Build Momentum in Your Demand Gen Strategy with Pam Didner of Relentless Pursuit

Pam Didner: But there is one thing I would like to share with all the marketers is the ability to learn. And because the technology is constantly evolving, and it does impact how marketing needs to be conducted or even perform, if you will.

Like way back then, you can’t do print. Okay. But somehow now with the digital, we have to do a lot of pay ads. We have to do, we have to be on social media. Now with AI, we have to learn how to use AI to possibly make our job a little bit easier. So the one thing that you need to have is the ability to learn and never stop learning. And that’s very important.

Intro: Welcome to Demand Bites, the podcast where B2B demand generation leaders find the strategies they need to grow.

I’m your host, Ross Howard, Director of Insights at Inbox Insight.

And in just 15 minutes, my guests and I will uncover what’s broken in the B2B buyer journey and provide real-world strategies you can put to work right away. So whether you’re looking for innovative demand-gen techniques or expert advice on accelerating sales, this podcast gives you the tools you need to succeed.

Ready to identify, educate, and convert your ideal customer profile? Or at least learn how other people are doing it. Let’s dive in.

Ross Howard: Hello everybody, thank you for joining us. Today on Demand Bites, I have author, speaker, and fractional CMO extraordinaire, Pam Didner. Welcome to the show.

Pam Didner: Thank you so much for having me, Ross.

I love the word extraordinaire. I feel like, I feel special.

Ross Howard: Yeah that’s the goal. I feel special having you here. I’ve been really excited since our first conversation to have you on and learn from you, learn about your journey.

I know that you’ve had roles at Intel and worked with loads of different B2B marketers, helping them grow. Do you want to give us a little bit of background about who you are and what you do?

Pam Didner: Yeah. Hey everyone, Pam Didner here. And like Ross indicated, I am a B2B marketer through and through. Can you tell?

Anyway, a long time ago, long time ago, I started as an accountant. I was actually a certified public accountant, but I worked in the finance and accounting department. And I was like, you know what, I hate saying this. I love accounting and all, but this is really not for me. Okay, so I started looking to try on different jobs and then I started working for Intel, and back then, it was a company that actually encouraged people to move around. I would say that’s the mentality for kind of a first generation of a tech company. So I joined them as like a finance and accounting person, eventually moved to operations and the product development and there was a period of time I was actually out manufacturing floor accounting parts because I was doing supply chain.

And one of my managers actually moved to the marketing side and was doing operations for events. And then he was like, Pam, it’s operations. Do you want to come? I was like, yeah, sure. No problem. We’ll join you. So that’s how I started like my marketing journey. It was like a twist of fate.

It was not very intentional.

Ross Howard: If you could give marketers one piece of advice that you would share with them, where do you start?

Pam Didner: That’s actually a very good question, but there’s one thing I would like to share with all the marketers is the ability to learn. And because the technology is constantly evolving and it does impact how marketing needs to be conducted or even perform, if you will. Like way back then, you had to do print, okay, but somehow now with the digital, we have to do a lot of pay ads.

We have to be on social media. Now with AI, we have to learn how to use AI to possibly make our job a little bit easier. So the one thing that you need to have is the ability to learn and never stop learning. And that’s very important.

Ross Howard: That’s a fantastic answer. In terms of demand generation, we really want to zero in on how can we help Demand generation managers and the people responsible for it in B2B companies, drive growth, and doing so in a sustainable, efficient way is more important than ever. What specific demand generation strategies are you seeing in the market at the moment and how could they be better?

Pam Didner: To me, the biggest tip, especially in the digital world, in the modern marketing of demand generation, it’s not necessarily that moment that you did the demand generation. For example, if you have events or if you have a trade show and the people come to your trade show, come to your booth, they are in front of you and then you have 30 seconds or five minutes of their time.

And then you try to tell them what is actually good and try to generate that interest and the demand with them. That’s actually good. But the most important thing about demand generation is the follow up. So you created that first touch point, which is excellent. But after the event, how can you continuously create additional touch points to keep that momentum going?

We tend to fall short on that because once we finish events, we move on, everybody moves on. There’s the next event we have to go to, there’s the next account we have to tackle. But the most important thing on demand gen is how do you build that follow up? How do you build that conversation?

And how do you keep that additional touch point going? Think about that. Okay, everyone?

Ross Howard: That’s a fantastic answer. It’s something that we did a study this year around B2B buyer behavior. And one of the things that came up was the number of not just content touch points that a buyer goes through, but the amount of hours they spend per month researching into these topics is getting bigger and bigger.

So it’s an average of 10 hours a month over a six month sales cycle. They’re trying to educate themselves. They’re trying to make the right decision. If you’re in there with one or two assets that are exceptional, you’ll grab the attention. But yeah, unless you are there consistently offering that value, you’re going to lose the top of mind penetration that you need.

