Welcome to Demand

Demand is a newsletter for anyone interested in deepening their knowledge of marketing and growth at technology companies. We will cover a gamut of topics related to marketing and derivatives of marketing – including product marketing, brand marketing, growth marketing, how to build, lead and develop a marketing team, how marketing interfaces with other functions including product, design, sales, communications, how to build and grow a marketing team, start a career in marketing and we will also touch on general management topics – rooted in personal experience and delivered as practical advice. The role of marketing is continually evolving and there’s a meaningful difference in how marketing is executed classically in CPG and other industries vs. in today’s modern technology companies. 

In today’s technology companies, marketing is an essential function, highly quantitative and highly cross functional. When done well, it is a significant contributor to business impact and growth. 

Our objective is to help you gain deeper insight into the role and craft of marketing at modern tech companies and empower you to become a world class marketer and operator. It’s brought to you by Naiomi Eliason and Erik Eliason. 

Our backgrounds  

We are business and marketing leaders with a combined 30 years of experience at tech companies such as Google, Meta, Square, Instacart, Shopify and Patreon, have worked in marketing in more traditional companies such as Target and General Mills and a number of smaller startups you’ve probably never heard of. We’ve launched and grown hardware, software, and media products that have reached billions of customers, generated billions in revenue, and added billions in market cap. We’ve also been on the ground, both as founders, ideating and scaling 0 to 1 products spending countless months (and years) searching for product/market fit. And through it all, we’ve hired and managed hundreds – we have over 20 years combined experience at hiring, managing and growing high performing teams. In our careers, there has never been a shortage of challenges or problems to solve and we believe many of you are also facing or will face similar challenges. Our goal is to bring transparency and share our knowledge so others can benefit from what we have learned.    

Why join Demand? 

This isn’t a traditional marketing newsletter with pithy statements, hot takes on buzzy brand campaigns or round ups of the latest AI marketing craze. Demand offers you a unique perspective into how marketing actually works at technology companies and is aimed at helping you learn and grow.

We’ve mentored hundreds of people over our careers. Those conversations have ranged from “how do I grow my product” to “how do I measure incrementality” to “what is product marketing”? We offer you a behind the scenes look at how the most successful marketing teams, leaders, and companies do what they do. These aren’t tired tropes you’ll find in a business book or so-called ‘marketing experts’. Rather, we will share tacit knowledge and key concepts directly from our experience and those at leading companies, so you can apply their hard-earned wisdom to your own work. 

What To Expect

We will aim to publish 1-2 posts per month. Content will be focused on a breadth of marketing and related topics at technology companies. We’ll provide honest takes on the latest product & feature launches with in depth analysis of the insights, positioning, narratives and reasons to believe which are foundational to these launches. We’ll do full stack marketing deep dives on the various areas of marketing including brand, performance, pricing, lifecycle and more.  Here’s what you can expect: 

• Insider Look into How Marketing Operates: content focused on the inner workings of functions such as Product Marketing, Growth Marketing, Brand Marketing and Creative

• Career & Professional Growth: Expert guidance on how to get a marketing job in tech (PMM, Growth, Brand, Creative), get promoted and grow in your career as marketer in Tech

• GTM Teardowns: In depth analysis of timely go to market campaigns and product launches from leading tech companies

• Candid Q&As: Short form Q&A on topics which are upvoted or our readers demonstrate significant interest in