Top 10 Growth Marketers in Seattle

In our quest to identify the top B2B marketing talent across the country, we’ve already featured two cities — Boston and Austin — that easily qualify as two of the hottest up-and-coming tech scenes in the country. The city we’ll feature in this post, however, has been a bona fide technology hub for more than a decade.
Home to a veritable who’s who of successful technology companies — including Microsoft, Amazon, Moz, Zillow, DocuSign, and Tableau Software (just to name a few) — Seattle also boasts a vibrant B2B startup community. Two of OpenView’s portfolio companies (Socrata and Skytap) were founded in the Emerald City, and The Startup Genome project’s most recent startup ecosystem report ranked Seattle as the fourth hottest hub in the world — behind only Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv, and Los Angeles.
Naturally, having that many successful, high-growth tech companies in one city also means Seattle boasts some of the best marketing talent in the world, as well.
Listed below are 10 marketing professionals that we think perfectly represent that talent pool and the new face of B2B marketing — a demanding hybrid of old-school know-how, new-school data science, and critical technical and analytical expertise. While these demand gen marketers’ backgrounds and titles vary, they are all supreme pipeline optimizers, outstanding lead generators, and major contributors to their respective company’s revenue growth.

The Top B2B Marketers in Seattle

Scroll through the list below to learn more about the top demand generation marketing pros in Seattle, find out what makes them tick, and discover their tried-and-true growth tips, hacks, or tactics.

Uri Bar-Joseph, Simply Measured

What He Does

Uri Bar-Joseph is Director of Marketing at Simply Measured, a social media measurement and reporting solution. Uri and his team are responsible for building and optimizing the demand generation “machine” that fuels the company’s growth. Previously, Uri managed Optify’s demand generation as Director of Marketing. By testing, experimenting and running into almost every digital marketing tactic, channel and campaign under the sun, Uri has developed demand generation best practices as the worlds of social, marketing and sales collide. He has a monthly column on SearchEngineWatch  and writes for his company’s blog as well as his own blog, The Marketing Athlete.

Uri’s Favorite Demand Gen Tactic

Start as close to the revenue as possible and focus on conversion rates, not volume.
When building a demand gen program, the further down the funnel you go, the better off you are. By focusing on conversion rates and not volume, you make sure you build an effective pipeline before you start fueling it with leads. By starting as close to the revenue as possible, every base point change you are able to get will have a huge impact on how much you’re required to deliver at the top.
Since every business is different, I always start with flow-charting how prospects move through the funnel and then I model the stages in excel. Every stage in the process includes a conversion rate that needs to be captured and measured. Once you identified all the conversion rates, you should prioritize them by their proximity to revenue and start with the conversion rates that are closest to revenue.
Connect with Uri on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Joanna Lord, Porch

What She Does

Joanna Lord is VP of Consumer Marketing at Porch, a free home improvement network that connects homeowners and renters with the right home service professionals. Joanna and her team specialize in increasing the business, exposure, and revenue of home professionals with the utilization of free business profiles, paid marketing, and analytics tools. Prior to her new role, Joanna served as the Chief Marketing Officer for BigDoor Inc., a white label software platform that helps brands easily engage their customers and build loyalty. She was responsible for leading the design, strategy, marketing and account management team, and also successfully repositioned the company into a new market all in a single year.

Joanna’s Favorite Demand Gen Tactic

While most companies have a survey on their cancellation page, don’t forget that you can also email past customers and request more feedback. You can ask them why they cancelled or what suggestions they might have for your company. Members that cancelled have a wealth of knowledge that can help steer your product and engineering efforts.
In addition to getting valuable feedback, you’ll be reminding them that you do genuinely care about them. Keep your surveys short and to the point, and thank them for their time. You will add another touch point to their lifecycle and leave a good last impression. You’d be surprised how valuable that is when they reconsider your service or product down the road.
Connect with Joanna on Twitter and LinkedIn

Andy Nelson, Moz

What He Does

Andy is Director of Growth Marketing at Moz. His team is responsible for customer acquisition through email, paid marketing (PPC, display, retargeting, FB, Twitter, etc.), conversion rate optimization, brand marketing, business development and PR. Prior to Moz, Andy led conversion rate optimization and analytics for REI, Alaska Airlines and Classmates.

