In this iTech Series Unplugged interview, Bhargav Chandrababu, Senior Director, Demand Generation at Mindtickle, shares insights on building revenue-first marketing teams, creating a predictable pipeline, and navigating the AI era. He discusses the evolving role of B2B marketers, the importance of sales alignment, and the mindset required to drive sustainable growth.

It’s great to have you for this interview, Bhargav. Could you tell us about yourself and your journey as a marketer?

The best careers are rarely the ones you planned. Mine certainly wasn’t. I started in sales, spent time as a coder, and somehow found a way to bring both worlds together as a marketer—building demand engines for Mindtickle, Sprinklr, Freshworks, and InMobi, four companies that collectively redefined their categories in B2B SaaS.

A serious marketing career wasn’t even on my radar when I started. Though looking back, there were early signs. I used to blog about music on Blogger while still in college, making a little money from Google Adsense here and there. Nothing significant, but it got me curious about how digital platforms worked.

What really set the direction was joining InMobi in 2015. Mobile advertising was at an inflection point, and learning digital marketing inside an ad tech company is honestly one of the best educations you can get. You develop a certain tech fluency from day one, the kind that stays with you regardless of what industry you move into later.

From there, every role has been some version of the same challenge. build a team from the ground up, scale it, and make it a predictable source of pipeline. That was true at Freshworks during their hypergrowth phase and at Sprinklr when I was the first digital marketing hire after the function moved from the US to India, and it’s what I’m doing now at Mindtickle.

Thirteen years in, the thing I care most about hasn’t changed: marketing that’s measured by the revenue number. Everything else is in service of that.

What are the key pillars of a high-performing demand generation strategy today?

The first is technology and data infrastructure. Before you spend a rupee or a dollar, you need to know what you’re measuring and how. At Freshworks, one of the first things we did was build an integrated MarTech stack and connect everything to a central data warehouse so insights were democratised across functions rather than sitting in one team’s dashboard. None of that would have been possible without an exceptional data analytics team. Without that foundation, everything else is guesswork dressed up as strategy.

The second is channel discipline. Organic, paid, ABM, field—none of these work in isolation. The best demand generation engines treat channels as a portfolio, not a menu. You make deliberate bets, understand how the audience converges, and optimise the mix over time. I find the teams that consistently struggle are the ones chasing the channel of the moment rather than building something that compounds.

The third is AI fluency, and I don’t just mean tools. I mean building a team that thinks natively in AI, using it for content operations, signal-based targeting, and automating workflows that used to require headcount. The marketers who will matter in the next two to three years aren’t necessarily the ones who know which tools to use. They’re the ones who think in systems and know how to integrate AI into how a team operates. That’s a significant mindset shift, and most organisations are still in the early stages.

And fourth, which most people underinvest in, is sales alignment. The honest reality is that marketing and sales have structurally different incentives; marketing optimises for volume and velocity at the top of the funnel, and sales optimises for quality and close rate at the bottom. Those tensions don’t disappear easily. The best demand gen strategy in the world fails if sales don’t trust the leads or understand the intent signals behind them. The teams I’ve seen consistently outperform are the ones where marketing and sales are operating from the same playbook.

Over the past decade, how have you seen B2B SaaS marketing evolve, especially in the way teams approach pipeline and revenue ownership?

Earlier, marketing was largely seen as a support function. We ran campaigns, generated leads, and handed them over. The conversation with the CEO or CFO was about brand awareness and share of voice, things that were genuinely hard to tie to revenue. That has changed dramatically.

The first big shift was attribution. As MarTech matured, CRMs, marketing automation, and intent data platforms matured. It became possible to connect marketing activity directly to the pipeline and revenue. Marketing leaders stopped presenting share of voice and started presenting pipeline contribution, cost per opportunity, and marketing-sourced ARR. That changed the conversation in the boardroom entirely.

The second shift, which is still playing out, is ownership. The best marketing leaders I know don’t think of themselves as service providers to sales. They think of themselves as co-owners of the revenue number. At Mindtickle, I present weekly to the CEO on inbound performance, channel, and pipeline contribution. That is a fundamentally different relationship to the business than marketing had a decade ago.

The third shift is around how buyers make decisions. Today you’re not selling to one person; you’re influencing a buying committee of six to ten stakeholders, each with different concerns and different stages of awareness. That’s reshaped how ABM works and how the pipeline is built. Campaigns are no longer about reaching a decision maker. They’re about orchestrating a conversation across an entire account. It should be contextual to the journey of the customers we are chasing.

“The best demand generation engines treat channels as a portfolio, not a menu. You make deliberate bets, understand how the audience converges, and optimise the mix over time.”

How is AI reshaping the relationship between marketing, sales enablement, and revenue growth?

AI is doing something interesting: it’s compressing the distance between intent and action across the entire revenue funnel.

On the marketing side, the impact is most visible in how teams operate. Content and SEO programmes that once required large teams and long cycles can now run leaner and faster. Signal-based automation means outbound sequences are triggered by actual buying behaviour, not arbitrary nurture schedules. That kind of precision simply wasn’t practical two years ago.

On the sales enablement side, and this is something I’ve seen first-hand at Mindtickle, AI is fundamentally changing how reps show up to customer conversations. Personalised coaching based on individual skill gaps means every rep is learning differently, not sitting through the same training as others. Real-time deal intelligence flags risks in active opportunities and recommends the next best move before the rep has to ask. Reps walking into sales calls today are better prepared if they’re leveraging the tech well.

Where it gets genuinely exciting is the intersection of marketing and sales. When marketing’s intent signals feed directly into sales workflows, and sales feedback loops back into marketing’s targeting, AI stops being something teams adopt in isolation and starts functioning as a connected system.

The honest caveat I’d add is this: AI amplifies good strategy and good data. If your fundamentals are weak, AI makes the mess faster. The companies that will win are the ones that already have clean data, aligned teams, and a strong context layer that makes that data meaningful.

What would be your advice to marketers on developing the right skills and mindset to succeed?

Three things, in the order that I learned from my mentor, which I often share with others now.

First, learn the business before you learn the tools. I’ve met brilliant marketers who know every platform inside out but struggle to have a conversation with a CXO or a sales leader about revenue. The marketers who grow fastest are the ones who can sit in a business review and understand what the numbers mean, not just their own numbers but the business’s numbers. That fluency is what gets you a seat at the table.

Second, own an outcome, not a function. There’s a meaningful difference between “I run demand generation” and “I own the pipeline target.” The first is a job description. The second is a leadership position. The earlier in your career you start thinking in terms of outcomes rather than activities, the faster you’ll move.

Third, be genuinely curious about technology, but don’t be seduced by it. The MarTech landscape is overwhelming and getting more so with AI. The marketers who build durable careers are the ones who can tell the difference between signal and noise and make technology work in the service of strategy rather than the other way around.

And one mindset thing I’d add is to get comfortable with being wrong in public. Marketing is inherently experimental. A test-and-learn culture has to start with leaders who are willing to say “that didn’t work; here’s what we learned.” That psychological safety is what separates teams that iterate from teams that repeat.

Ultimately, the marketers I’ve seen grow the fastest are the ones who are just as comfortable being uncomfortable as they are being right.

Could you tell us about your most memorable experience as a marketer?

The one that stays with me is from my early days at Sprinklr.

As I mentioned before, I was building the digital marketing function from the ground up, and the self-serve motion was fairly new territory for the company — an organisation that had historically grown through outbound and enterprise field sales. Building that confidence that inbound could work required as much internal selling as external marketing.

What I remember most is the moment, about eighteen months in, when the self-serve motion crossed its first meaningful revenue milestone. It sounds modest in hindsight, but at the time, it was proof of concept for something nobody was sure would work. We eventually grew it fourfold in Net New ARR over the following years, thanks to a resilient inside sales team.

But the number isn’t what stays with me. What I remember is the leadership support through a journey that had no guaranteed outcome and the team that built something meaningful without a playbook. There’s something particular about being a small team delivering a meaningful outcome inside a large organisation; the ownership feels different, the wins feel more personal, and the losses teach you more.

About Bhargav Chandrababu

Bhargav Chandrababu is a marketing leader with 13 years of experience scaling demand generation across four category-defining SaaS companies: Mindtickle, Sprinklr, Freshworks, and InMobi. He also advises early-stage startups on demand generation and go-to-market strategy and serves as an Advisory Board Member at Bhumi, one of India’s largest volunteer-based NGOs.

The post Revenue, Alignment, Demand Gen and AI: Bhargav Chandrababu on Modern B2B Growth appeared first on iTechSeries.

