Marketing operations is all about overseeing and managing a brand’s entire marketing program, including campaign planning, strategy development, performance assessment, and tech choices.
It’s a big and important job, and it’s a complex one. Because of this, in many cases, marketing operations leaders have years (and sometimes decades) of experience with plenty of hard-earned lessons as on-the-floor marketers before making it to this role.
There are some outstanding marketing operations leaders that are creating great content online in different avenues, sharing some of those lessons learned and insight into their strategic wins.
In this post, we’re going to feature fifteen different marketing operations leaders to follow, twelve of which will be appearing in our upcoming Hot Takes Live FREE virtual conference on February 16th.
1. Sean Percival
Sean Percival is the Chief Marketing Officer of Iterate Norway, a venture builder based in Oslo. He’s an American entrepreneur and investor that moved overseas.
Percival has worked with thousands of startups on growth marketing and fundraising and has personally invested in over a hundred startups in addition to founding a few of his own. He truly understands exactly what role marketing operations leaders play in the process after years of experience as a marketing executive, with previous positions like Vice President of Online Marketing and CMO.
Percival shares outstanding and deeply “real” content online, including through his YouTube channel Percival’s Startup Rants. If you’re looking for a good one to get started, you can’t go wrong with “This startup marketing advice is a complete waste of time.”
2. Evan Dunn
Evan Dunn is the Director of Growth Marketing at the incredible RevOps data automation tool Syncari.
He’s a marketer who focuses on big topics that others sometimes skip over—the ones that can really drive revenue. He regularly discusses account-based marketing and go-to-market strategies, sharing his insights and experience.
Dunn is incredibly active on his LinkedIn, sharing great resources in addition to content he’s created. You can see a great post from Dunn here.
3. Giulia Gagliardi
Giulia Gagliardi is the CMO at Casavo, which is a business designed to help you sell and buy homes. She’s been an essential part of Casavo’s international growth strategies, as they just released their first global brand campaign in the past few months.
Gagliardi has been working in product management and marketing for almost a decade and has outstanding experience in the field.
Want to see Gagliardi’s hot take? Make sure you attend our Hot Takes Live event in February!
Hot Takes Live
Jun 28, 2023, 10:00 AM–3:00 PM EDT
During Hot Takes Live, SaaS leaders from some of the top companies you know and love will reveal some of their most unpopular opinions about Marketing, Sales, Ops, and Product.
In these laser-focused 10-minute sessions, leaders will share the counterintuitive insights and surprising data points that enabled them to disrupt their industry by going against the grain (and achieve better results in the process).
4. Paul Fairbrother
Paul Fairbrother is the Owner & Founder of the Fairbrother Agency, and he’s long been a uniquely outstanding resource when it comes to any kind of paid social ad campaigns.
Paul spent years working as an ad specialist at AdEspresso and then Hootsuite, working directly on the ads platform and with clients. He’s audited campaigns across more than 1,000 ad accounts, in addition to hosting webinars and running $1,000 ad experiments.
His coaching clients have included everyone from solopreneurs who can only afford to drop $20 a day on ads, all the way to corporations with $10+ billion USD annual revenue.
If you want to know anything about incorporating Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn Ads into your marketing campaigns, Fairbrother is the one to follow. Make sure you keep an eye on his LinkedIn, where he shares outstanding content regularly.
5. Ruchika Hassan
Readdle‘s VP of Global Marketing, Ruchika Hassan has 15 years of sales, growth, and marketing experience. She’s worked with teams to help their brands grow from $0 in revenue to $100M in revenue thanks to performance-based marketing (driven by data and strong branding, of course).
Her specialization is all about being able to find high-value ways to boost brand awareness and demand. She takes a true operational approach to marketing that expands all the way to every part of the customer experience, relying on outstanding team members who are able to use the right tech to grow businesses.
Hassan has outstanding articles published through LinkedIn’s platform, a personal favorite of which is all about her customer-centric approach.
6. Andrew Davies
Andrew Davies is the Chief Marketing Officer at Paddle, which recently ranked in the Deloitte Tech Fast50 for the fifth year in a row. He’s an advisor, supporter, and investor of early-stage startups.
He started building startups when he was attending university and has had an expansive career in marketing ever since. He was previously the Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Optimizely, and Co-Founder CMO of Idio before it was acquired.
Davies regularly discusses account-based marketing, SaaS marketing, and product-led growth. He’s appeared on podcasts as a guest and been interviewed on some great sites, and he’s got some of his own content, too. Check out his post about changing SaaS valuations.
7. Kenny Lee
Kenny Lee is the Vice President of Revenue Marketing at the global sales enablement platform Seismic.
Lee has over 20 years of experience across multiple marketing specialties in businesses ranging from startups to enterprise brands.
As a marketing operations leader, he likes being positioned in the middle of marketing, product, sales, and operations, allowing him to help drive real business transformation and growth at scale.
He’s got outstanding experience in demand generation, product marketing management, integrated campaign planning, and partner marketing.
