B2B Market/Customer Researcher
Howdy, I’m Ryan… I have 24 years of marketing miles. I’ve been a director, responsible for the odd million dollar budget…but also supervised bootstrapped budgets at startups. I’ve worked with dozens of entrepreneurs, founders and businesses of all shapes & sizes. I took a small detour in my career, working for CBC as a TV & Radio reporter. And I’ve produced short films and documentaries. So far I’ve interviewed over 2300 people in my career 🕵️♂️. I’m most passionate about Market, Buyer and Customer Research, Postinoning, Messaging and Brand Story. Here's a good rundown of the work I do: https://www.contentlift.io/
My agency contentlift.io specializes in helping B2B teams build the foundational pieces of a go-to-market strategy. We conduct qualitative research to help inform positioning, messaging, distribution channels, content and copy ideas.
I can give you some ideas and frameworks for helping validate a B2B business idea through customer interviews. I have spent the last 10 years working primarily with founders at the ideation stage or early stage startups.
With 22 years in marketing, I worked as a product marketer before the term product marketing was used. In my opinion, product marketing is foundational marketing.
My main focus is helping companies use customer interviews to map out their customers actual buying journey. Leaning on the "Jobs To Be Done" framework - we identify all the behaviours, motivations and triggers that transition a buyer from identifying a problem to solve to investing in a solution. This helps us build the foundation of a marketing campaign that influences buyers in the way they actually decide to buy things.
User Interviews is just one of many recruitment tools I use for conducting research. In my experince, it is best for recruiting middle manger level B2B Buyers.
I have an intermediate level of understanding. I can audit which pieces of content are performing well and how people are moving through the website.
I have used WordPress extensively throughout my career, with a focus on content and website development. I can help add or review web content for companies.
I teach early-stage entrepreneurs the fundamentals of customer discovery and market research. We cover: - different methodologies like Jobs to Be Done and Lean Canvas - different types of market & customer research - how to define your research objectives and find potential buyers - how to conduct market research, specifically 1:1 interviews, with examples from projects I've run
We specialize in buyer research interviews for B2B. We have access to millions of B2B professionals who match your ideal buyer. We start booking conversations 72 hours after launching your project. You get all the first-party data you need, to build go-to-market programs, that influence your ideal customers' buying decisions. - Their roles and responsibilities - The business process buyers are responsible for - How problems & challenges manifest in this process - How they try to solve these problems - How and why they prioritized various solutions - Buying triggers and catalysts of change - Their perceptions of vendors/solutions in the market - How buyers select and evaluate vendors - Buying committee members and what they care about I've logged 23+ years in Marketing, Sales, & Business Development. I spent 3 years working as an investigative reporter. I've interviewed over 2300 people in my career. I've worked with over 200 B2B businesses of all shapes and sizes.
I work with B2B marketing teams as a fractional senior marketer, helping build, launch and maintain marketing programs. The benefits of hiring a part-time senior marketer are: * Flexibility: I can work on a variety of projects, rather than one deliverable * Cost savings: A senior skill set without an increase in headcount * Dependability: I'm in independent contributor who can balance strategy and execution My specialty is research, content and product marketing. Some of the projects I've worked on for clients: * Buyer & market research, gathering insights to create new personas and messaging * Development of content strategies to support the entire customer lifecyle * Thought leadership and strategic narrative development with C-Suite * Sales enablement programs * Copywriting for paid search, landing pages and other high-conversion content. * Traditional PR activities with trade media and other communications tasks * Original research for whitepapers, ebooks and other content formats Happy to chat, walk you through these various projects and see if I can help in any way.
Helping the company with Messaging, Content, PR & Branding as they build out their core team. I have led or assisted in the following projects: * Messaging frameworks for multiple products * Tone & voice documents * Audits & analysis of organic channel performance * Content strategy & calendar * Overseeing a team of contract writers * Creation of lead magnets (Reports, Ebooks, etc) * Customer case studies * Content for product launches * Sales enablement materials
Member of the senior leadership team, reporting directly to CEO. Led development of annual operating plan for marketing, ensuring marketing activities aligned with overall business strategy. Oversaw a team of six direct reports, responsible for Lead Generation (SEO, PPC, Content), Social Media, Graphic Design and Web Development. Worked with the product, sales and customer success teams to refine the go-to-market strategy and positioning of core product lines. Created preliminary key messaging documents, brand guides and buyer personas. Interviewed customers for success stories and content ideas; during tenure as manager, organic traffic increased on average 175% YOY. Built relationships with industry analysts and trade media; successfully achieving media coverage goals in annual operating plan. Oversaw execution of tradeshows and events. Worked with designers and UI/UX to improve customer experience and increase conversions on key landing pages. Copywriting for google ads, landing pages and other high conversion content.
Entrepreneurs, Tech, Jobs. Rinse. Repeat. Helped shape and execute marketing plans, to meet the strategic objectives. Oversaw creative development of local, national and international campaigns. Chief architect of the “Work in Ottawa” Campaign, which generated over six million unique impressions through our digital tactics. Member of Amazon HQ2 Task Force Marketing Committee
Telling stories about the 613.
P/T with Ottawa's strongest & spiciest video creative agency. http://danrascal.com/
They're good. Real good.
Filed national and local stories covering municipal politics, crime and community issues. Filed two stories with local investigations team.
Reporting to the CEO, I oversaw brand development & operations for all of Canada, which consisted of 110 restaurants. * Managed multiple supplier contracts worth upwards of $4 Million annually * Worked with territory managers to grow sales and develop new locations * Oversaw all product research & development * Modernized reporting and POS systems * Largest project was re-brand & re-design of corporate locations. Same-store sales in new concepts increased by 40%.