In this edition of the interview series, Shivani Priyadarshini, Head of SEA Field Marketing at Akamai Technologies, shares her insights on the evolving role of field marketing, customer-centric GTM strategies, changing buyer expectations, customer retention, and leadership. She explains why trust, relevance, and execution remain at the heart of sustainable B2B growth.

Welcome to the interview series, Shivani. Could you tell us about yourself and your journey as a marketer?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about marketing, it’s that it rarely goes according to plan—and that’s probably why I’ve stayed in it for nearly 20 years, not including the seven years I spent in a call centre before transitioning into the field.

The truth is, I got into marketing by accident. Before marketing, I worked in sales and customer adoption for the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft. While I could sell, I realized I enjoyed understanding customers, listening to their challenges, sharing ideas, and helping solve problems far more than closing deals. Eventually, I recognized that what excited me most wasn’t sales—it was marketing.

When I made the switch, I started from scratch. I had no formal marketing education or experience. Everything I learned came from hands-on work, making mistakes, asking questions, and figuring things out along the way.

Over the years, I’ve worked across industries, countries, and cultures, each experience teaching me something new. Today, I lead Field Marketing for Southeast Asia at Akamai Technologies, partnering closely with sales teams, customers, partners, and executives across the region.

What I love most about marketing is that it sits at the center of everything. You’re close enough to customers to understand their challenges, close enough to sales to understand market realities, and close enough to the business to see the impact of your work.

Some of my most valuable lessons came not from successful campaigns but from failures, missed targets, and tough conversations. Marketing taught me resilience. At its core, marketing is about building trust, creating opportunities, and helping people make better decisions. Everything else is simply the vehicle that gets you there.

You have extensive experience leading field marketing across different regions. What makes field marketing a critical growth driver in today’s B2B landscape?

I may be biased, but I’ve always believed field marketing is where strategy meets reality.

You can have great campaigns, messaging, and content, but if they don’t resonate with customers or help advance sales conversations, they don’t matter. Customers don’t care how good your product is; they care whether it solves their problem.

Field marketing is a critical growth driver because B2B buying has become increasingly complex. You’re no longer selling to a single decision-maker but engaging multiple stakeholders with different priorities and concerns. At the same time, buyers have access to more information than ever and often complete much of their research before speaking with a vendor.

That’s where field marketing plays a vital role. It’s not about filling rooms or running events for the sake of it—it’s about creating opportunities for meaningful conversations.

I’ve always seen field marketing as the bridge between marketing and sales. We stay close enough to customers to understand their challenges and close enough to sales to understand market realities. This gives us a unique ability to influence the pipeline, accelerate opportunities, and build trust long before a contract is signed.

One thing I’ve learned is that sales teams don’t want more marketing activities; they want conversations, opportunities, and revenue. Good field marketing helps deliver that.

Having worked across Southeast Asia, I’ve also learned that what works in one market may not work in another. Field marketing provides the flexibility to adapt globally while executing locally.

At the end of the day, people buy from people. Technology and buying journeys may evolve, but trust and relationships still drive business decisions, and field marketing helps create those moments where trust is built.

What are some of the key elements of a successful go-to-market strategy?

I’ve always felt that people overcomplicate go-to-market strategies.

At its core, a successful GTM strategy comes down to answering a few simple questions: Who are we trying to reach? What problem are we solving? Why should they care? And why now? If you can’t answer those clearly, even the most sophisticated marketing plan won’t help.

The second key element is alignment. One of the biggest reasons GTM strategies fail isn’t because the idea is wrong, but because marketing, sales, product, partners, and customer success teams are working toward different priorities. When everyone pulls in different directions, you lose consistency and credibility with customers.

I’ve also learned that GTM strategies must be built around the customer, not the product. Companies often focus too much on features and capabilities, but customers care about outcomes. They want to know how you’ll help them reduce risk, save money, grow revenue, improve efficiency, or make their jobs easier.

Execution is equally important. I’ve seen great strategies fail because nobody followed through, and simple strategies succeed because teams executed them consistently. A good plan executed well will almost always outperform a perfect plan that stays on a slide deck.

Finally, successful GTM teams know how to adapt. Markets evolve, customer priorities shift, competitors react, and what looks great on paper doesn’t always work in reality. The best teams listen, learn, and adjust quickly instead of becoming attached to the original plan.

For me, a successful go-to-market strategy isn’t the one with the most slides or the most complex framework. It’s the one that understands the customer, aligns the business, drives action, and ultimately helps solve a problem customer genuinely care about.

“Great campaigns, messaging, and content only matter if they resonate with customers and advance sales conversations. Customers don’t care how good your product is; they care whether it solves their problem.”

How have changing customer expectations influenced modern marketing strategies?

Customers today are far more informed than when I first started in marketing, and that’s fundamentally changed how we engage them.

In the past, buyers relied heavily on vendors for information. Today, they have access to reviews, analyst reports, peer recommendations, industry communities, and AI tools before ever speaking to a salesperson. In many cases, they’ve already formed an opinion before we enter the conversation.

As marketers, we can no longer rely on generic messaging or one-size-fits-all campaigns. Customers expect relevance. They want you to understand their industry, business challenges, and where they are in their buying journey.

Customers have also become more selective with their time. They’re constantly exposed to emails, ads, webinars, and content. If you’re not delivering value, they’ll quickly move on. More communication doesn’t necessarily mean more engagement; relevance matters far more.

I’ve also seen a growing demand for authenticity. Customers want to hear from peers, practitioners, and people who have solved similar challenges. That’s why customer stories, communities, roundtables, and peer-to-peer conversations are so effective. The human voice still makes a difference.

AI adds another dimension. While it helps marketers personalize and scale engagement, it also raises expectations. Customers can often tell the difference between automated content and information that genuinely addresses their needs.

At the end of the day, customer expectations haven’t made marketing harder—they’ve made it better. They’ve pushed us to focus less on ourselves and more on understanding customers, building trust, and creating meaningful experiences. In many ways, that’s how marketing should have worked all along.

Could you tell us about your most memorable experience as a marketer?

I’ve been fortunate to have many memorable experiences throughout my career, but the ones that stay with me aren’t necessarily the biggest events or the campaigns that generated the most leads.

The moments I remember most are the ones that remind me that marketing is really about people.

One experience that stands out was the very first Akamai Media Leadership Summit. The idea actually came about during a casual conversation over drinks between a colleague and me. We started discussing how valuable it would be to bring media leaders from across India, Southeast Asia, and Australia/New Zealand together to learn from one another.

What made it different was that we deliberately chose not to make it a vendor-led event. Instead of having our executives and product experts do all the talking, we invited customers to take center stage. Some delivered presentations, others participated in panel discussions, and one customer even hosted a site visit to their office so attendees could see firsthand how they operated.

What followed was something special. The conversations were open, honest, and incredibly valuable because they came from peers facing similar challenges. There was a genuine willingness to share experiences, lessons learned, and ideas.

What makes it memorable isn’t just that the event was successful. It’s years later, and customers still bring it up when we meet. They remember the people they met, the conversations they had, and the insights they gained.

The summit has evolved over the years, but there is always something special about the first one. It reminded me that sometimes the best marketing doesn’t come from talking about your company or your products. It comes from creating an environment where people can learn from one another.

Customer marketing plays a key role in growth. How should GTM teams approach engagement, retention, and expansion after the initial sale?

One of the biggest mistakes companies make is treating the sale as the finish line. In reality, it’s just the beginning of the relationship.

Customers engage with you because they believe you can solve a problem. Once the contract is signed, your responsibility is to ensure they achieve the outcome they were promised. If they don’t, no amount of customer marketing can compensate for that.

For me, engagement starts with staying relevant. Don’t only appear during renewals or upsell opportunities. Understand what’s happening in your customer’s business—their priorities, challenges, and evolving definition of success.

Retention is built on trust and ongoing conversations, not transactions. Customers stay when they continue to see value. That value may come from product innovation, but it often comes from helping them learn, sharing best practices, connecting them with peers, and providing support when needed.

Expansion becomes easier when you’ve earned the right to have that conversation. Customers should see you as a partner before they see you as a vendor. When that happens, discussions about additional solutions occur naturally because they’re focused on solving business challenges, not hitting sales targets.

I’ve also found that some of the best customer marketing happens when customers learn from one another. Roundtables, workshops, advisory boards, and leadership forums can create powerful peer-to-peer learning opportunities.

At the end of the day, customer marketing isn’t about keeping customers happy—it’s about helping them succeed. When customers are successful, engagement, retention, advocacy, and growth naturally follow.

What advice would you give to marketers who aspire to move into leadership roles?