Andy’s Favorite Demand Gen Tactic

It’s easy to get caught up in analytics and algorithms, but we should also remember that we’re marketing to real people and take every opportunity to gather their feedback. How? Run surveys on your site that help you identify customer experience issues and inform your CRO strategy. Get feedback on major design/UX changes on sites like UserTesting.com to help maximize your testing efforts. Use a customer experience tool like ClickTale to see how people actually interact with your site.
Connect with Andy on Twitter and LinkedIn

Dave Rigotti, Bizible

What He Does

Dave Rigotti is the head of pipeline marketing at Bizible, a SaaS marketing analytics product for Salesforce that helps demand gen marketers prove the ROI of their marketing. He is also the editor of PipelineMarketer.com. Previously, Dave spent nearly 5 years at Microsoft on the Bing marketing team.

Dave’s Favorite Demand Gen Tactic

My biggest tip is to connect marketing and sales data so you can make decisions based off revenue. Far too many companies rely on cost per lead. At Bizible we don’t set any lead goals (both volume and cost).
Doing this enabled us to see that one “hack” has worked incredibly well: proactive live chat. A lot of companies use live chat as a support channel, but it can be an incredibly effective demand channel as well. The conversion rate from lead to opportunity is 50% higher than average and it’s one of our best revenue-driving channels. Companies spend so much money getting people to their site that it’s important to convert them into a conversation, not just a lead.
Connect with Dave on Twitter and LinkedIn

Wade Tibke, Tableau

What He Does

A long-time resident of Seattle, Wade is a B2B technology marketer with over 15 years experience. He is currently the Senior Director of Marketing Operations at Tableau, a leader in the analytics industry focused on helping people see and understand data. Wade was around the 30th employee at Tableau and has watched the business develop into one of the world’s fastest growing software companies, now with over 1500 employees. Wade is responsible for marketing operations, lead management, and demand generation programs. He has a deep knowledge of marketing systems and analytics. And believes in the power of technology to drive highly personalized, thoughtful, and educational experiences that optimize conversion. Wade also believes that dogs and beer might be the secret ingredients to all things going well.

Wade’s Favorite Demand Gen Tactic

Data first. Make data your friend so you’re able to answer questions about campaign performance, marketing attribution, conversion, and lead flow –  sliced by region, territory, lead source, stage, etc. Once you have mastery of your data, you can dispel myths and make data driven decisions.
Think beyond email. It’s a fading tactic. Always put it last (cause you know you’ll do it anyway). Leverage sales, events, social, community, user groups, champions, programs, channel, thought leaders/speakers, press, etc.
A bite sized nugget: Give people social options when they email opt out. Maybe they just don’t like your email. But they might follow you on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Connect with Wade on Twitter and LinkedIn

Ashley Tate, BigDoor

What She Does

Ashley Tate is the Director of Marketing at BigDoor, a SaaS platform that helps enterprise brands like Starbucks, CBS, Hulu, PacSun, and more drive engagement and build loyalty. Prior to BigDoor, she managed the content team at Moz where she helped digital marketers do better marketing through visual and interactive content creation and distribution.

Ashley’s Favorite Demand Gen Tactic

When you’re building your business, don’t forget that marketing’s main objective is to fill the sales funnel. If you can’t see a clear line from each marketing objective to driving leads through the funnel in some capacity, it’s time to go back to the drawing board to reshuffle your marketing priorities.
Use your content analytics as the driving force behind your editorial calendar. Too often, marketers implement tactics that are popular rather than using data that’s already in front of them to strategically create a unique, user-centric plan. Content analytics already tell you what your audience wants to see more of by looking at how users have engaged with pieces in the past, and give you the opportunity to quantify how content will perform rather than publishing a piece and hoping for the best.
Connect with Ashley on Twitter and LinkedIn

Kerry Ok, Skytap

What She Does

Kerry Ok is currently the Director of Marketing at Skytap, a cloud software company that helps its customers build better software faster. Prior to Skytap, she was the Global Event Manager for F5 Networks. Kerry has a passion for generating quality leads and partnering with sales to achieve joint success.

