The First Marketing Hire · 90 days
Your first marketing hire, fractionally.
Most companies hire a growth marketer first, then discover nobody decided what the product is or who it's for. This is the other order. Six stages of the PMM Operating System installed, four of them automated, and a team trained to run all of it. For companies where one or two people are doing product marketing across four products, and nobody owns the story.
From €25,000 · 90 days · GTM Foundations is credited against it
01
Research
Runs itself
CONTINUOUS
02
Competition
Runs itself
EVERY 90 DAYS
03
Segment, position & price
Judgment
ON CHANGE
04
Message
Runs itself
MONTHLY
05
Launch & enable
Judgment
PER RELEASE
06
Measure & maintain
Runs itself
WEEKLY
Green runs itself · Yellow needs a person
What runs without you
Four of the six run without you.
The other two need a person. By day 90 that person works for you, not me.
The system · Full size on the demo →
The map
Six stages, every output, once.
01
Research
Runs itself
02
Competition
Runs itself
03
Segment, position & price
Judgment
04
Message
Runs itself
05
Launch & enable
Judgment
06
Measure & maintain
Runs itself
26 outputs · 6 stages · 4 that run themselves
Green runs itself · Yellow needs a person
What the six stages don't cover
Retention and churn programmes. Customer advocacy and reference programmes. Product roadmap ownership. Demand generation execution. Brand.
Some of that is premature for a company at this stage, a business with forty customers needs someone to explain what it sells, not a churn programme. Some of it belongs to somebody else and I'd be the wrong person to do it. Either way, I'd rather tell you now than have you discover it in month two.
If your constraint is one of those five, say so on the call and I'll tell you who to talk to.
Who this is for
Who this is for, and who it isn't.
This is for you if
- One or two people doing product marketing across several products, and nobody owns the story
- You have customers and a sales motion, even a small one
- Someone will own this after I leave
- You want the function to outlast the engagement
- You want someone in your timezone
This isn't for you if
- You need one launch or one market sorted, not a whole function, which is GTM Foundations
- Nobody internally will own it afterwards
- You want a retainer, or you want me to stay indefinitely
- You want execution. I don't run campaigns, write the blog or manage the agency; I build the system they work against
- Pre-product, with nobody to interview
What you get
What you're holding on day 90.
Six documents, populated with your market rather than a template. Every one of them is something a person on your team opens and uses.
2 PAGES PER PRODUCT
Spec, metrics, limitations, packaging, and who it's for and who it isn't for. The single source of truth that stops four teams describing the product four ways.
1 SHEET · EVERY ASSET YOU OWN
Every asset mapped to its owner, its destination and its refresh cadence, so you know when each one goes stale and where it lives.
1 SHEET · 3 CHECKLISTS · 27 ACTIVITIES
Every release scored 1, 2 or 3, each tier triggering a fixed activity checklist, owners and critical path. Without it, every launch gets negotiated from scratch.
1 SHEET · 50 QUESTIONS × 6 COMPANIES
Fifty questions across market, product, positioning, marketing, sales and company, filled for you and up to five competitors. Every cell sourced with a URL and a date, or marked unknown. No silent blanks.
1 DASHBOARD · 5 OKRS
OKRs measuring research coverage, sales confidence and cross-functional trust.
1 SHEET · PER BUYER, PER STAGE
For each person, at each stage, every line tied to a proof point, so claims can be checked rather than repeated.
ALL SIX ARE YOURS. NO LICENCE, NO PLATFORM, NO DEPENDENCY ON ME.
Why the Half-Life Map exists
"Not everything stayed perfect as things evolved, but the foundation held."
Sofia Tsekoura · Product Marketing Manager, MarineTraffic
How it works
How it works.
90 Day Build Overview
Week 1
Kickoff & audit
90 minutes. Product, roadmap, vision, and every customer touchpoint you already have.
Week 2
Customer calls
Five interviews. I run them, you introduce them.
Week 3
Win/loss review
Closed-lost reasons, support tickets, sales call notes.
Week 4
The Fifty
Fifty questions across six competitors, every cell sourced.
Week 5
Who to sell to
Scored from the customers you've won and kept, not from a wishlist.
Week 6
Positioning workshop
90 minutes. Three to four viable directions, argued against real alternatives.
Week 7
Internal decision
You meet without me and choose a direction.
Week 8
Constraint named
Positioning, messaging, pricing, launches or enablement. One of them is the bottleneck.
