Alex Blanes — Senior B2B Marketer

Expertise

Core Capabilities

Strategy & Leadership

Go-to-market planning
Market segmentation & TAM development
Team building & talent development
Stakeholder & executive engagement
Data & martech innovation

Revenue & Pipeline

Demand generation & ABM
Pipeline attribution & forecasting
Sales alignment & enablement
Positioning & ICP definition
Launch strategy

Multi-Region Execution

Event strategy & field marketing
Partner & channel enablement
Regional programme design
Multi-brand, multi-language delivery
Distributor & vendor orchestration

Operations & Intelligence

Marketing “operating systems”
Closed-loop reporting & analytics
Budget & ROI governance
Automation & workflow design (including agent swarms)
Performance measurement frameworks

Career

Experience

May 2022 – Apr 2025 Remote, UK

Head of Marketing Communications

Gilbarco Veeder-Root

OEM market leader across 48 countries + 12 languages. I owned the full European marketing function — strategy, demand generation, field/events, channel marketing, and brand — with a $1M+ budget, a core team of four, two agencies, and 30+ vendors.

Demand Generation & Field Marketing

Led 30+ owned and paid field activations across European markets — trade events (up to USD $600k), distributor roadshows, product launches, showroom openings, aftermarket webinars, customer days and partner summits — fused with pre-event ABM targeting, on-site lead capture, and post-event nurture sequences
Generated $26M sales pipeline in 2024 through integrated field and digital demand programmes, with attribution tied to field-sourced and field-accelerated pipeline
Embedded closed-loop reporting across SFDC/Hubspot to reallocate spend toward high-yield motions. Built pipeline review cadences with Sales leadership and established tighter lead handoff SLAs with BD teams

Channel & Partner Marketing

Launched an aftermarket parts eCommerce platform as Product Owner. Delivered €2M revenue in 6 months, scaled to €10M+, lifted downstream distributor sales +29%, and removed €200K in annual operating cost. Blueprint extended to the 2025 GTM for Oceania.
Designed "partner-of-partner" enablement strategies with the European Director of Business Development, tiering resources across 130+ distributor and channel partners by sales performance and strategic priority (e.g. aviation vertical, 2024). Owned partner programme compliance, MDF/CIB planning, co-marketing execution, and lead follow-through — aligning enablement sessions, business plans, and regional GTM with corporate strategy.
Designed and scaled "event-in-a-box" playbooks to empower field teams across European markets, including the "Partner Pulse" series of webinars — an enablement-led channel format that lifted attributed booked revenue +39% YoY, cut per-event costs by 30–50%, delivered a cohesive brand experience and became the blueprint for regional field activations across Western Europe, DACH and Nordics.

Marketing Operations & Strategic Planning

Built the European marketing operating system — integrated process ecosystem in Airtable linking Marketing, Finance, Product, and Commercial teams for unified execution and credible ROI governance
Owned TAM development and refinement (2022, 2023) and facilitated annual executive reviews to inform Product/R&D roadmaps, new market entry and M&A considerations

Nov 2025 – Feb 2026 Remote, UK

Head of Strategy (Contract)

Ziggy Agency

B2B demand generation agency serving enterprise and Fortune 500 clients. Contracted to build a strategic development function shifting the agency from campaign execution to full-funnel revenue accountability.

Led demand generation strategies for Fortune 500 clients including Canon Europe, Schneider Electric, and Publicis Groupe (Epsilon), with budgets ranging from £57K to $1M+.
Designed a Category Entry Point (CEP) demand generation strategy for a branded merchandise firm targeting £5M incremental revenue from Health & Beauty, achieving 3.5x pipeline coverage (£17.5M qualified pipeline) from £57K annual media spend. I grounded the creative and content strategy in buyer psychology rather than product capabilities, mapping content to the specific moments brand managers feel competitive anxiety, supplier frustration, and launch pressure — with a separate enablement track arming them to sell internally to procurement.
Built a 1-few ABM programme using Clay to enrich and hyper-target 27 priority accounts across US and UK markets, reaching 75%+ account penetration rate against a typical ABM benchmark of 30–40%. Used Clay's LinkedIn enrichment to determine whether contacts had selected brand-level or parent/umbrella-level employers, enabling precise targeting at the portfolio level (e.g. Charlotte Tilbury) or corporate level (e.g. Puig) depending on company size — maximising contextual relevance across a dual-persona journey on LinkedIn and Meta.
Designed a $1.1M global paid media strategy for a major travel technology provider to reposition the brand from legacy GDS to modern travel technology platform — spanning two audience segments (200+ airlines, 22K+ travel agencies), 15+ markets across AMER/EMEA/APAC/LATAM, and six languages. Designed a dual-layer 'evergreen + moments' media architecture combining LinkedIn ABM, StackAdapt CTV, and direct buys across trade and business media, achieving 82% 90-day audience penetration on key airline accounts and 134% on key agency accounts.

Apr 2021 – Mar 2022 Remote, UK

Head of Marketing

Gyre (formerly CharacterScope)

L&D SaaS rebranding and repositioning; mandate to build pipeline from zero.

Co-led end-to-end rebrand as a pipeline strategy, turning positioning, ICP definition, and value proposition into the spine for GTM, sales enablement, and channel mix decisions.
Generated 100+ qualified leads in 45 days at £32 CPL through LinkedIn and Google Ads with creative/keyword testing and landing-page optimisation
Built ABM with Sales from day one: account selection via Crunchbase, personalised outreach, and integrated web/SEO/automation against shared revenue goals

Jan 2020 – Mar 2021 London, UK

Marketing Manager

Global Fund Media Ltd

Pandemic pivot to virtual summits required a scalable field events engine for a fast-growing publishing and events firm.

