Ron Kagan
B2B demand generation, growth and AEO / AI search.
Based in Ohio. Available for a full-time leadership role with a US or global company.
Ron is certified by technology leaders
genuinely innovative and shows deep strategic thinking about how to create meaningful connections at scale ... This is exactly the kind of advanced thinking that separates professional-grade Clay implementations from basic approaches.
Clay Certification TeamI have had the privilege to lead growth. At its best, growth as a practice strengthens its practitioners, solidifies a team’s purpose and creates passion around the difference we can make in each other’s and our customers’ lives.
I’ve led a 32-person global organization, including directors and managers, and reported to the CEO. Across my roles, I’ve owned budgets up to $5M. My remit has spanned demand generation, product marketing, brand, content, lifecycle and marketing operations.
That work continues after the sale. At Feedzai, I doubled field-marketing ROI through programs that helped existing customers expand into new buying centers.
I prize the endorsements that I have earned not just from those who have supervised me but from the people whom I have coached and mentored. I am proud to have earned the trust of smart, opinionated, talented people. We can all hold each other accountable to a plan. That’s how we keep going. That is how I love to work and it’s the recipe for momentum.
I brought global SEO and SEM in-house and rebuilt how the team worked, with a steady cadence of testing, learning and scaling across North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
The paid-acquisition program used 51% of the prior year’s ad spend. I improved targeting, tested the conversion journey and rebuilt acquisition measurement around customer value.
I ran coordinated account campaigns that turned nine Fortune 200 companies into qualified opportunities while keeping customer acquisition cost flat.
Different markets and buying journeys. The same responsibility: make demand generation earn its place in the growth plan.
Answer engine optimization (AEO) helps buyers discover a company through answers from tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, as well as Google’s AI results. I connect that work to the questions buyers ask and the decisions that follow.
At OnPay, I set the AEO vision and execution plan, aligned stakeholders, coached the content and technical teams, and supervised delivery.
Semrush’s US desktop data put OnPay at organic #1 for “farm payroll software” in February 2026. We retained our #1 “nonprofit payroll services” spot amidst fierce competition from much larger competitors. The Semrush April snapshot also includes OnPay as an AI Overview source. I loved working with Jon Davis on content and Nicholas Will on dev.
Read the AEO case and public search evidence. Separately, I publish open-source tools for measuring AI citations, so the method can be inspected.
The Best People Ever Say The Best Things About Me
In the last year since we worked together, I can't count how many times I've said "I wish I had Ron!!!" He is a MASTER at developing strategies to amplify and optimize lead and demand gen programs. He is SO creative in finding ways to take things to the next level and get the most out of every channel and tactic possible. He is kind, caring, witty, and incredibly smart. One of the things I miss most about working with Ron is spit-balling ideas and hearing his ideas on ways to revolutionize how we were doing things. He is an absolute rockstar and I would fight anyone for him if I had the budget!
Ron is one of the most kind, thoughtful and hard-working people you will ever meet. I was fortunate to have Ron as a member of my marketing team at Pared. He was in charge of lead generation and was relentless. He helped to source and drive leads to our sales team. Ron is exceptionally resourceful and very knowledgeable about marketing tools and tactics. He taught himself programming to automate processes and scale up our lead gen efforts. He was constantly thinking of ways to improve and refine his contact acquisition strategies. Ron was a consummate team player and we were lucky to have him.
Working with Ron was a real pleasure. He is a hard worker that brings a great attitude to the office every day. He helped build our demand generation function from the ground up to exponentially drive leads for the sales team while reducing our reliance on paid inbounds and lead sources. For Ron it isn't about Sales or Marketing it is about how can we achieve our goals as one team. He is truly dedicated to his craft and understands that good marketers need to reinvent themselves every couple of years to stay on top of the latest methods. He would be a great asset to any team.
Selected work
Prospecting
I used current buyer signals to find qualified prospects and wrote code to collect the contact data, rather than relying on a broker’s stale list. The thinking behind it lives in my demand generation resources.
Method: collect the data when the campaign needs it, from sources the buyers themselves keep current.
Pipeline generation
I built the list, segmentation, messaging and outreach for a targeted prospecting campaign, then tracked the replies and meetings back to the campaign.
One cohort: 14% conversion across 350+ prospects, producing 53 scheduled meetings.
GTM engineering
When manual research became the bottleneck, I wrote the API workflows that assembled prospect records and handed sales a ready-to-use list.
Competitor research
This walkthrough shows the Argyle build: scrape competitor pages, identify the companies behind the logos, match them in Salesforce and give reps a call list.
I’m available for a full-time VP of Marketing, VP of Demand Generation, VP of Growth or Head of Demand Generation role.