Week 9
Messaging workshop
90 minutes. For each person, at each stage, every line tied to proof.
Week 10
Frameworks installed
Populated with your market.
Week 11
Automation wired
Four of the six stages start maintaining themselves.
Week 12
Handover
Your nominated owner runs a full cycle while I watch.
About twelve hours of your team's time across three months.
What's still running on day 91
What I need from you
- About twelve hours across three months
- Four workshops
- Introductions to five customers
- Access to your existing material
Proof
Where I've done this before.
One vessel-tracking feed, four commercial products, defined by workflow rather than by feature.
Read it →
Three positional networks merged into one verified feed, with a narrative five buyers recognise.
Read it →
Eleven products and a services arm, unified into one commercial model. Built the function from zero to eight.
Read it →
What it costs
What it costs.
Price
From €25,000
Quoted after a call
Invoiced in
EUR
Duration
90 days
Credited
GTM Foundations is credited against it
What moves it: how many products, how many markets, and whether there's a team already. The floor is real; the rest is scoping.
What this leads to
What this leads to.
The Maintenance Retainer
Four of the six stages can maintain themselves. This is me keeping them pointed at the right things once the build is over, so the system stays current without your one product marketer re-running research.
Quoted after a call · Monthly
If you run sales
Your reps stop writing their own decks.
Product marketing that never reaches a sales call is a documentation project. Four of the six stages produce something a rep uses in front of a customer.
Battlecards
PER COMPETITORClaim-to-response pairs, traps and landmines, and a thirty-second talk track. Built from the competitive grid, so every rebuttal carries a source and a date rather than an opinion.
Objection handling
RANKED BY FREQUENCYThe objections your team actually hears, with the real root cause behind each, the reframe, and the question that surfaces it early enough to matter.
The sales playbook
ONE DOCUMENTMarket opportunity, buyer types, positioning, pricing, competitive advantage. The thing a new rep reads in week one instead of shadowing someone for a month.
Launch Tiers
PER RELEASEEvery release scored 1, 2 or 3, each tier triggering a fixed checklist with owners. Sales stops finding out about launches from the changelog.
I've built this for a maritime data company selling into commodity traders and shipowners, where the competitive claims were technical and the buyers were sceptical. The same structure works wherever the product is hard to explain in one sentence.
26
outputs
6
stages
4
that keep running after I've gone
Straight answers
Straight answers.
Why ninety days?
Thirty gets you documents. Sixty gets you documents nobody uses. The third month is where the team learns to run it, which decides whether any of it survives.
What do you need from us?
About twelve hours across three months: four workshops, introductions to five customers, and access to your existing material. I do the work between sessions.
Who owns it afterwards?
Whoever you nominate on day one. If that person doesn't exist yet, say so before we start, because it changes what I build.
How do I choose between Foundations and The First Marketing Hire?
By what you're missing. Foundations answers "how do we take this one thing to market" and suits one product in one market. The system answers "who owns product marketing here and how does it keep running", which only becomes urgent once you have customers, a sales motion and repeat objections.
Can we start with Foundations and upgrade later?
Yes, and several people should. Foundations covers stages 01 to 04, so the build picks up from there rather than repeating it. Foundations is credited against the build if you start within three months.
How do I know which tier we are?
Count your products and your markets. One product sold into one or two markets is the first tier. If you're not sure, tell me what you sell and to whom and I'll tell you which one applies.
Do you work with our existing agency or freelancers?
Yes. I build the strategy and the frameworks they execute against. Most of the time that makes them more useful, because they stop guessing what the story is.
What if the positioning we land on is wrong?
Then we find out in month two rather than month twelve, which is the point of doing research before messaging. Positioning is a bet, and I'll show you the alternatives I rejected and why.
Before you came in, product marketing was fragmented. Different teams were telling slightly different versions of the story, and there wasn't a single owner driving consistency. What changed was clarity and structure. You defined positioning, built a PMM team, and introduced a more systematic approach to launches and enablement. It reduced a lot of internal friction and made execution more predictable.
Dany Rastelli · Head of Marketing, MarineTraffic
Before you joined, our go-to-market was very sales-led and reactive. We were pushing deals through but without much structure around who we were targeting or how we onboarded them. You brought a level of discipline we didn't have. Clear segmentation, proper onboarding flows, and a more joined-up way of working across product, marketing, and sales. It made things feel a lot less improvised and gave us something we could actually scale.
Dan Hunt · CEO, FoodVessel