As an Account Director at DemandGen, I’m the primary liaison with clients and serve as the “quarterback” for the internal DemandGen team. Some client engagements are more complex than others and involve a series of projects scoped at the beginning of the engagement. In other cases, a client will come to us for assistance on a specific project.
As a part of a DemandGen client engagement project, we develop a project plan that outlines the tasks required to complete the project with an associated timeline. During our kick-off meeting, we introduce the team that will be working on the account (technical specialists, solution architects and implementation architects) and review the project plan. We schedule weekly calls with the client team to make sure we have an opportunity to connect on project progress. In addition, this ongoing communication allows us to get to know the company better and understand how the MA tool is used.
The Initial Project
I was recently assigned a new client for what appeared to be a one-time project that was very unlikely to lead to a longer term client relationship. Boy, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Our initial project was to consolidate the company’s 14 workspaces into one workspace to facilitate reporting. Almost from day one, our team and the client team seemed to mesh well. The client team was very sophisticated in the MA tool, but asked us to tackle a project for which the team simply didn’t have the bandwidth for.
The client’s new CMO had great ideas and expectations for how to utilize data from existing marketing campaigns to plan for future campaigns — but the current MA configuration made for an extremely manual process to capture and analyze the campaign data.
The Beginning of a Relationship
As we dug deeper into the project, our technical team identified areas where two of our DemandGen solutions could greatly benefit the client: Campaign Attribution Analyzer and Demand Funnel Reporting.
Coincidentally, the client received a marketing email promoting DemandGen’s Campaign Execution Services (CES) and immediately expressed interest. After discussing the solution with the client team, we agreed it made sense to first focus on building out the company’s campaign development to create the foundation for future campaigns.
The Partnership
As an account director, I was blessed with the perfect storm: a great technical team on my side and intelligent, articulate marketers on the client side who understand the limitations of their MA system and honestly engage with us on project priorities.
We truly are partners. They think of us as an extension of their team and reach out to us with non-project related questions. They believe in our team’s expertise and use it to their advantage. They chose DemandGen to complement their strengths and make their jobs easier.
I believe that the keys to a successful relationship are pretty simple: truly listening to each other; asking questions for clarification; putting yourself in each other’s shoes and treating others the way you want to be treated.
For more information on how DemandGen can become your team’s partner, contact us! If you would like to see more examples of how we’ve helped other clients check out our case studies!
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Angela Brock is an Account Director at DemandGen. She works directly with clients to help advance their business needs, develop long-range marketing plans, and drive ongoing success with their marketing initiatives. Angela is Marketo Certified and she is an Eloqua Product and RPM Master.
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