My first piece of advice is to stop thinking like a marketer and start thinking like a business leader.

Early in my career, I measured success through campaigns, programs, and marketing metrics. As I moved into leadership roles, I realized that what truly matters is whether you’re helping the business grow. Learn how sales works, understand revenue, and know how both your company and customers make money. The more commercial your mindset, the more valuable you’ll become as a leader.

Second, get comfortable being uncomfortable.

Many of the biggest opportunities in my career came from taking on challenges I had never faced before. I didn’t have a marketing degree or a perfect career path, and there were plenty of times I felt out of my depth. But growth often comes from saying yes, learning quickly, and figuring things out along the way. Mistakes are inevitable, and some of my most valuable lessons came from them.

I’d also encourage marketers to invest in relationships. Marketing doesn’t operate in isolation. The most successful marketers build trust with sales teams, partners, customers, executives, and peers. Learn from others, share experiences, and don’t hesitate to ask questions. Leadership is often more about influence than authority.

Finally, stay curious and agile. Marketing is constantly evolving, and the people who continue to grow are those who never stop learning.

Looking back, I didn’t have everything mapped out. I found marketing by accident and stayed because I enjoyed solving problems and helping customers. Stay curious, stay humble, and don’t shy away from opportunities that challenge you—they often shape your career the most.

About Shivani Priyadarshini

Shivani Priyadarshini is a seasoned B2B marketing leader with 28 years of experience, including 21 years in the technology industry and 7 years in customer engagement roles. She has built expertise in field marketing, demand generation, account-based marketing, and go-to-market strategy. Throughout her career, she has helped organizations create customer-centric programs that strengthen relationships, drive growth, and deliver measurable business outcomes across global markets.

The post Where Strategy Meets Reality: Shivani Priyadarshini on Modern Field Marketing appeared first on iTechSeries.

In this edition of the interview, Wilhelm Frank, Commercial Marketing Director EMEA at Lenovo, shares insights from a marketing career spanning corporate leadership, agency experience, and entrepreneurship. From building award-winning campaigns to leading EMEA B2B marketing, he discusses balancing global and local strategies, proving marketing ROI, connecting brands with demand generation, and developing future marketing leaders.

Welcome to the interview series, Wilhelm. Could you tell us more about your journey as a marketer?

Well, I started my career in a local role in Austria after my studies. I wanted to have a marketing job from the very beginning, and the offer at HP was very attractive to me, as it covered product management but also included the creative part with campaign management responsibilities within the printing group. After 6 years and after winning a silver lion in Cannes for a Direct Marketing project, I wanted to see the other side of Marketing and moved to PKP Proximity (now “BBDO”), where I learned as Account Director for several clients all the essentials from an agency perspective. After a year, I thought I could do it all myself and established a marketing consultancy with a friend. One of the key outcomes was that we were core stakeholders in the establishment of the first e-gaming trade fair in Austria, called “Game City,” which is still the main event for gaming in my country. But I missed the corporate life soon and especially wanted to have an international role, so I accepted an offer from Lenovo and continued my career there 18 years ago as Campaign Manager for the Eastern European markets. After some years, I moved to the EMEA marketing team, was part of the Channel marketing organization, and then soon led it. In 2017, I further moved ahead and became Head of Commercial Marketing. After some years, I got promoted to Director for Commercial Marketing and owned the full end-to-end EMEA B2B Marketing for the PC business group from brand to demand generation, a great role with broad responsibilities and opportunities, where I especially further professionalized our Demand Generation approach and also established an Account-Based Marketing Program.

Having worked on both the corporate and agency side, how have these experiences shaped your approach to strategy and execution?

Although my time on the agency side was not super long, it was a great time to learn, and I can only recommend that any marketer, at least sometime in their career, see both sides of marketing. It helped me especially in the cooperation as well as in the selection of agencies for all the years after. Getting some understanding about internal processes and how much time different requests take is super helpful in evaluating proposals and quotes. And it overall improves the collaboration with agencies to finally optimize the joint outcomes over time. Especially when it comes to proper briefings, which are the key element for a successful and fair agency-client relationship.

You’ve worked extensively in pan-EMEA environments. How do you balance global consistency with local market relevance?

As I am from a rather small country in EMEA (Austria), I saw from the very beginning of my career as a local field marketer in Austria how difficult it is within corporate organizations to create really locally relevant campaigns. And of course, global consistency and a full alignment with the overall corporate strategy and CI/CD are key to succeeding in the long term and creating a consistent brand experience across all our customers across the world. On the other side, with my local experience, I also realized how important the local flavor is. Even in IT, where products and customers don’t seem to need too much of this local touch. But a really locally relevant approach starting from a close alignment with internal stakeholders, especially sales, but also creative-wise with some local touch, can really make a big difference, and that’s why I have always tried also in my EMEA role to balance out global consistency with local relevancy as much as possible and partly tended to focus even more on a more localized approach. With AI and modern MarTech, this is now also much easier, cheaper, and faster to adapt worldwide campaigns and add local flavors into it, while still remaining fully brand consistent.

“A consistent storytelling approach can be guaranteed from brand to demand, which always needs to start on the brand side first, before we can focus on leads and sales conversions.”

With increasing pressure to prove business value, how do you measure ROI and define success beyond traditional marketing metrics?

At the end, what counts most is the business success. Might it be achieving sales, market share, or profit targets? All that we do on the marketing side needs to have a clear impact on these meta goals. Especially on Demand/Lead generation side, we established an end-to-end reporting where we can clearly measure starting from engaged accounts towards marketing and then sales qualified leads, our contribution to the marketing-driven sales pipeline, and over time, our attribution to won revenue. Even more in our ABM program, where lead velocity and customer lifetime value can be added for a more in-depth ROI measurement. Also, here modern MarTech, ABM tools, and finally AI help us further to visualize the customer journey and conversions across the journey better and finally help us to calculate ROI, but also forecast results more easily and accurately.

As a marketing leader, what has been your approach to balancing brand awareness and demand generation?

First of all, it’s key to analyze your data and the current status of your brand and demand generation achievements. Based on that, it needs to be clearly defined where the main gap is, whether it is on the awareness, consideration, or conversion side or more of a topic around retention, etc. With that, a fact-based discussion with the leadership team is possible to get their buy-in on where the priorities need to be set. At the end, it cannot be only one or the other, but it should be clear where more focus should be set for a given timeframe. And my key recipe is to connect the dots as closely as possible and esp. focus on fully integrated marketing approaches, where a brand and also a product campaign connect closely with a lead generation campaign or, e.g., even a Co-Marketing activity in the IT Channel. With that, a consistent storytelling approach can be guaranteed from brand to demand, which always needs to start on the brand side first before we can focus on leads and sales conversions.

What would be your advice to marketers looking to grow into leadership roles?

Always stay curious, and the more you move ahead, ensure you are not only an expert in marketing, which is the basis, but also understand business, strategy, and sales in more detail. Try to grow your skills also outside your comfort zone, and be part of different non-marketing projects. Try to take ownership, e.g., as a project or team lead, where possible to train your people management skills but also to showcase to your leaders that you are willing to take on broader responsibilities. And finally, you also need to be capable in the “finance language”; as I mentioned before, all that we do in marketing finally needs to contribute to exceeding the financial goals of the company.

About Wilhelm Frank

Wilhelm Frank is a seasoned B2B marketing leader with extensive experience across global technology companies and advertising agencies. His expertise spans strategic planning, brand marketing, demand generation, ABM, digital marketing, channel marketing, and event management. Known for building high-performing international teams and driving measurable ROI through MarTech innovation, Wilhelm is an award-winning marketer, respected industry speaker, and guest lecturer recognized for his contributions to modern B2B marketing.

The post Wilhelm Frank on Connecting Brand, Demand, and Business Impact in B2B Marketing appeared first on iTechSeries.

In this edition of our interview series, Tejinder Dhillon, Head of Marketing UK&I at NetApp, shares insights drawn from her experience spanning regions, functions, and growth-focused strategies. From balancing brand building with demand generation to leveraging AI, customer insights, and cross-functional collaboration, she offers perspectives on the evolving world of B2B marketing and sustainable business impact.

It’s great to have you for this interview series, Tejinder. Could you tell us about yourself and your journey as a marketer?

Absolutely, it’s great to be here. My journey in marketing has been shaped by working across different regions and functions, which has given me a very holistic perspective on the discipline. I started with a strong interest in understanding customer behaviour and quickly realised that impactful marketing sits at the intersection of creativity, data, and business strategy.

