Introduction

Starting in September of 2022, I took on the role of in-house marketing lead at PlayerZero, a burgeoning AI startup in the B2B product/engineering space with tremendous growth potential. As a one-man marketing department, I had full latitude to strategize & execute on all marketing initiatives.

I had the privilege of leading and orchestrating both in-house teams and external contractor partnerships, enhancing our capabilities with a remarkable intern, Jarius, whom I personally brought on board, managed, & trained. Primarily, I served as the driving force behind our marketing campaigns, overseeing everything from strategic planning to the meticulous logistical management & execution of each project.

Throughout this case study, I'll expand on my tangible achievements. However, I've always felt that the true signifier of a job well done is the impression I've left on the people I've worked with. I'm proud to call my former PlayerZero compatriots both friends & thought partners to this day!

Now, let's rewind back to September of 2022, when I landed in Atlanta & immediately began planning our product launch…

Product Launch

Spearheaded our initial Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy, orchestrating collaborations across influencer and social media channels. This culminated in a triumphant Product Hunt launch, securing the #1 Product of the Day award & earned media coverage from the press.

Content & Messaging

Here's a brief overview of some of the content services I provided while at PlayerZero:

• Owned & produced both the PlayerZero Podcast (self-hosted) & the Untested Podcast (hosted by Animesh Koratana), booking/interviewing dozens of incredible guests & reaching tens of thousands of listeners.

• Planned, shot & produced world-class video content for hundreds of different applications.

• Wrote hundreds of blogs & newsletters under the PlayerZero brand & ghost wrote for executive thought leadership (published in numerous tech trade & media publications with wide distribution).

• Technical messaging generation - planned & wrote docs, change logs, white papers and more.

• Created messaging guidelines & developed a brand voice for the company.

• LinkedIn, Twitter, and Product Hunt post writing & design on behalf of both the company's official channels & key executives.

• Conceptualized, pitched & acquired key-topic speaking opportunities for executives on the PlayerZero team at conferences like ProductCamp Atlanta & Tech Summit San Francisco.

Below - an example of a technical blog which I wrote and guest posted on HackerNoon. It still holds a top spot on Google and is one of the top technical blogs on the platform with 38,669 reads (& counting) and (get this), 5 months, 6 days and 6 hours of total read time.

Below - a screen capture of the page & branding I designed for the PlayerZero Podcast which I hosted.

Visit the Video Portfolio section of my site to view some of the video work I completed in my time at PlayerZero!

Below - an example of a case study I created for PlayerZero. For each campaign or asset I generated, I always coordinated a multi-channel push involving numerous stakeholders to amplify our reach.

Community

When our engineering team spearheaded the development of a suite of features designed specifically for product managers, I jumped at the opportunity to cultivate a content-driven community centered on this target audience. Click below to learn more about how I built Future of Product and what I was able to accomplish in my time running it:

Web Traffic

With all sources accounted for, I increased PlayerZero's daily average web traffic from 0 visitors per day in April of 2023, to over 2,000 visitors per day by February of 2024, of which the vast majority were a strong ICP fit for PlayerZero's product. Via a combination of the following channels, I was able to drive this massive increase in traffic:

1. ICP-targeted strategic & technical blog content

2. Multi-channel thought leadership

3. Organic social media growth

4. Strategic partnerships with channel partners

5. High-growth programmatic SEO content

6. Earned media coverage

Below - the results of my 3 successive pushes to increase organic Google search traffic via blog content. This increase was achieved through a combination of 1. ICP-targeted blog content that I researched & wrote (began Apr '23), 2. programmatic technical content leveraging our proprietary database which Animesh (Founder & AI builder) and I worked together to create (began June '23), 3. Human/AI hybrid articles that I created at scale (began Dec '23).

Domain Building

I elevated our Ahrefs domain rating from a 2 to a highly competitive 42 within a year, demonstrating a substantial increase in website authority and online presence. I did so by forging partnerships with high domain value companies like Product Hunt, leading product marketing initiatives to integrate our product with & gain valuable backlinks from industry bell weathers like Segment, and organically acquiring backlinks on the back of my content approach from competitors like Zenn.

Data

Leveraging low-spend PPC campaigns, I achieved statistically significant language-market fit, a pivotal milestone that enabled the strategic scaling of our SEO efforts. This crucial step allowed us to refine our messaging and adopt terminology genuinely resonant with our potential customers' vocabulary for our product category—an especially formidable task in the realm of emerging technologies where establishing a clear and relatable message is paramount, given the absence of similar products.

I created dozens of experimental design drafts (EDDs) - a concept I invented in my time working in the Manhattan ad space - which established explicit success criteria, enabling precise measurement and analysis. By implementing custom data tracking through an array of tools including GA4, Google Tag Manager, Next.js, HubSpot, and real-time de-anonymization tools like Apollo and Koala, alongside session replay utilities such as Mixpanel and Posthog, I ensured a comprehensive capture and analysis of user interaction data.

Further innovating, I developed a bespoke conversion attribution model based on our particular funnel and constructed a real-time dashboard to visually represent the source of every web conversion, offering immediate insights into our marketing strategies' effectiveness. This dashboard became an essential tool for decision-making and strategy refinement.

Harnessing the power of LinkedIn, Twitter, and Reddit, I curated retargeting audiences comprising hundreds of thousands of users, setting the stage for highly targeted campaigns. Through a meticulously designed LinkedIn ads funnel, these initiatives resulted in the acquisition of numerous demo signups, achieving this at an impressively low cost and demonstrating the efficacy of our targeted approach in engaging potential customers.

Additionally, I designed and executed numerous campaign dashboards, each followed by a regular post-mortem. These sessions were instrumental in quantifying each campaign's success against the established criteria from the EDD phase, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and strategic agility within our marketing efforts.

Product Marketing

In a strategic move to turn our long-forgotten Chrome extension into an asset, I spearheaded a rebrand of the chrome extension and followed this up with a zero-cost Product Hunt launch paired with a coordinated social media and influencer campaign.

This innovative approach not only catapulted DevReports to the #3 product of the day on Product Hunt but also successfully attracted over 500 new users to the extension without incurring any marginal expenses. More importantly, this initiative validated our strategy with Chrome extension users, many of whom transitioned into our main platform as paying customers, continuing to spread their love of PlayerZero to this day.

Strategy

Overall, I directly acquired hundreds of users, both free and paid for PlayerZero over the course of 2 years in which we faced numerous major product pivots, technical, & business challenges. I conceptualized and launched two highly successful sub-brands & far exceeded every key metric & objective set forth for me in my time as head of marketing. I accomplished this with very little financial resources at my disposal, but tremendous creative leeway and the support of fantastically talented and dedicated technical, UX, & customer success teams. It was an absolute joy working with Animesh, Matt, Rebecca, Jarius, Sejal, & the rest of the PlayerZero team!

There's a lot more that I accomplished in my nearly two years with PlayerZero. If you're interested in learning more, please don't hesitate to reach out to me via email at max@astronautcreative.com - or simply fill out the form at the bottom of this page!