Pam Didner: You actually brought a very good point, Ross, and I just did a talk at one of the conferences two days ago in Chicago. You just said basically you know one or two pieces of content needs to be pretty good to capture the attention but also what is after that, right? So the bottom line is in the talk I shared with everybody you have to think of content.

Or content is a conversation opener. It’s basically when you send an email with something attached to it, and hopefully somebody will open that email and then somehow look at your content. If they are interested, it’s like, “Oh, this is interesting. I want to talk to Ross about this.” So if the content is good and that’s a conversation opener. So I told all the attendees who were actually at the conference. I say, “look at the content as tools that you can use to bend the odds to your favor.” So if you send out the email, you have to think what is the probability that person is going to open that email?

Probably very small. So what do you do to bend the odds to your favor? Can we have a better subject line? Can we have better content? Can we do something to get the attention so I can bend the odds to my favor? And that’s how you need to think about content, in the context of demand generation.

Ross Howard: While we’re on the topic of content, and so you brought up AI already, it’s a huge enabler for a lot of teams but also, there are a lot of marketers with lots of doubts at the moment about efficacy, quality, risk, time to learn it.

What are your tips around using generative AI?

Pam Didner: Okay, you brought a very good point, Ross. If you read a lot of blog posts, it’s like AI is going to make your job easy, but they forgot to tell you something, that it actually does take time to learn it. When you are on a press timeline to get a lot of stuff done, AI is not necessarily going to help you right away, unless you are very good at prompting.

So unless you are an expert at prompting, and I know exactly what I’m looking for, and I want exactly what I know AI to do, and you write a very good prompt, chances are the AI probably can give you a fairly decent answer. But you are totally right, a lot of time when you are working with AI, you have to try multiple different times to get an answer that you are looking for. That’s number one. And the second thing is you need to have a point of view.

So if AI, if you basically ask AI, say, “give me a demand generation plan for 2025 and for my company. My company sells this kind of products, and my target audience is this, my budget is this… create a plan for me.”

Chances are, the AI can give you something. But you need to make the judgment call. Is that plan good? That’s where your knowledge and expertise will come from. My take on this is, always try to use AI. If you are using AI to generate content, you use that as a first draft. Don’t just copy and paste. Done. That’s not going to work.

Ross Howard: I know another area you’re really passionate about is sales and marketing alignment. I know that was a big theme for you in the past, and it’s a huge one for all B2B marketers, but especially if you’re trying to capture demand and partner with sales. What’s your top tip for sales and marketing alignment?

Pam Didner: Do you know, like the tip it sounds going to be when I said it, you were like, seriously, Pam, because I talked to many sales and marketing departments across many companies. And the number one things that you need to do is, can I say this? I’m going to say this out loud and clear. Talk to each other.

Salespeople, you know what? You need help. Just go to marketing and yell at… not yell, that’s a wrong word Pam, don’t use that word. Tell them very nicely and say you need help. You need content. Let them know. But when you are telling them, let them know what you are looking for, what sale stages you are in and why you need it.

I have come to realize salespeople will say, “I need help” and that’s it, but it’s your job to elaborate a little bit. All right, marketing on the same way. You cannot create content and throw it to the other side of the wall and then expect salespeople to use it. They are not going to use it. They are busy.

They are so busy. They are calling people all the time. They are not going to look at your content unless you structure the content in the way they understand. So the key thing is talk to each other and think from each other’s perspective. Marketing people is like, “Oh, we are about nurturing.”

But when you talk to sales, it’s not about nurturing. They are hunters. They talk to several accounts, they don’t have a budget, they move on. So as a marketer, you need to think, not as a person who nurtures the prospect. It’s oh, they move on to a different target. What can I do to help that conversion, right?

So it’s that talking to each other and also try to understand each other’s perspective to me is very important. And I have found that many companies or many divisions or departments have not done that well.

Ross Howard: Fantastic advice. Really pragmatic advice as well. Thank you so much, Pam. Really appreciate your time today coming on the show.

Where can people find you and follow you?

Pam Didner: All right. So Pam Didner here, and you can always go to my website. If you have any specific marketing or sales related questions, you can also find me in almost every single social media channel, and I recently just got on TikTok.

Ross Howard: Right, I’ll get my phone out.

Pam Didner: And I started talking about, life and life in general, and also life as a B2B marketing professional.

But a lot of you are business professionals. You can always find me on LinkedIn and reach out and connect with me and that will be great.

Ross Howard: Fantastic, Pam. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Pam Didner: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Take care! Bye bye!

Outro: And that wraps up today’s episode of Demand Bites. Thanks for listening.

I hope the insight provided today are able to help you power up your own demand generation efforts. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard, make sure to hit subscribe so you’re always up to date with the latest strategies. If you’re looking for more insight, stay connected with Inbox Insight on LinkedIn and join a network of marketing leaders driving the future of demand gen.

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