Built a scalable virtual field events engine that became a new revenue stream worth £500K+
Drove webinar registrations +794% (177 → 1,583) in a single quarter. Reset email performance baseline: open rates +125%, click rates +900%

Aug 2019 – Jan 2020 Remote, UK

Marketing Communications Manager

Interprefy

Rapidly scaling SaaS in real-time translation, transitioning to a unified inbound model.

Increased monthly SQLs by 390% (25 → 120+) and generated 360+ opportunities worth €581K in a single quarter
Migrated to HubSpot Enterprise. Re-engineered lead scoring and qualification with business process modelling, defining clean handoffs between Marketing and Sales

Additional Roles

Marketing Consultant & Product Owner • Aalbun, London 🇬🇧 Jan 2020 – Mar 2021

Built full GTM framework from scratch (personas, SWOT, channel strategy, USPs) and implemented HubSpot CRM/CMS as integrated growth infrastructure. Later re-engaged to lead beta delivery of a legal tech product.

Social Media Manager • QS (Quacquarelli Symonds), London 🇬🇧 Mar 2019 – Aug 2019

Unified editorial and social content operations across global higher-education platforms (TopUniversities.com, TopMBA.com).

Social Media Manager • Ofgem, London 🇬🇧 Jan 2018 – Mar 2019

Designed the UK energy regulator's first social media strategy; +818% engagement and +284% audience growth in six months. Deployed social listening for regulatory compliance intelligence.

Area Coordinator • The Royal Society of Arts (RSA), London 🇬🇧 Jun 2017 – Dec 2017

Ran email campaigns and CRM segmentation in Pardot/Salesforce, managed event production at RSA House, and presented RFPs for internal comms and analytics-led content strategy.

Marketing & Communications Officer • The UCL Academy, London 🇬🇧 Sep 2016 – Jun 2017

Built an integrated brand, comms, and content pipeline from scratch — including a full visual identity redesign — and led recruitment marketing strategy for Sixth Form admissions.

Marketing & Content Specialist • THNK School of Creative Leadership, Vancouver 🇨🇦 Sep 2014 – Jun 2015

Managed strategic content production and distribution across global channels, and sourced press, affiliate, and partner relationships for a creative leadership school.

Digital Project Manager • Centre for Digital Media, Vancouver 🇨🇦 Sep 2013 – Jun 2015

Led a cross-functional team of five delivering promotional film content for the 2014 Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing — reviewed and approved by a VP of the International Olympic Committee.

Background

Education

2016

MSc — Holistic Science

Schumacher College

High Merit

2014

MDM — Digital Media

Centre for Digital Media

Distinction

2012

BA — Digital Media Studies & Liberal Studies

Vancouver Island University

Distinction

Tools

Platforms & Tools

HubSpotSalesforceGoogle AdsLinkedIn AdsMeta AdsAirtableLooker StudioZapiern8nClayApollo.ioClaude ChatClaude CoworkChatGPTAdobe Creative CloudWordpressElementorBigCommerce

Personal

More than meets the eye 👀

🏝️

I grew up on a small island off the west coast of Canada — but have lived and worked in 🇬🇧 for the past 10 years

🍫

I have a signed autograph, written mainly in chocolate (ganache), from Sir Ian McKellen

📖

I've half-written (okay, more like a quarter) a fantasy trilogy called the Myth of Laerad — read the first chapter!

📝

My favourite poet is Wendell Berry (How to Be A Poet and To The Unseeable Animal are both faves)

🛁

My favourite forms of therapy are hot baths, farmers markets, cooking, gaming with friends, and my two Siberian cats

🗣️

If I had a superpower, it would be the ability to speak any language (and I mean ANY)

✨

Inspirations in my life include Simon Wardley (the man and the work), Martin Buber, Redwall, and Snufkin

🎩

My first career aspirations (when I was 11) were butler and opera singer

🤓

I'm secretly more of an educator (and perpetual student) than a marketer

Values

How I Work

1

Kindness as infrastructure

The best teams? Built on trust, not pressure. Psychological safety is the operating condition that makes honest work, creative risk, and real accountability possible.

2

Transparency by default

The best decisions? Built on open communication, visible reasoning, and honest feedback — even when it’s uncomfortable. This is what creates the conditions for teams to move faster and with more confidence.

3

Mission over mechanics

Execution is almosteverything — but what are you executing for?. For me, rewarding work happens inside organisations genuinely trying to make the world more equitable, healthier, and informed — not just more profitable.

4

Complexity over control

Organisations are living systems, not machines. The best teams don’t succeed through top-down blueprints, but through small, safe-to-fail experiments, shared sense-making, and the kind of psychological safety that lets emergent solutions surface from anywhere in the system.

5

Stewardship, not extraction

Sustainable organisations — like sustainable ecosystems — are cyclical, not linear. The ones worth building are a net positive; they treat their impact on people, communities, and the planet as a core design constraint, closing loops rather than burning through resources.

For recruiters & hiring managers

What I'm looking for

I'm exploring my next senior marketing role — ideally one where I can bring together strategy, commercial impact, and team development across markets. Here's what that looks like in practice:

Role

Marketing Director, Head of Marketing, Senior Marketing Manager

Generalist — open to other titles

Location

Remote preferred

Open to hybrid in Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Ideal arrangement

0.8 FTE (four days a week)

Full-time also welcome

Employment

Permanent preferred

Contract & interim/temp considered

Happy to discuss salary expectations directly — drop me a line below.

AlexBlanes