Generation Z Trailblazers

Julian Lina, Head of Demand Generation and Sales Development at Fond, innovated on traditional demand generation tactics by completely shifting Fond’s investment strategy towards a very focused account-based approach that now leverages several creative marketing channels. He successfully led the organization through a very common but difficult challenge within B2B software: moving up-market.

In 2017, Fond made a critical decision to shift its customer acquisition focus from SMB and mid-market to enterprise-sized organizations. Historically, Fond had invested the majority of its marketing spend on digital advertising to generate a healthy flow of inbound leads. At the time, this type of demand generation strategy was effective in driving leads that covered a variety of verticals, sizes and geographies. However, it was not a reliable approach for specifically generating enterprise-sized accounts.

In 2018, Lina pioneered what is now known as Fond’s account-based marketing function, including:

1. Building a targeted list of accounts and leads based on a set of desired variables (ex. industry, geography, size, intent data, job title).
2. Developing multichannel campaigns against those target lists. These campaigns are comprised of digital advertising, web personalization, direct mail, events, social media, email and phone calls.
3. Executing those campaigns in alignment with SDRs, AEs, sales ops, functional leadership and external partners.
4. Reporting on KPIs on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis and quickly leveraging insights to iterate on subsequent campaigns.

Lina grew year-over-year pipeline generation by 47% (YTD) at one-third of historical marketing spend by allocating investments more equitably across all demand generation channels, including digital advertising, SEO, content, direct mail and events.