Over time, I’ve had the opportunity to work on both brand-building initiatives and revenue-driven campaigns, which has helped me develop a balanced approach. Today, I see myself not just as a marketer but as a business partner to sales and leadership teams, someone focused on driving growth, building meaningful customer relationships, and delivering measurable impact.

Having worked across multiple marketing functions and regions, how has your perspective on modern B2B marketing evolved?

Modern B2B marketing has become significantly more customer-centric and data-led. Earlier, it was often campaign-driven and product-focused. Today, it’s about understanding the buyer journey in depth and engaging customers in a more personalised and value-driven way.

Working across regions has also shown me that while technology and tools are global, customer expectations are often highly local. Successful marketing strategies balance global consistency with local relevance. Another key shift is the tighter alignment with sales marketing, which is no longer just about awareness but about influencing pipeline and revenue at every stage of the funnel. Above all, the correct judgment!

How do you balance long-term brand building with short-term demand generation and pipeline goals?

See brand and demand generation as two sides of the same coin, not competing priorities. Strong brands make demand generation more efficient, and consistent demand activity reinforces brand credibility.

In practice, I aim for a portfolio approach. We invest in long-term brand equity through thought leadership, storytelling, and consistent messaging while simultaneously running targeted campaigns that drive immediate pipeline. The key is alignment on shared metrics and ensuring that campaigns ladder up to a clear brand narrative.

It’s also about patience and discipline; while demand generation delivers quicker wins, brand building is what sustains growth over time.

“Modern B2B marketing has become significantly more customer-centric and data-led. Earlier, it was often campaign-driven and product-focused.”

Tell us about your most challenging marketing campaign experience so far and what you learned from it.

One of the most challenging campaigns I worked on involved launching a complex solution across multiple markets with very different levels of maturity. The challenge wasn’t just the campaign execution, but aligning stakeholders across regions, sales teams, and product teams.

What I learned is that clarity and alignment early on are critical. Defining a clear value proposition, ensuring stakeholder buy-in, and adapting messaging for local markets made all the difference. It also reinforced the importance of agility, being willing to test, learn, and optimise quickly rather than waiting for perfection.

How has AI and data-driven marketing changed the way you understand customer behaviour and design personalised experiences at scale?

AI and data have transformed marketing from being intuitive to being far more predictive and precise. Today, we can analyse behaviour patterns, intent signals, and engagement data to better understand where customers are in their journey.

This enables us to move from broad segmentation to true personalisation at scale, delivering the right message through the right channel at the right time. However, the real value comes not just from the technology itself but from how we use it responsibly and strategically.

For me, it’s about combining data insights with human creativity using AI to enhance decision-making while still focusing on authentic, meaningful customer experiences.

What are the most important factors for driving strong collaboration between marketing, sales, and other revenue teams in large organisations?

Alignment starts with shared goals. When marketing and sales are aligned on outcomes, particularly pipeline and revenue, it naturally fosters collaboration.

Beyond that, communication and transparency are key. Regular check-ins, shared dashboards, and clear definitions of success help ensure everyone is working towards the same objectives. It’s also important to build trust, understand each other’s challenges, and create a culture where feedback flows both ways.

Ultimately, the most successful organisations break down silos and operate as one revenue team, rather than separate functions.

As a marketing leader, how do you assess the success of a marketing program beyond the standard metrics?

While metrics like leads, conversions, and pipeline are critical, I believe success goes beyond the numbers.

I look at factors such as:

• Customer engagement quality – Are we reaching the right audience and creating meaningful interactions?
• Sales alignment and adoption – Are sales teams finding value in what marketing delivers?
• Brand perception and trust – Are we strengthening our position in the market?
• Long-term impact—Are we building sustainable growth, not just short-term wins?

About Tejinder Dhillon

Tejinder Dhillon is a marketing leader with over a decade of experience driving growth and leading strategic initiatives in the corporate technology sector. Alongside her corporate career, she coaches ambitious women professionals on career growth, executive presence, and personal branding. Combining leadership expertise with insights from editorial styling experience, she helps women build confidence, strengthen their professional identity, and unlock new opportunities for advancement.

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Natasha Koskenniemi, Senior Global B2B Marketing Leader, shares insights on transforming global GTM strategies into impactful regional execution, improving funnel performance, and building alignment across cross-functional teams. She discusses the importance of audience-centric thinking, AI’s evolving role in marketing, and creating campaigns that drive meaningful business outcomes beyond surface-level metrics.

Welcome to the interview series, Natasha. Could you tell us about yourself and your journey as a marketer?

My path into marketing started in high school through DECA, a student business and marketing competition that made marketing feel real and strategic rather than theoretical. I am American, born and raised, and by college, I knew exactly what I wanted to study. My personal life shaped my professional direction in unexpected ways. I met my now-husband in college while he was studying abroad from Sweden, and that relationship sparked a curiosity about living internationally. I spent my junior year in London, completed another international experience during a J-Term in China, and, after college, followed my husband to Sweden.

Moving there meant learning the language, building a network from nothing, and finding my footing in a country where I had no established path. Through Korta Vägen, a program that helps internationally educated professionals enter the Swedish workforce, I landed my first marketing role at Index Braille. Things have not always gone according to plan, but grit has always helped me move forward.

Professionally, that early chapter gave me something I did not fully appreciate until later. In my earlier roles, I owned both strategy and execution. I built campaigns, ran channels, wrote briefs, managed vendors, and analyzed results. That hands-on foundation gave me deep channel knowledge that became a genuine advantage as I moved into larger organizations.

At Juniper Networks (acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise), I was not implementing; I was the architect. Because I had spent years doing the work myself, I understood what was possible, where friction points existed, and what good execution required. My time there also gave me a strong appreciation for operations, automation, and AI. When the right systems work together, teams gain consistency, cleaner data, and more time for high-value thinking. That combination of strategic and executional fluency, supported by strong operational infrastructure, is where I feel most effective as a marketer.

How do you translate a global GTM strategy into consistent, high-impact regional execution?

When alignment, visibility, and planning are built in from the start with the right stakeholders, including sales, field, and partner marketing teams closest to customers, the global-to-regional translation becomes far more effective. Global teams build frameworks, and regional teams receive toolkits, but those toolkits work best when the people executing them help shape what goes into them.

I think of a well-run campaign like a heart monitor. There is always a steady rhythm of activity, always-on digital programs, nurture campaigns, content, and partner motions. The spikes are your major moments: a product launch, an event, or both. Everything leading up to that spike creates momentum so that by the time the announcement happens or the room fills, the audience is already primed. The effort does not stop there. Post-event activity is equally important for sustaining energy and converting momentum into pipeline. There will always be field programs that are not planned into global campaigns, and that is fine. Large campaigns should leave room for local activation. However, field and partner teams need to align regularly with global teams. Questions like: What activity is coming through digital channels? What can be localized? What existing traffic or brand activity can regions build on instead of duplicating? These are what separate teams working with the global engine from those working around it.

The relationship between marketing and sales is equally important. Sales often bring account-based requests, but marketing should operate as a strategic partner rather than simply a doer of tasks. Open conversations around global initiatives, localization opportunities, channel mix, and in-person engagement create stronger outcomes than a simple request queue. At Juniper, I supported this through a squad model where representatives from brand, campaign, product marketing, regional marketing, sales, and field teams worked together from the start. Regional input shaped strategy early, while modular playbooks and localization frameworks enabled faster execution. The foundation was a yearly campaign plan built on visibility and transparency, keeping large teams aligned around priorities and long enterprise buying cycles.

What are the most overlooked drop-off points in the funnel, and how do you address them to improve MQL-to-SQL conversion?

The most consistently overlooked area is the transition from early-stage engagement to sales-ready traction. Marketing teams often focus heavily on top-of-funnel volume or pipeline, while sales focuses on late-stage deal progression, leaving the middle of the funnel treated as someone else’s problem. That gap is where a significant amount of pipeline value gets lost. The question worth asking at every stage is simple: Why care? Why would this specific contact at this specific account care about what we are sending them? If marketing cannot answer that, the issue starts with the foundation, not the funnel.

One of the things I found when the Networking for AI campaign required us to market to a new audience was that our organic database was thin on marketable contacts within those target ABM accounts. We were creating engagement, but not with enough of the right people to build buying-group coverage. I led a shift in budget toward targeted contact acquisition focused on the right contacts at the right accounts. The goal was never volume; it was building a segmentation model that could support persona-level nurture. This work ran alongside a full rebuild of our email nurture architecture by persona and funnel stage. A technical buyer early in the journey received something very different from an executive further along in the process. Combined with multi-touch programs and our Brand-to-Demand campaign structure, we saw meaningful improvements in both MQL volume and quality.