Hot Takes Live
Jun 28, 2023, 10:00 AM–3:00 PM EDT
During Hot Takes Live, SaaS leaders from some of the top companies you know and love will reveal some of their most unpopular opinions about Marketing, Sales, Ops, and Product.
In these laser-focused 10-minute sessions, leaders will share the counterintuitive insights and surprising data points that enabled them to disrupt their industry by going against the grain (and achieve better results in the process).
8. AJ Wilcox
AJ Wilcox is the founder of B2Linked, a LinkedIn advertising agency that’s been up and running since 2014. They’re a LinkedIn-certified agency that has worked with over 300 different ad accounts and worked on over $120M+ campaigns.
Wilcox has been invited to speak at over 70 conventions, including large international marketing conferences like Social Media Marketing World and Content Marketing Conference.
He’s exceptionally active on LinkedIn, where he shares outstanding tips and advice regarding LinkedIn Ads and account-based marketing. Take a look here.
9. Rich Adkin
Rich Adkin is the CEO and Founder of Flikli, an animated explainer video production company. He’s had a diverse career in marketing and content production since 1999.
And if you’re curious about what Flikli does, take a look at the R.A.P. Squad animated series we co-produced with their team.
As the CEO of an explainer video production company with a long career in marketing and content creation, Adkin has a unique perspective that some other marketing operations leaders may not quite have. He has great insights into what types of content perform well across multiple mediums, which are well worth seeing.
Adkin will be another one of our guests on our upcoming Hot Takes Live FREE virtual event, so make sure you tune in.
10. Nischal Dua
Nischal Dua is the Director of Marketing at Airmeet, which facilitates virtual summits and meetups. He also is available to hire through his site.
Dua works with early and mid-stage tech startups to develop, plan, and execute long-term marketing strategies. He can help your marketing be better than it was before, and he specializes in B2B marketing.
He’s a self-proclaimed serial entrepreneur who has built two six-figure businesses and who also specializes in digital marketing. He’s a huge advocate of remote work, as a digital nomad himself.
You can find some of his content through his LinkedIn here.
11. Vincent Lo
Vincent Lo is the Senior Director of Product Marketing at RFP response software company Loopio.
He has 20 years as a product marketing leader working in the intersection of marketing, sales, engineering, and executives to effectively help tech companies scale. Creating high-performing teams and scalable GTM strategies is a central part of his success.
He also takes a strong position that “data-informed” is better than “data-driven,” knowing that the numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. He utilizes data with simple decision frameworks and test-and-measure approaches. Lo also has experience working in social media marketing and competitive intelligence, giving him incredible experience.
Hot Takes Live
Jun 28, 2023, 10:00 AM–3:00 PM EDT
During Hot Takes Live, SaaS leaders from some of the top companies you know and love will reveal some of their most unpopular opinions about Marketing, Sales, Ops, and Product.
In these laser-focused 10-minute sessions, leaders will share the counterintuitive insights and surprising data points that enabled them to disrupt their industry by going against the grain (and achieve better results in the process).
12. Mike Aynsley
Mike Aynsley is the Marketing Director at social media management software Hootsuite.
Aynsley is a growth marketing leader that specializes in growth channels, conversion optimizations, inbound marketing, and market research. Data analysis and conversion optimization are crucial parts of his job, as are taking an audience-centric approach to marketing.
Aynsley has outstanding content that’s published across multiple platforms. Check out his post detailing 30 free templates for social media to save you time.
13. Eric Siu
Eric Siu is the Founder of the digital marketing agency SingleGrain.
Siu has been a powerful voice in the marketing world for years now, and his agency prioritizes scalable and predictable revenue growth through PPC ad campaigns, video campaigns, content marketing, and SEO work. Their company has worked with huge names like Nordstrom and Uber.
In addition to hearing more from Siu on the upcoming Hot Takes Live event, you can check out his podcast Leveling Up on YouTube.
14. Mike Allton
Mike Allton is the Head of Strategic Partnerships at Agorapulse, an outstanding speaker, and a fantastic blogger.
Right now, he helps facilitate opportunities between Agorapulse and other brands, including co-marketing and collaborative opportunities. He was a co-author of the book Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing, and is the writer behind both thesocialmediahat.com and thebloggingbrute.com.
15. George B. Thomas
George B. Thomas was previously an “Inbound Evangelist” (which might just be my favorite job title ever) at Impulse Creative and is now the owner of “Chief HubSpot Helper” at his own company.
Thomas’s focus now is to help companies streamline their work processes and growth using the right marketing, sales, service, operations, and CMS tools through HubSpot. He has over 30 years of marketing and sales experience and 20 years of HubSpot experience.
His HubHeroes YouTube channel, podcast, and blog are game changers for anyone who wants to use HubSpot to scale their business, and he’s an outstanding professional speaker.
Marketing Operations Leaders to Follow: Final Thoughts
There you have it–a solid list of fifteen different marketing operations leaders with diverse experience and incredible content to follow. And even better—a large chunk of these leaders are going to be featured soon, sharing their hottest (and often most controversial) takes in marketing today.
Want to check out hot takes from some of the marketing operations leaders on this list? Sign up to see our next Hot Takes Live FREE event on February 16th!