Kerry’s Favorite Demand Gen Tactic

One of my favorite marketing tactics is to provide sales with a single 360 degree view of our history with a lead (for which we use Act-On and InsideSales.com), including the search terms they used, what content they downloaded, events attended, email links they clicked on, and call recordings so they can hear prior conversations.  This arms the sales team with more context before they engage with their first sales call. At Skytap, this practice creates a high level of trust and efficiency between our two teams.
Connect with Kerry on Twitter or LinkedIn

Michael Korch, Socrata

What He Does

Michael, Director of Demand Generation at Socrata, is a Seattle native with 15 years experience designing SaaS applications, creating compelling content, executing global channel-friendly campaigns, delivering MQLs and accelerating opps and pipeline for Sales. He has worked at several of Seattle’s leading software developers including Tableau Software, Isilon Systems, Visio, and Aldus Corp.
Michael currently leads Socrata’s demand generation and website teams, building scalable programs and process including integrated funnel metrics and SLAs, inbound and outbound lead gen programs, and sales prospecting programs.

Michael’s Favorite Demand Gen Tactic

I’ve had good results at several companies introducing a weekly 30-minute live webinar to secure more meetings for Inside Sales. The target audience is near-MQLs, prospects that are on target and engaged with Socrata content, but not yet ready or willing to take a discovery call. This audience is often the same group of folks you see at a trade show, standing 10 feet away from the product demo table, obviously interested, but not willing to commit to a conversation or share a pain, project, or problem they’re looking to solve. The webinar content introduces your company and solutions, and showcases three customer stories.
We use slides for the first 20 minutes, and leave the last 10 minutes for Q&A. Marketing agrees to deliver the first two sessions, with the express goal of transitioning all presentations to the inside sales team. The presenter duty is rotated weekly or monthly between team members. It boosts their confidence, and improves their ability to weave in customer stories comfortably during their prospect calls, making them more effective producers.
Connect with Michael on Twitter and LinkedIn

Rob Ousbey, Distilled

What He Does

Rob currently serves as COO of Distilled. He moved to Seattle in 2010 to launch Distilled’s first US office. He built a team of online marketing experts who deliver strategic and tactical work for everyone from small startups to the world’s largest brands. Outside of Distilled, Rob loves exploring the PNW with his wife & son.

Rob’s Favorite Demand Gen Tactic

A basic, but underutilized tactic: if you’re promoting some non-commercial / top-of-funnel content, add a Facebook conversion pixel, such that just viewing the content is a conversion. You’re now building up a list of people who’ve viewed the piece, and you can promote future similar content to them through Facebook re-targeting.
Connect with Rob on Twitter and LinkedIn

Matt Heinz, Heinz Marketing

What He Does

Matt Heinz, President Matt Heinz brings more than 15 years of marketing, business development and sales experience from a variety of organizations, vertical industries and company sizes. His career has focused on delivering measurable results for his employers and clients in the way of greater sales, revenue growth, product success and customer loyalty. Matt has held various positions at companies such as Microsoft, Weber Shandwick, Boeing, The Seattle Mariners, Market Leader and Verdiem. In 2007, Matt began Heinz Marketing to help clients focus their business on market and customer opportunities, then execute a plan to scale revenue and customer growth. Matt lives in Kirkland, Washington with his wife, Beth, three children and a menagerie of animals (a dog, cat, and six chickens). You can read more from Matt on his blog, Matt on Marketing, follow him on Twitter, or check out his books on Amazon.com.

Matt’s Favorite Demand Gen Tactic

Repurposing content.
If you’re an active blogger with a strong editorial calendar, you’re essentially writing blog posts, white papers, and eBooks all at the same time. For example, write 12-15 blog posts on a particular topic and keep them on your site for free. They drive traffic and visitor engagement. Put them together into a PDF and you have a registration-required best practice guide. Put a year’s worth of content like this together and you’ve got a pretty meaty eBook. Or a paperback book by using LuLu.com to self-publish.
Connect with Matt on Twitter and LinkedIn
Photo by: Andrew E. Larsen