On the SQL side, we worked much more closely with SDR teams through weekly alignment on account priorities, lead quality signals, and follow-up strategy. We built outreach sequences aligned with the prospect’s marketing experience and introduced bottom-of-funnel field activities like Executive Roundtables and Technical Test Drives, creating stronger engagement than digital programs alone. The common thread is that MQL-to-SQL conversion is never one lever. It comes from the right contacts, relevant content, coordinated channels, aligned outreach, and a GTM organization working together end to end. Underpinning all of it are strong Sales and Marketing alignment, shared KPIs, and deliberate decisions around what to scale and what to stop.

How do you ensure alignment across brand, product marketing, sales, and field teams in large-scale integrated campaigns?

The starting point is making sure everyone is working toward the same commercial objective, not just the same campaign brief. Brand focuses on perception and narrative, product marketing on positioning and differentiation, sales on accounts and quota, and field teams on events and regional activation. Every perspective is valid, but without a shared definition of success, each naturally pulls in a different direction.

I create alignment by anchoring the entire team to a shared commercial outcome before execution begins. That becomes the reference point when priorities inevitably conflict. When people lose sight of it, I bring them back by asking a simple question: Why do they care? Why does this program matter? What commercial outcome does it support? And how does each contribution connect to that result? That question quickly cuts through competing agendas. The squad model makes alignment structural rather than dependent on goodwill. Representatives from brand, product marketing, campaign, regional marketing, sales, and field teams are embedded from the start instead of being brought in after decisions are made. In matrixed organizations, this matters because alignment is built through influence rather than authority. You cannot force a product team to prioritize your webinar, but you can help them understand what is at stake.

After the Networking for AI launch, we had enough data to identify webinars as a high-performing channel. The challenge was that building a webinar required significant time before promotion even began, and conflicting priorities repeatedly created bottlenecks. Deadlines slipped, promotion windows narrowed, and performance reflected it. We did not solve it by escalating issues or chasing stakeholders. Instead, I brought previous webinar data to the entire squad: live session performance, audience personas, conversion rates, and pipeline impact. Once everyone could clearly see the commercial value at stake, it stopped becoming a scheduling conflict and became a shared challenge worth solving together. When people reconnect with the why, the how usually follows.

“Marketing teams often focus heavily on top-of-funnel volume, while sales focuses on late-stage deal progression, leaving the middle of the funnel treated as someone else’s problem.”

Could you tell us about your most memorable experience as a marketer?

Without question, it was the Networking for AI campaign at Juniper, which became the Networking for AI pillar within the broader New Way to Network Brand-to-Demand initiative.

When I stepped into the GTM Performance Architect role, one challenge was that Data Center and AI were being treated as separate conversations, while the market was increasingly viewing them as inseparable. Enterprise customers investing in AI infrastructure needed to understand that networking was not simply a commodity beneath that investment; it was a critical performance factor. The narrative needed to shift, and it needed to happen quickly because the opportunity to position Juniper as a leader in that space would not remain open forever. What made the project memorable was the scale of what we had to bring together. This was not a traditional campaign. It required aligning brand, product marketing, demand, field, and sales around a single company point of view, then translating that into a program that could land consistently across AMER, EMEA, and APAC. We built the messaging architecture, content framework, channel strategy, and field activation model to operate as one integrated system.

The campaign contributed to $1.92 billion in pipeline influence. What was especially rewarding was hearing C-suite leaders and sales teams naturally using the Networking for AI narrative in their own conversations. When messaging evolves from campaign assets into how an organization naturally talks about its products, you know something meaningful has happened. Even today, if you search for Networking for AI or ask an AI tool about it, the concept remains present. That level of category impact does not happen by accident. Beyond the results, being part of the AI revolution at that moment felt like a once-in-a-career experience. I imagine it felt similar for people who experienced the early internet boom. You could sense that you were part of something significant. We worked incredibly hard, but it was energizing, exciting, and brought out the best in us as a team. That is something I still carry with me.

Beyond the standard metrics, what tells you whether a campaign has succeeded or not?

Earlier in my career at a startup, the CEO I worked for had a habit of challenging me with two words: why care. What he meant was, why should my audience care? He used it when reviewing content, but it became a lens I apply to everything, including metrics. When leadership is celebrating vanity clicks and impressions, I find myself asking the same question. Why care? Those numbers do not tell you who sat behind them, what they were thinking, or whether they are anywhere close to a buying decision.

That question is what developed into what I would call an obsession with the middle of the funnel, and I think it is the most under-discussed problem in B2B marketing. On one end you have your awareness metrics, impressions, clicks, share of voice, and keyword rankings. On the other end, you have your north star metrics, meetings held, pipeline, and revenue contribution. Leadership tends to gravitate to one end or the other because those are the easiest stories to tell. Sales is down your neck about the pipeline, so marketing instinctively reaches for brand-level awareness and thought leadership to show traction. Those metrics matter, but they do not lead directly to pipeline and treating them as if they do create a dangerous gap.

There is a principle that a buyer needs to interact with a brand multiple times, going progressively deeper into their research, before they are ready to have a real conversation. Seeing a TV commercial repeatedly is not enough because it never takes them anywhere. It is our job to meet the prospect in the right channel, at the right time, with the right content for their persona, speaking directly to their business challenges. That is a middle of the funnel problem, and it requires someone to own it explicitly.

The audience question is where I see teams fall short most consistently. We rally around an ABM list, agree on the titles we are going after, and then assume that strong metrics mean we are reaching the right people. But apply the why care test, and the picture often changes. Why should the CMO care about 500 webinar attendees? Show them why. Because 100 of those attendees were analysts and media who serve their own strategic purpose. 150 were partners actively selling your products. And 250 were technical personas representing accounts on your priority ABM list. That breakdown tells a completely different story than the headline number, and it is the story that matters. In paid channels, especially, failing to ask this question does not just cost you relevance. It literally costs you money.

The accountability question matters here, too. Full funnel metrics should be tracked and owned by someone from the beginning, even when they are not the north star. It does not matter which function owns the middle of the funnel as long as that decision is made explicitly at the start. In my Juniper years that sat with me as campaign architect, but no junior marketer would have known to pick it up without it being called out. If it is not assigned, it disappears, and then everyone wonders why the pipeline is light.

What advice would you give marketers on developing the right skill sets in an increasingly AI-driven world?

Stay curious. That is the foundation of everything else.

AI is a remarkable tool, but it is only as smart as the prompt you give it or the agent you teach it to be. And I will be honest, I appreciate when an individual or a brand does not sound like a chatbot wrote their content. There is a real risk that, as generative AI becomes ubiquitous, everyone starts sounding identical. If you are going to use it, and you should, take the time to build agents that reflect your own unique brand voice. Keep answering the right questions yourself. Keep asking better questions of the AI. Challenge it, push back on its first response, give it more context, test whether its output reflects your thinking or just resembles it. That back and forth is where the value is. Critical thinking is not something AI has, and in a world where everyone has access to the same tools, your thinking is your differentiation.

What I have found personally is that the most powerful combination is staying genuinely curious and innovative while using AI to handle the work that does not require my full attention. Repetitive tasks, derivative content, scaling a core idea across multiple verticals, partner audiences, or personas without rebuilding from scratch every time. When those workflows are handled well, I get to spend my time on the things that actually require judgment and creativity.

The marketers who will struggle are the ones who use AI to produce more of the same thing faster. The ones who will thrive are the ones who use it to operate at a greater scale while keeping their own point of view at the center of everything they put out. Stay curious, protect your thinking, and never let a tool do the job that only your experience and judgment can do.

About Natasha Koskenniemi

Natasha is a global B2B marketing leader with 15+ years of experience driving growth across AMER, EMEA, APAC, and the Nordic region. She specializes in building full-funnel GTM engines that transform global strategy into regional impact and measurable business outcomes. Known for creating clarity in complex environments, she combines strategic vision, cross-functional leadership, and data-driven execution to align teams, accelerate pipeline growth, and scale high-performing marketing ecosystems.

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Melanie Morris, Senior Director of Marketing, North America at Backbase, shares insights on scaling growth in complex B2B environments, emphasizing cross-functional alignment, sales and marketing collaboration, and talent development. She also discusses global campaign execution, improving lead quality, and AI’s growing role in modern GTM systems, offering practical guidance for today’s marketing and GTM leaders.

It’s great to have you for this, Melanie. Could you tell us about yourself and your journey as a marketer?

My career has spanned telecom, FinTech, and SaaS, but the common thread has always been building scalable demand engines in complex environments.

