Winning in Demand Generation When Every Pound Must Work Harder

By Emanuela Mafteiu - Wednesday August 12, 2026 Share (Twitter) WhatsApp Summarize ChatGPT Perplexity Grok Google AI I spoke at Hero Conf this April about a reality many demand generation teams are facing and know very well that budgets are tighter, expectations are higher and vanity metrics no longer tell the full story.

The room nodded because this is the day-to-day challenge for so many in-house marketers. Data is everything if you aren’t constantly analysing what works and what doesn’t, you risk giving those accounts to your competitors. Think of data as your compass in the dark, a tool to navigate.

Tableau is our compass and we use the dashboards to check campaign ROI and attribution. Multiple views, last touch or multi-touch, can give you what you need to constantly optimise your campaigns. For example, I recommend identifying your highest-performing channels and understanding which ones deliver your KPIs most effectively.

If your demand generation team is focused on the top of the funnel, then Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) are a critical metric for both your marketing team and the wider business. However, it’s important to strike the right balance between push and pull strategies, as both play an essential role in driving sustainable growth.

To make matters more complex, Marketing Qualified Accounts (MQAs) are arguably even more important in B2B environments. B2B purchasing decisions are rarely made by a single individual. Instead, they typically involve a decision-making unit of nine to twelve stakeholders. Selling to One Buyer Is Outdated Clicks on your ads do not build pipeline, accounts do.

As we discussed earlier, buying group penetration is everything. B2B purchasing decisions are rarely made by one person. Instead, buying committees share the responsibility of selecting a vendor, and they often wait until they’ve reached a consensus before engaging with a BDR. To succeed, you need a clear Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

If you don’t have one, build it from scratch. Assume there are 15–20 stakeholders in the buying group, and shift your top-of-funnel strategy from simply generating leads to: Engage buying committee Help penetrate the account Build multi-threaded influence, this is not on the marketing level but at the sales level too.

4 Things to Watch for: Utilise the right channel for the right KPI (MQAs – Content Syndication; Pipeline – Paid Search) Optimise audience targeting Allocate resources effectively Build a Prospect Map (include all the touchpoints, you need them to identify the gaps) For instance, tools like multi-touch attribution models highlight which interactions genuinely influence conversions or pipeline, enabling you to fine-tune your strategy and for what persona.

Above: A self made image to illustrate the journey Attribution Is the Language of Leadership If you can’t show the pipeline, you lose your budget. To defend your budget, you need to be willing to pivot. Reallocate spend from underperforming campaigns or channels to those delivering results.

Showing leadership that you’re actively optimising your investment also builds credibility and confidence in your marketing strategy. From Single Persona to Buying Group Impact Here is a real example of how I operationalised that shift. Initially, we were heavily focused on one technical persona at the top of the funnel. Strong content. Strong CTR.

Decent MQL flow. But when we looked at pipeline progression, deals were stalling. We had interest, but we did not have the persona consensus, the budget owners or the right account influencers. We had to rely on content syndication at first to bring in the whole decision making unit personas: IT Leader, CX Leader, Digital Leader, CISO/CIO, Fraud Leader.

Once we captured early interest signals, we activated the display, not as a branding exercise, but as an account-level nurture program. The focused LinkedIn campaigns that continue the themes from content syndication and aligned some Google ads to aid with their research.

We also layered AI-powered email, like everyone else, to get personalisation at scale and to keep the entire buying group warm, reinforcing value, case studies, and use cases relevant to each persona. Instead of isolated MQLs, we created a buying committee momentum. And when sales stepped in, the accounts were not cold. They were educated. They were aligned.

They were ready for solution conversations and demos. This is a company wide motion and it’s about building coordinated, persona-led, signal-driven account progression all the way to pipeline. One Lesson From the Stage After I stepped off the stage at HeroConf, someone asked me to share the ‘secret sauce’. The truth is, there isn’t one.

Success comes from taking a disciplined approach to analysing your data. The challenge today isn’t a lack of data, it’s that it&#