I help small & early-stage companies find their customers - and figure out the best way to reach them.

If you need help building or fixing your marketing foundation, let’s chat.

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ABOUT YOU

When you're a small or early-stage team, marketing can feel nebulous, expensive, somehow urgent, and also impossible. You're either waiting for the perfect moment to start or trying everything all at once.

HOW I CAN HELP

  • Before you can build a brand or create content, you need to know what you're saying and who you're saying it to. I'll help you nail down your positioning and turn it into messaging that actually works:

    • Competitive analysis and audience research

    • Positioning framework (what makes you different and why it matters)

    • Messaging hierarchy and core value props

    • Homepage and landing page copy

    • Sales deck messaging and talk tracks

  • Most early-stage founders waste time on channels that will never work for them. You're posting on LinkedIn when your users live on Reddit. You're building an SEO strategy when you need to be in Facebook groups.

    One of my favorite ways to work together is a focused engagement to help you stop guessing and start focusing in the right places:

    • Audit of your current efforts and what's actually working

    • List of potential growth channels - scored and prioritized

    • Clear recommendations on where to focus - and what to drop

    • Project plans to pilot the top recommended channels

    • Working session to walk through it together

  • Every company has a story - the trick is finding the one that actually connects with your audience. I'll work with you to figure out what makes your business different (not just better) and build a brand strategy that works across everything you do:

    • Brand discovery and differentiation workshops

    • Voice and tone guidelines

    • Visual identity direction and creative briefs

    • Channel-specific brand applications (site, email, social, product)

    • Brand playbook you can hand to writers, designers, and agencies

  • Should you be on Substack? TikTok? Does your CEO need to start posting on LinkedIn? I'll help you figure out which content efforts are worth your time and budget:

    • Content audit and channel recommendations

    • Editorial calendar and content roadmap

    • Content briefs and templates

    • Distribution and promotion strategy

    • Performance tracking and optimization

  • More people find their next product or service through search than any other channel. If you're not showing up when someone searches for what you do, you're losing customers to competitors who figured it out:

    • SEO audits and keyword research

    • On-page optimization and content recommendations

    • Link building and off-page strategy

    • Technical SEO fixes (site speed, crawlability, indexing)

    • GEO optimization (making sure AI search tools can find you)

  • I'm probably up for it.

    Whether you want to launch a podcast, build an interactive guide, or try something you haven't quite figured out yet - I can help you strategy it, produce it, and ship it.

Who I am

I’ve spent most of my career building marketing from scratch.

As the first marketing hire at four small/early-stage companies, that has meant figuring out (often with limited budget, limited data, and no existing playbook) who the audience actually is, what message makes them pay attention, which channels are worth investing in, and how to build a marketing function that can keep working as the company grows.

Before that, I worked in retail talent development, which taught me how to ask the right questions and how to listen for what people aren't saying. A lot of marketing lives there - in understand how people make decisions, what makes them trust a brand, and why some messages stick while others disappear.

My work sits between strategy and systems: figuring out what will work, building it in a way that is practical, and documenting it so your team has something useful long after the engagement ends.

How I work

Working with me is meant to move your work forward - NOT produce a strategy deck that gets saved somewhere and never touched again.

Everything we do is built around what is actually useful to your business right now and what your team can realistically execute.

Sometimes that looks like a one-time audit with clear priorities and next steps. Sometimes it's a product <> channel fit sprint that tells you exactly where to focus your energy and gives you project plans to pilot your top three channels. Sometimes it’s ongoing support where I’m helping you make decisions in real time.

I typically recommend starting with a smaller project first so we can solve something tangible, learn how we work together, and build from there if it makes sense.

  • "Katie is a rare talent who can think 10,000 feet up while delivering at ground level."

    — Max M.

  • "Beyond her next-level marcom talent, Katie’s just a really, really good human — total NorCal cool, grounded, collaborative, and generous with her brilliance. She’s a light. She makes the work better, the brand stronger, and the people around her think bigger.."

    — Shelly S.

  • "We were absolutely spoiled having Katie as our first Director of Marketing—she set the highest bar!

    — Zoe K

  • "I especially appreciate how [Katie] can take a loosely formed concept and help refine it into something clear, strategic, and actionable."

    — Mark D.

  • "She doesn’t just give you the blueprints to a house. She plans, builds, and moves you in."

    — Natalie B.

  • "Katie is an outstanding marketing leader and more importantly, an incredibly kind, empathetic, and generous human being."

    — Karan D.

  • "No idea how we landed you but so glad someone here knows the magical way of catching a unicorn."

    — Rochelle S.

Examples of recent product<>channel fit work

  • They had a great product but were invisible to their buyers, competing against well-funded names. We mapped the full channel ecosystem across owned, earned, and partnership channels, scored and prioritized the top options, and landed on doubling down on organic channels that compound trust over time: email, webinars, LinkedIn, and professional associations. The work also included a blueprint for a systematic outbound sales motion so pipeline would be predictable, not episodic.

  • Their messaging was trying to serve three audiences at once, which made it hard for them to know where to focus marketing efforts at all. Before touching channels, we got clear on who the actual buyer was, repositioned around their specific problem, and built channel recommendations from there: conference circuit, partner networks, and outcome-based referrals - each including a pilot plan so they'd know exactly what to do first and how to tell if it was working.

  • They had some early traction but no clear sense of which channels were worth doubling down on. After mapping their full ecosystem and scoring 15+ channels, we landed on three to pilot first: SEO-informed content, a referral program, and advocacy org partnerships - each including a pilot plan laying out exactly what to test, what to watch for, and what success looks like. Plus an SEO foundation fix before touching any new content.

  • They had a clear target audience but no channel strategy. We mapped the full ecosystem, scored 10+ channels, and landed on three to pilot first: Instagram outreach, Facebook groups, and a referral program. We built out pilot plans for each - including what to test, what signals to watch for, and what ‘it's working’ looks like before committing more time or budget.

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Let’s work together

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