I started on the agency side before spending ten years consulting for Microsoft across multiple product groups, including Windows, Office, Dynamics, and Bing. That experience is where I fell in love with B2B marketing: the complexity of enterprise buying cycles, the challenge of positioning the same product differently for distinct audiences, and the power of strategic storytelling at a global scale.

I then moved to T-Mobile, where I gained deep experience in B2C marketing and sophisticated audience segmentation. Reaching the right customers within a base of more than 75 million subscribers required precision and personalization that have shaped how I think about demand generation today. Eventually, I joined the early T-Mobile for Business division, which at the time operated very much like a startup within a large enterprise. This was a pivotal role for my career. I helped build the SMB demand marketing engine, and once that was driving predictable lead flow, I launched and scaled an SDR organization within Marketing to support pipeline conversion. That gave Marketing visibility and influence across the full funnel, which gave us a remarkable advantage for rapidly optimizing performance.

Since then, I’ve continued building and transforming GTM systems across B2B organizations, always focused on connecting strategy, execution, and measurable business outcomes.

You’ve built marketing organizations in complex B2B environments. What are the biggest challenges companies face when trying to scale growth?

Scaling growth in B2B organizations is rarely a tooling problem. It’s usually an alignment problem. The companies that scale effectively create shared accountability across Marketing, Sales, Product, and Customer teams. Without that alignment, organizations tend to operate in silos, which creates friction for both internal teams and buyers.

Building that foundation requires strong communication, transparency, and curiosity. Every time I am faced with an obstacle or my team gets blocked, I ask lots of questions. This helps build understanding and trust. Teams need shared visibility and a willingness to challenge assumptions together. From my perspective, that cross-functional alignment is both the hardest and most rewarding part of scaling a GTM organization.

The other critical piece is talent development. High-performing teams do not happen overnight. You have to invest in people individually, understand their strengths, and create an environment where they will take risks and grow.

Marketing and sales misalignment is a common issue. What practical steps help create stronger alignment between both teams?

A good starting point is speaking the language of Sales.

Sales teams care about pipeline, revenue impact, account prioritization, and increasingly, the buyer signals that help them focus their efforts. The strongest marketing organizations build credibility with Sales by helping to answer two questions: where should we focus, and why?

When Marketing can surface meaningful engagement signals, connect activity to pipeline progression, and provide insight into buyer behavior, the relationship shifts from lead provider to strategic partner.

It’s also important to create consistent feedback loops. Some of the most valuable insights come directly from conversations with Sales teams and customers. That alignment helps Marketing refine messaging, improve targeting, and build campaigns that resonate more effectively in the market.

You’ve scaled integrated campaigns across North America and EMEA. How do you balance global consistency with local market relevance?

The most successful global campaigns are rooted in a strong brand narrative and strategic content foundation. That work often starts with Product Marketing having a deep understanding of the product fit, market dynamics, and differentiators. From there, global teams can create core messaging and campaign assets that regional teams tailor for local market conditions.

It’s also important to involve regional marketers early in the process. Lean regional teams should not have to carry the entire campaign execution burden themselves. Global should provide the strategic foundation and core assets, while regions localize the final layer to ensure relevance within their markets. That balance creates consistency without fragmenting the brand or ignoring market nuances.

“When marketing connects engagement signals, pipeline impact, and buyer insights, it evolves from a lead source into a strategic partner.”

From your experience, what factors have the biggest influence on improving lead quality and pipeline performance?

Lead quality improves when marketing stays close to customer reality. Marketing teams can create compelling campaigns and creative messaging, but if those messages are not resonating with buyers, performance eventually stalls. That’s why strong feedback loops with Sales and customers are essential.

I always encourage marketers to join customer calls, review meeting transcripts, and listen closely to objections and priorities. Those insights help shape better segmentation, stronger messaging, and more effective campaigns.

The other important factor is measurement discipline. Over time, organizations should develop clear performance baselines around conversion rates, engagement, and pipeline progression. When campaigns underperform against those benchmarks, teams can pivot messaging, targeting, or channel strategy quickly and continuously improve the system.

AI-enabled ABM workflows are becoming more important. How do you see AI improving account prioritization and executive engagement?

We recently built an AI-powered GTM signal engine with Claude, Vercel, GitHub, and other tools, which was designed to help Sales prioritize accounts and personalize engagement at scale.

The system aggregated third-party intent data, first-party engagement signals, account activity, and buyer insights into a unified scoring model that fed directly into our CRM. That allowed Sales teams to identify both high- and low-engagement accounts and tailor outreach based on real buyer behavior and signals.

We also developed agents to generate personalized messaging and content by account and buyer persona, helping teams scale executive engagement in a much more targeted way.

What’s most exciting is that these capabilities are becoming increasingly accessible. Organizations no longer need massive custom infrastructures or expensive third-party platforms to begin building intelligent, AI-driven GTM systems.

Based on your experience leading global marketing teams, what advice would you give to marketers looking to grow into senior leadership roles?

Pay attention to the problems you naturally gravitate toward solving, then become exceptional at them. For me, that has been building GTM systems and helping organizations connect strategy, execution, and outcomes. Over time, that focus became part of my leadership identity and personal brand.

I also believe relationships and influence matter tremendously. Senior leadership is not just about expertise; it’s about collaboration, trust, and the ability to align teams around a vision.

Take on high-visibility or stretch opportunities, even when the immediate benefit is not obvious. In a previous role, I volunteered to manage logistics for a leadership offsite, which gave me direct exposure to the CMO. That relationship eventually turned into a mentorship and opened new doors for my career. Sometimes the experiences that accelerate growth are not the most glamorous in the moment.

The best senior marketing leaders do more than drive pipeline. They create alignment, build future leaders, and shape how organizations grow. If you prioritize this transformational work, you will be amazed at the opportunities that will arise.

About Melanie Morris

Melanie is a marketing executive with 15+ years of experience building scalable B2B marketing organizations that connect strategy to measurable pipeline impact. She has led global GTM and demand generation initiatives across telecom, FinTech, and SaaS, driving significant growth through the alignment of marketing and sales. With experience at Microsoft, T-Mobile, and in enterprise consulting, she specializes in building data-driven, high-performing demand engines in complex environments.

The post The Discipline of Scalable Growth: Strategy, Alignment, and Execution with Melanie Morris appeared first on iTechSeries.

Alisa Hammond, Senior Marketing Manager at Deltek, shares insights from leading full-funnel marketing programs across B2B and SaaS organizations. She discusses aligning brand, demand generation, and conversion strategies through audience-focused marketing while exploring AI, SEO/AEO, and automation. Alisa also highlights the importance of collaboration, experimentation, and psychological safety in building innovative teams and driving sustainable growth.

Welcome to the interview series, Alisa Hammond. Could you tell us about yourself and your journey as a marketer?

Hello! I’m Alisa, and I am a marketer, millennial, and mom from Michigan. I’m coming up on 11 years of experience across the full digital marketing mix: paid search, SEO, social, email, content creation and promotion, CRO, and analytics. I’m passionate about what I do, and that passion is typically fueled by cold brew and sour candy!

I graduated from Michigan State University with a Marketing degree in 2015 and kicked off my career at Plante Moran as a Senior Marketing Consultant. The role gave me incredible exposure to a wide range of industries and marketing tactics and built a foundation that deeply shaped how I think about campaign strategy and delivery. It’s also where I discovered my passion for B2B marketing specifically, which has been my focus ever since.

After five years at Plante Moran, I moved into social media management at LLamasoft. This shift helped me transition into the SaaS space—the industry I was most eager to be in—and I joined Deltek shortly thereafter in December 2020, where I have been ever since. As a Senior Marketing Manager at Deltek, I’ve had the chance to lead global, full-funnel SEM programs; manage significant paid media budgets; and launch CRO strategies and platforms. I’ve recently shifted to my current focus, which is supporting and helping scale Deltek’s video content strategy. I also write and optimize website content for SEO/AEO, which has helped bring together my creative and analytical passions.

You’ve led full-funnel marketing programs across multiple channels. How do you align brand awareness, demand generation, and conversion goals?

My approach always starts with the business goal—what are we trying to achieve, and how does marketing ladder up to it? From there, I work backward to define what each stage of the funnel needs to accomplish to move prospects toward conversion.

The key to alignment, in my experience, is building every tactic and content package around where the audience is in their buying journey. That doesn’t mean abandoning consistent branding or core messaging. What it does mean is being intentional about the role each stage plays and tailoring the experience accordingly.

