Why Perswayed is Here
What I was hearing made no sense.
Bad advice from all directions. And for a while, I honestly thought I was going to have to join them, and give advice I knew wouldn’t work, just to keep climbing.
I had just left the Chicago Bears, where I lived in digital strategy and content production, to join a traditional agency that was growing a digital practice, Taylor Global. My first three clients were Allstate, Capital One, and Tide, each surrounded by a full suite of creative, paid media, and PR agencies racing to “guide” them through the rise of digital and social.
And almost all of that guidance had the same fatal flaw:
They didn’t understand the difference between content (built to earn attention) and advertising (built to push a message).
They could see the media landscape changing—but their creative process was still frozen in the golden age of television:
“What’s our brand message?”
“What’s our value proposition?”
“What’s on our business calendar?”
On the agency side, everything quietly revolved around one question: “What will the brand approve?”
No meaningful thought was given to the only question that actually determines whether something wins in the modern media landscape:
Why will anyone care?
The “insights” were usually laughable. Stats about mobile adoption, generic demographic breakdowns, and anything except the real drivers of human decision-making: emotion, identity, context, and motivation.
Since then, the world has only become more personalized and more ruthless.
Platforms rank and distribute based on relevance.
Email providers filter what people don’t engage with.
Streaming platforms win because their recommendation engines keep putting more of what you care about in front of you.
TikTok’s “For You” rewired the expectations for every feed on earth.
Today, there are very few ways to reach people at scale if you’re not built to be relevant, if you don’t understand what captures attention, what motivates action, and what drives decisions.
That’s why I started Perswayed.
Because the landscape changed… but too many organizations still start marketing with, “What’s our message?” instead of, “What moves our audience?”
Perswayed exists to help you capture attention, generate interest, convert demand, and earn loyalty—by building marketing around human decision-making.
My belief (and the problem Perswayed solves)
There’s endless debate right now about what “type” of marketing wins: brand vs. performance, demand vs. revenue, sales-led vs. partner-led.
But one thing wins in every environment, on every channel:
Insight into human decision-making.
I believe marketing is influence. And influence starts when you understand:
what people care about
what motivates them
why they choose what they choose
When you lead with that understanding, you don’t have to choose between shaping perception and driving results.
You can do both.
Why listen to me?
I’ve spent my career building the kind of systems most companies say they want—but struggle to execute:
Turning content into an engine for measurable growth (not a “nice-to-have”)
Building full-funnel demand generation that aligns marketing and sales around one mission and one set of metrics
Relentlessly optimizing paid + creative + UX + sales follow-up as one connected machine
Using data to create “hand-raisers” (high-intent audiences) that make paid spend and outbound effort dramatically more efficient
A few outcomes I’m proud of:
Helped drive 533% growth in annual ticket revenue for the Atlanta Dream by merging marketing + sales into a demand engine
Achieved 15:1 and 17:1 ROAS through constant iteration and cross-functional optimization
Built systems that connect content performance → retargeting → conversion → revenue (instead of siloed reporting and finger-pointing)
How Perswayed helps
1) Growth Strategy
I build a leadership blueprint that finally syncs your revenue functions around one shared mission, one funnel, and one set of metrics—so marketing and sales are creating and capturing demand together.
This is where alignment happens:
shared definitions of success
shared funnel visibility
shared priorities and KPIs (not siloed “wins”)
2) Demand Generation (Perswayed’s signature system)
Most teams try to “optimize campaigns.”
I help you build the machine.
We work across content, creative, paid media, UI/UX, lifecycle messaging, and sales follow-up to create a demand engine that:
earns attention with content people actually want
identifies and grows audiences of hand-raisers
retargets those audiences with intent-based offers
moves leads through a clear journey from interest to conversion
closes the loop so the system improves every week
If your content is doing its job, you should have huge retargeting audiences—and a sales team that loves marketing because the leads are better.
3) Digital Content Strategy
Brand content usually doesn’t fail because the team lacks talent.
It fails because most organizations never align around the one thing that defines social success:
Entertainment.
If you want reach, you have to earn reaction. If you want action, you have to earn attention first.
I help you:
find the entertainment lane your brand can credibly win
build an insight-led creative process (research → insights → ideas → production)
stop confusing “promoting” with “publishing”
connect content performance to business outcomes through a measurable system
What makes Perswayed different
I don’t start with messaging. I start with motivations.
Demographics don’t move people. Emotion does.
I don’t treat channels equally. I treat them honestly.
Organic is for attention and perception. Paid is for intent and conversion. Email is for nurturing and momentum. The magic is in how they connect.
I don’t optimize parts of the funnel. I build the whole funnel.
Most growth breaks because teams measure different things and own different pieces. I help you build one connected system—so you can see what’s working, what’s blocking revenue, and what to do next.
If you’re a senior leader, here’s what you can expect
When Perswayed is working, you’ll feel three things shift quickly:
Clarity — you finally see your funnel end-to-end
Alignment — marketing and sales stop operating like rival departments
Confidence — you stop guessing, because your system is built to learn
Let’s build something people actually choose
If you’re tired of “content calendars” that don’t move the business, campaign thinking that resets every quarter, and reporting that doesn’t connect to revenue…
Perswayed is for you.
I’m Dan Gadd. I built Perswayed to help modern teams earn attention, create demand, and turn relevance into revenue.
If you want to build a growth engine that’s insight-led, measurable, and built for the reality of today’s media landscape—let’s talk.
Contact us
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