Leading a marketing turnaround

The problem

In 2019 I was chosen to succeed a marketing executive who had led TestOut’s marketing for 30 years. I inherited a long-tenured team whose numbers needed to turn around. TestOut also had to move from a mostly traditional approach to a multichannel, digital B2B model. And I had to earn the trust of people who had been there far longer than I had.

What I did

Earned trust first. Much of the team had been at TestOut far longer than I had. Earning their trust came before changing how we worked. I spent my first months listening and learning how they worked, kept what was working, and changed things with them, not to them.

Built out the team. I recruited and trained three campaign managers and two researchers, managed the SDRs, and grew the department to 12 people across campaigns, marketing operations, product marketing, creative, content and web. My role expanded from Director of Academic Marketing to Director of Marketing when the creative team joined. I built repeatable hiring and people-management systems so new hires were productive quickly.

Fixed how work flowed. Sales and campaign managers often complained about late creative. I set up two-week creative sprints with a request queue for our three designers: every request was scoped, prioritized and scheduled. Complaints and late projects dropped to near zero.

Made launches routine. I introduced the company’s first webinars and a standard launch plan, and set up a product-marketing committee so product, sales and marketing agreed on dates, messages and assets before a release.

Taught the craft. I wrote TestOut’s direct-response marketing playbook, covering what worked for our audiences, how often to send, and how to write subject lines and calls to action. I also taught a customer-facing writing training for staff.

Made the hard calls. I led a cross-department product-naming decision that balanced customer clarity against trademark risk, with attorney review. I owned a marketing budget of about $500K.

Carried it through the acquisition. When CompTIA acquired TestOut, I led the integration of the two marketing organizations and product lines: sales enablement, training, people and system migration.

Results

• A team of 12, built and trained, running multichannel marketing for a $30M company through its acquisition.
• Late creative projects and complaints cut to near zero with the sprint and request-queue system.
• 4 people I hired and developed were promoted, to Marketing Operations Manager, Senior Marketing Director, Senior Product Marketing Manager and Senior Marketing Manager.
• The company’s first webinars and a standard launch process.
• K-12 revenue grew from about $3M to about $12M during my marketing leadership (see the K-12 case study).
• Led the post-acquisition integration of two marketing organizations.

Why it matters

For marketing leadership: I’ve taken over an established team from a long-time leader, earned their trust, modernized how the work gets done, and kept the team delivering through an acquisition. That’s what a Director or VP of Marketing role at a growing company asks for.