A prospect who has never heard of your product is in a fundamentally different mindset than someone who has been in your nurture stream for six months. At the top of the funnel, I lean on organic social, SEO- and AEO-informed thought leadership, ungated content, and community engagement to build awareness and drive discovery. As we move down the funnel, the focus shifts to higher-intent tactics: retargeting, paid search, email nurture programs, landing page CRO, and sales enablement—all designed to convert engaged audiences into qualified leads.

The thread that ties it together is measurement. Each stage has its own KPIs, but I’m always looking at how they connect—whether awareness efforts are feeding the right audiences into mid-funnel programs and whether those programs are producing pipeline that converts.

“A prospect who has never heard of your product is in a fundamentally different mindset than someone who has been in your nurture stream for six months.”

Tell us about your most memorable experience as a marketer.

One of the most formative moments in my marketing career was attending Digital Summit and hearing Seth Godin speak firsthand about storytelling and trust. Sitting in the front row for that presentation left a lasting impression—his thinking on how brands earn trust through authentic, consistent narratives continues to shape how I approach my work. His books and talks remain a go-to source of inspiration when I need to reconnect with the why behind what I do. That experience also reinforced how meaningful storytelling can create stronger connections and influence the way audiences perceive and engage with brands.

How do you see AI and automation changing digital marketing, analytics, and campaign optimization over the next few years?

AI is transforming our industry in ways that are already tangible, and I think the changes we haven’t yet anticipated will drastically overshadow the ones we have.

What I can speak to is how it’s already reshaping the way I work. I’ve used AI to assist me with things like real-time bid optimization, analytical forecasting, automated reporting by tactic and channel, SEO and AEO optimization, and content reviews. Those repeatable, process-driven tasks are exactly where AI shines—it makes marketers faster without sacrificing quality, and it frees up something we all have too little of: time.

For me, that reclaimed time goes toward the work I find most energizing. designing video and blog content, ideating new campaign strategies, and pursuing special initiatives that have a real, measurable impact for my team and the business. AI handling the repetitive lift means I can show up more fully for the creative and strategic work that moves the needle.

On the analytics and optimization side, the shift feels even more significant. AI-assisted tools are getting better at surfacing performance patterns and suggesting or automating adjustments in real time. That changes our job from pulling together disparate reports from multiple platforms to interpreting signals and making strategic calls, which is a much better use of talent.

Where I think we need to stay thoughtful is around brand voice and trust. The efficiency boost is real, but AI doesn’t inherently understand the human context around things like pain points or complex thought processes. Trust me, people know when you’ve used AI for content, and this can backfire on the market’s perception of your brand. My approach is to use AI to move faster and test more while keeping a close eye on quality, consistency, and if the work we are doing is resonating the way we want it to.

For marketing leaders looking to scale growth, what mindset or operational practices are most important for long-term success?

Two priorities come to mind that I feel strongly about, especially right now.

The first is protecting human connection and collaboration, even as AI becomes increasingly embedded in the way we get work done. Marketing teams that stop learning from each other, stop building relationships internally and externally, and start working around people instead of with them are going to lose something quite difficult to recover—the ability to communicate and connect authentically, which is already complex in an increasingly remote profession. It sounds clichéd, but there is truly nothing more valuable in any organization than the experience, creativity, innovation, and connections built by the people who work there. Companies need to invest in their people, but the people also need to invest time, trust, and curiosity in each other.

The second is something that I am also learning in real time, which is the importance of fostering a sense of psychological safety to try something new, even if there’s a possibility it will fail. Innovation and education happen when we take risks, so true leadership means consistently reminding your teams that marketing experiments aren’t a “pass or fail” final exam but a year-round lesson plan.

About Alisa Hammond

Alisa Hammond is a B2B SaaS marketing leader with 11 years of experience across SEO/SEM, social media, CRO, analytics, content strategy, and paid media. Currently at Deltek, she leads full-funnel digital marketing initiatives and video strategy programs. Passionate about data-driven decision-making and audience-centric marketing, Alisa combines analytical expertise with creative storytelling to drive sustainable growth, campaign performance, and impactful customer engagement.

The post Scaling Growth with Human-Centered Marketing: A Conversation with Alisa Hammond appeared first on iTechSeries.

In this exclusive interview series, Nicki Wells, Senior Director of International Field and Channel Marketing at Absolute Security, shares insights from two decades in enterprise marketing. She explores the balance between global strategy and local relevance, the shift toward business-outcome-driven buying, the evolution of field marketing, and how AI is reshaping modern go-to-market strategy and leadership.

 Nicki, it’s wonderful to have you for this interview. Tell us about yourself and your journey as a marketer.

I’m a proud mum of three beautiful children, living in Hampshire with my partner. I enjoy nature, good food, the odd glass of wine (or two), and more recently have taken up Badminton as a hobby in my spare time! My marketing journey started almost 20 yrs ago now at a global endpoint security vendor, F-Secure. Over my time there, I worked in a mix of different roles, including sales, so marketing wasn’t originally in the plan, but I found myself gravitating towards the strategic, creative, and commercial side of marketing, and that’s where it all began for me.

That early experience in sales has stayed incredibly valuable throughout my career, because it gave me a strong understanding of sales priorities, revenue pressure, pipeline expectations, and what commercial teams genuinely need from marketing.

It’s one of the reasons I’ve always believed marketing should be tightly aligned to business outcomes & measurable & predictable (wherever possible!) growth.

Since then, I’ve successfully built international marketing strategies & led pan-international marketing teams at global cybersecurity companies, including Rapid7, before my current role at Absolute Security, where (as well as leading a fab team of Marketers) I’m also responsible for building and scaling our international SDR and demand generation teams. I’ve worked across field marketing, channel marketing, executive CISO/CIO engagement, ABM, pipeline generation, PR, and global go-to-market strategy, always with a focus on how marketing can drive both regional relevance and commercial impact, and I LOVE it!

You’ve led international marketing across EMEA, LATAM, and APJ. What’s the biggest challenge in balancing global consistency with regional relevance?

The biggest challenge is recognising that while global strategy creates consistency, customer expectations are never truly “one-size-fits-all.” You need a strong global narrative, consistent positioning, and aligned business priorities, but the way you engage buyers in Germany differs significantly from Japan, India, or LATAM. Different markets have different levels of risk appetite, buying cycles, channel influence, cultural nuances, and exec priorities.

The mistake many organisations make is assuming localisation simply means translation. True regional relevance means understanding the market dynamics, the customer mindset, and the local business environment. The most successful international strategies create a clear global framework while empowering local marketers to adapt messaging, channels, programs, and engagement approaches in ways that resonate locally. That balance is critical to building both trust and commercial impact.

Over the years, what changes have you seen in how enterprise leaders approach technology purchasing decisions?

Enterprise leaders’ buying behaviours and purchasing decisions have become significantly more business-outcome driven. A few years ago, technology decisions were often led primarily by technical capability. Today, CISOs/Security leaders are far more focused on operational resilience, measurable ROI, business continuity, and long-term risk reduction.

Cybersecurity is a great example of this shift. It’s no longer viewed purely as an IT issue; it’s now a boardroom conversation involving operations, finance, legal, and exec leadership. Enterprises increasingly understand that downtime, disruption, and operational risk can directly impact revenue, customer trust, reputation, and shareholder confidence.

At the same time, buying committees have become larger and more complex, involving multiple stakeholders across security, infrastructure, procurement/finance, and operations. That means vendors must communicate value in business language, not just technical language. And there’s the continuous evolution of AI, which is fundamentally changing the vendor selection process and rapidly becoming the first place buyers turn to for research, validation, and discovery of brands and solutions.

How has field marketing evolved from event-led execution into a more strategic revenue and account-based function?

Field marketing has evolved dramatically over the past decade. Historically, it was often viewed as an execution-focused function centered around events and lead generation. Today, the strongest field marketing teams operate as strategic commercial partners to sales. Modern field marketing is far more data-driven, account-focused, and revenue-oriented. It’s about identifying where growth opportunities exist; aligning closely with sales priorities and key industries; understanding target account dynamics; and orchestrating integrated programs that drive engagement across the entire buyer journey.

Account-based marketing has accelerated this shift even further. Success now depends on alignment across marketing, sales, engineering, SDRs, customer success, and leadership teams, who all work together around shared revenue objectives. Organisations increasingly expect marketing to demonstrate pipeline contribution, account progression, and business impact, not just activity metrics.

“Enterprise marketing is becoming more commercially accountable, with growing pressure to prove measurable impact across pipeline, revenue, retention, and customer growth.”

You’ve managed direct and channel marketing programs globally. How do you balance partner priorities with revenue growth objectives?

