Manager should be comfortable analyzing large quantities of data, working in Google Analytics and Excel, doing customer persona research, analyzing competitors, and measuring their results. 
• Comfortable running experiments – The best Demand Generation Managers can create a hypothesis, set up a marketing experiment to test it, and then analyze and report on the results. 
• Data-driven – If you’re terrified of spreadsheets and don’t know what Vlookups or pivot tables are, this might not be the best role for you. 
• Great writer – In smaller B2B marketing teams, the Demand Generation Manager may be expected to write some of the content.  
• Prior marketing chops – Most Demand Generation Managers have at least five years of marketing experience. 
• Familiar with at least one or two marketing automation tools – There are no shortages of marketing automation tools out there, from Marketo, Hubspot, and Pardot to Eloqua, Drip, and ActiveCampaign. 
• Organized – Since they often juggle multiple priorities, it can be an asset if they’re detail-oriented and have excellent project management skills.

How Betts recruits Demand Generation Managers for B2B and B2C marketing teams

Looking for a Demand Generation Manager for your SaaS marketing team? We can help. Reach out to us today, and we’ll be in touch soon. Looking for a job in demand generation? We can help with that too. Reach out to us here to talk to a recruiter.