Case Studies

Adrienne works with affiliate, DTC, SaaS, B2B, and solopreneurs.

Finder

Givebutter

Paylode

HeartSpark Design

Deanna Seymour

Want to Work There

True North Visionaries

Thrively

Adrienne by the numbers

VP Marketing, Head of Content

Highest titles I’ve held. The title I want? COO or VP Organic :)

12

Content and marketing operations built for startups across seed stage to Series A.

7

Years of revenue-responsibility working with CFO to create forecasting, budget, and reporting for all top line activities across the whole company (not just my department).

Thousands

Of complex problems solved, employees empowered and promoted, and challenges embraced.

15+

Internal conferences I’ve planned and managed, including 5 Power Weeks, 5 holiday annual parties, a few leadership summits, and a 4-day conference in Mexico City for 25 international employees in my department.

Massive amounts of content

Programmatic pages: 10,000+
Articles commissioned with briefs: 50,000+
Max articles per week: 125
Max department size: 75

Calculators created (loan, mortgage, etc): 100+
Standardized briefs: 200+

”Best” pages: 1500+
”VS” pages: 3000+
Product Reviews: 15000+
Videos produced for Youtube channel: 200+
News articles: 500+
Pages re-written and optimized: 100,000+

Emails: Over 5M sent over my career, including cold, marketing, & transactional. 250+ email workflow is the largest I’ve built myself.

3

Complete Brand Books I’ve created including messaging, positioning, editorial style, and content principles.

8

Years sober

22

Years since I moved to CO

3

Dogs and cups of coffee daily

$500M+

Valuation created for startups over the past 20 years including $150 -> $495M at Finder, based primarily on the success of the US business.

200+

People hired in the past 10 years, managing entire recruiting process. Conducted at least 1,000 interviews.

300+

All-hands meetings I’ve facilitated as host (weekly for 5 years plus quarterly company meetings and retro presentations)

240+

Quarters of OKRs developed, managed, and retro’ed across 12 budgeted departments within organic.

3M KWs, $1.2M MRR

Business value built across a single brand from organic in 5 years.

24+

Conferences I’ve brought teams to or sponsored across marketing, editorial, and SEO, like Mozcon, Searchlove, Affiliate Summit.

Plus vertical industry-related gatherings like National Conference on School Leadership (4000+ principals), Nonprofit storytelling, Green Expos, Proptech, and local food.

0

Layoffs made during covid on a team of 75

50

Times I flew to NYC in a 4-year period to be in the office.

$1.2M/year

Largest paid media / ppc budget I’ve managed.

Adweek, CNN, Forbes, WSJ

Organic coverage and mentions I’ve earned for clients.

400+

Processes and corresponding SOP documentation created and organized into searchable Knowledge Bases. For everything from “how to select topics” to “how to hire someone on your team” to 20+ separate SEO hygiene audits.

20+

Number of monthly SEO audits that are compiled, organized, assigned, and tracked, automatically every month, like 301s and orphaned pages. This allows us to insert 3-5 extra editorial-based audits or technical SEO work each quarter.

No cap

The max on my company credit card because the CEO trusted me to get everything done efficiently and affordably.

700+

Number of articles written under my byline over my career.

10+

Fintech tools and engines built with product, including Car insurance quote engine, lending pre-qual, lead forms, credit card product filters, full market comparisons using faceted search, comparison table design and field mapping for over 30 verticals.

My approach

My ideal content process uses

Documentation on process and principles: Confluence
Data and content storage (article drafts, spreadsheets): Google Drive
SEO research and evaluation: Semrush, Ahrefs, Screaming frog, Sitebulb, Console
Ticket / task management: Jira
Writing articles: Google Docs or direct in CMS
Audits: Google sheets
Reporting: Looker studio for dashboards, native reporting tools, hubspot, Botify

My ideal team structure to grow a vertical starts with a minimum of 3 people even if they’re part-time:

Vertical owner: Group lead; project manager, SEO lead, or general manager

Editor: Generally good editors can write, but it’s hard to find a writer that can edit well. Hire an editor because everything you do will benefit from the skills of a wordsmith that can level up the entire piece. Editors also fill in skill and execution gaps where other people can’t, like a random press release, the About page messaging, or reviewing an investor deck. An editor will be able to level up an AI-written piece adeptly.

Content manager: A publishing assistant that is typically junior or international. They format and publish all the content to the CMS, do research, execute audits, reporting, and anything else that’s a bit more technical but can be delegated by the lead. They’re constantly looking for ways to automate and smooth out steps.