The strongest channel partnerships are the ones where objectives are clearly aligned. Partners want to work with vendors that help them grow their business, differentiate in the market, and create long-term customer value. That means successful channel marketing isn’t just about running ad hoc campaigns to fulfill MDF, it’s about building trusted relationships and creating shared outcomes together.

One of the biggest priorities is ensuring partners feel enabled, informed, and supported while still maintaining focus on measurable business results. That requires clear and continuous communication & transparency around goals, and joint planning on target accounts, pipeline opportunities, and market priorities.

The most effective channel strategies are collaborative rather than transactional. When vendors and partners operate as an extension of each other, the impact on customer engagement and revenue growth can be significant!

How has AI impacted the way you plan and execute your marketing programs?

AI is already transforming marketing at an incredible pace. As mentioned before, AI/LLMs have got a big part to play in vendor selection and decision-making, and it’s so important for us in Marketing, to meet our buyers where they are! AI is fundamentally changing buyer expectations and the speed at which organisations operate. Customers now expect more relevant, personalised, and timely engagement than ever before.

From a productivity perspective, AI is helping my teams accelerate content creation, improve personalisation, analyse data faster, and scale programs more efficiently across multiple markets and languages. For marketers, I think the real value of AI isn’t replacing creativity or human insight; it’s enabling teams to move faster, make smarter decisions, and focus more time on strategic thinking and customer engagement.

Looking ahead, what major shifts do you expect in enterprise marketing, channel partnerships, and global go-to-market strategies over the next few years?

I think we’ll continue to see three major shifts:

1. Enterprise marketing will become even more commercially accountable. The expectation to demonstrate measurable and predictable impact on pipeline, revenue, retention, and customer growth will continue to increase.
2. Go-to-market strategies will become far more integrated. The traditional separation between sales, marketing, channel & customer success functions is already disappearing. Organisations operating with shared data, shared accountability, and aligned customer engagement strategies will move faster and perform more effectively.
3. AI will continue to reshape both customer engagement and operational execution exponentially. The companies that succeed will be the ones that combine both AI-driven efficiency with authentic human connection, trust, and strategic thinking.

About Nicki Wells

Nicki Wells is an International Marketing leader with 18+ year’s experience in the security, cloud, and SaaS industry. She leads international teams delivering programs for senior security leaders focused on cyber resilience, anti-fragility, and operational uptime. Known for clear, no-fluff storytelling, she brings a strong sales background from F-Secure and leadership experience at Rapid7 and Absolute Security, spanning ABM, SDR, demand generation, and go-to-market strategy.

The post Global Marketing Without Borders: Nicki Wells on Global GTM and Local Impact appeared first on iTechSeries.

Elizabeth Shen, Marketing Manager for SEA & AEC at Kaspersky, shares her journey from sales to regional marketing leadership across Asia, bringing a strong commercial perspective to her work. In this interview, she explores how to build sales-aligned marketing, prioritise focus across diverse markets, align teams around clear objectives, and use AI thoughtfully to drive long-term impact beyond leads and conversions.

Welcome to the interview series, Elizabeth. Could you tell us more about your journey as a marketer?

My journey into marketing wasn’t a straight line. I actually started out as a sales representative, which shaped a lot of how I think about marketing today. Being on the front line taught me what really matters to customers and sales teams: clarity, relevance, and timing.

Over time, I transitioned into marketing and worked across different regions, including SEA, Greater China, India, and Japan. That shift gave me a broader perspective; I don’t see marketing as just campaigns or content, but as a commercial function that supports revenue growth. Having been on both sides has helped me anticipate needs better, communicate more clearly, and design marketing programs that sales teams actually want to use.

What does a successful marketing strategy look like for you beyond leads and conversions?

Leads and conversions are important, but to me, a successful marketing strategy goes beyond numbers. It’s about clarity of objectives, quality of engagement, and long-term impact.

I look at whether marketing is helping sales open doors, shorten conversations, and build credibility with customers. Success also means strong alignment with sales, consistent messaging across touchpoints, and programs that educate the market, not just generate demand. If marketing can influence pipeline quality, partner readiness, and brand trust, that’s when it’s truly working.

How do you prioritise markets and segments when budgets and resources are limited across regions?

When resources are limited, focus becomes critical. I prioritise based on business objectives, market maturity, and revenue potential, rather than spreading efforts too thin.

I strongly believe in moving away from broad-based approaches and instead focusing on clearly defined segments and named accounts. Understanding where sales are investing their time, which accounts have traction, and where partners are strong helps guide smarter decisions. Being clear and concise, both in strategy and execution, ensures that every dollar spent has a purpose.

What are the key factors that keep marketing aligned with sales and commercial goals as the business scales?

Alignment starts with listening. Regular conversations with sales teams, understanding their challenges, and being transparent about what marketing can (and cannot) do are essential.

Clear objectives, shared KPIs, and early involvement in planning cycles help keep both teams moving in the same direction. My sales background also helps; I always ask myself whether a campaign or activity would actually help a sales conversation. Anticipating needs and staying commercially grounded keeps marketing relevant as the business scales.

“Leads and conversions are important, but successful marketing goes beyond numbers to clarity of objectives, quality engagement, and long-term impact.”

Could you tell us about your most memorable moment or experience as a marketer?

Some of my most memorable moments come from working across emerging markets in Asia, where no two countries are the same. Currently working across Asia Emerging Countries has been especially challenging, but also incredibly rewarding.

What stands out most are the moments spent with partners: long discussions, problem-solving together, and learning how each market operates differently. Those experiences remind me that marketing isn’t just about execution; it’s about relationships, trust, and understanding people on the ground.

What cultural or market-specific nuances have been most critical when localising campaigns across regions?

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that what works in one country may not work in another, even within the same region. Cultural context, decision-making styles, and market maturity all play a role.

In some markets, education and trust-building are key; in others, speed and efficiency matter more. Language, tone, and even channel preferences can differ significantly. Keeping an open mind, listening carefully to local teams and partners, and avoiding assumptions have been critical to successful localisation.

How can marketers leverage the power of AI in their marketing programs without becoming overly reliant on it?

AI is a powerful tool, especially for improving efficiency, insights, and content ideation. However, it should support human thinking, not replace it.

Marketers still need to define clear objectives, apply judgment, and understand their audience deeply. AI can help scale efforts, but strategy, creativity, and cultural sensitivity must remain human-led. Used thoughtfully, AI frees up time so marketers can focus on higher-value work, build stronger connections, and make more informed, strategic decisions.

What would be your advice to marketers starting their careers on building a strong foundation?

Start by understanding the business and the customer, not just the tools. Learn how sales works, ask questions, and don’t be afraid to get close to the commercial side of the organisation.

Always keep an open mind, listen more than you speak, and be clear and concise in how you communicate. Most importantly, have clear objectives. If you know why you’re doing something, the how becomes much easier to figure out, especially as complexity grows and priorities shift over time.

About Elizabeth Shen

Elizabeth Shen is a marketing expert passionate about building strategies that drive growth and resilience in the digital world. Beginning her career in sales, she brings a strong commercial mindset to marketing, shaped by frontline experience. Having worked across SEA, Greater China, India, and Japan, she focuses on turning complex ideas into clear, impactful programs that align closely with sales, support revenue growth, and deliver meaningful business outcomes through collaboration and purpose.

The post Marketing Beyond Leads: Elizabeth Shen on Revenue, Relationships, and Regional Growth appeared first on iTechSeries.

Tune in to our exclusive iTech Series Fireside Chat with Cristy Garcia, CMO at impact.com, as she traces her two-decade marketing journey, from early career ambition to leading globally scaled, high-impact teams. Cristy unpacks how modern marketing has moved beyond MQLs to become a core driver of pipeline, bookings, and long-term brand equity. She shares practical perspectives on aligning brand and demand, shifting toward value-led storytelling, and building trust-first ecosystems that deliver compounding growth across the revenue engine.

Key Highlights:

• Transitioning from MQL-focused marketing to driving revenue, pipeline, and long-term brand growth.
• Applying the “give, give, ask” content strategy to build trust and strengthen third-party validation.
• Designing a culture where experimentation thrives and innovation emerges from every team member.
• Navigating today’s fragmented customer journey through authentic, consistent engagement.
• Integrating AI to elevate strategy, creativity, and critical judgment of marketers.
• Understanding the business deeply and communicating marketing’s impact with clarity and alignment.

Catch the conversation for hands-on insights, leadership perspective, and a look at marketing’s future.

The post The Marketing Strategist: Cristy Garcia on Brand Lift, Revenue Impact & the Future of AI in Marketing appeared first on iTechSeries.