Head of Product Marketing · Athens · 2022–2024
MarineTraffic: turning one vessel-tracking product into four commercial products.
SECTOR
Maritime data and API
STAGE
Scaleup, acquired
MARKET
Global
ROLE
Head of Product Marketing
PERIOD
2022–2024
TEAM
0 → 4
COMPANY
marinetraffic.comStages covered
01
Research
02
Competition
03
Segment & position
04
Message
05
Launch & enable
06
Measure & maintain
The same six stages as the PMM Operating System.
The situation
High usage, low monetisation clarity.
MarineTraffic had one core product, vessel tracking, and an enormous, wildly varied user base. Ports, terminals and agents. Vessel owners, managers and brokers. Global traders and analysts. Photographers and enthusiasts. Everyone used the same product, and everyone used it differently.
Commercially that meant no defined ICPs, no differentiated value propositions, and no packaging logic. The company was not short of users. It was short of a reason for any particular user to pay more than any other.
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
The mandate
Build product marketing from zero, and turn usage into products.
I joined to build the function. There was no product marketing team. The remit ran from research through positioning to launch and enablement, across a portfolio that did not yet exist as a portfolio.
Team built
0 → 4
product marketing managers, one per product line
Products created
1 → 4
Enterprise pipeline
+30%
The diagnosis
The product wasn't the problem.
The instinct with a single product and flat monetisation is to build more features. The usage data said something else: different users were solving completely different problems with the same feed. A port needed to know when a ship would arrive. A fleet operator needed to know where its own vessels were. A trader needed to know what the whole market was moving. Same data, three jobs, one undifferentiated product.
Build more features
More capability on one product, sold the same way to everyone.
Segment the users, then build products around them
Let the workflows define the product boundaries, then price and sell each one to the people who need it.
When I arrived
When I left
One product
Four commercial products
No segmentation
Defined ICPs per product
Generic usage
A named buyer per product
No packaging logic
Pricing structured by coverage and fleet size
No product marketing function
Four PMMs, one per line
What I built
Four products, found inside one.
01
01 Research
Usage research and segmentation
Who the customers actually are, from behaviour rather than assumption.
- Worked with the data team to analyse usage patterns across the base
- Mapped behaviours to workflows, then workflows to buying triggers
- Defined ICPs across ports and terminals, vessel owners and managers, traders and analysts
- Separated the professional base from the enthusiast base, which had been counted as one
02
02 Competition
Competitive intelligence
A structured view of a category nobody had mapped.
- A fifty-question competitive grid across five direct competitors, every cell sourced
- A twenty-company market monitor tracking traffic, keywords and social reach quarterly
- Battlecards built from that grid rather than from opinion
03
03 Segment & position
Productisation, the turning point
Four commercial products, defined by workflow.
- Port Call Optimisation, for ports, terminals and agents
- Fleet Operations, for vessel owners and managers
- In-Transit, for cargo owners and supply chain
- MT Central, for traders, analysts and enterprise users
- Each with its own scope, buyer and pricing logic
One product, four buyers
Vessel tracking
Port Call Optimisation
Fleet Operations
In-Transit
MT Central
Same data. Four jobs. Four products.
04
04 Message
Positioning and messaging per product
A different story for each, from the same underlying data.
- A messaging framework per product, split by user, influencer and buyer
- MT Central's elevator pitch: "a single source of truth for a complete global picture of vessel tracking"
- Personas defined down to the decision-maker: operations managers as users and influencers, ship owners as buyers, cargo owners in supply chain, construction, oil and gas and manufacturing
05
05 Launch & enable · 06 Measure & maintain
Launch and enablement
Four products are only four products if sales can sell four products.
- Sales narratives and decks per segment
- Demo flows per product
- Pricing and packaging structure across the range, from a free tier to fleet and global coverage plans
- A launch process the team reused rather than renegotiated
I joined after you'd already set most of it up, and it was clear there was real thinking behind it. There was a shared way to talk about the products, defined segments, and actual playbooks to work from, which made onboarding into the role much easier. Not everything stayed perfect as things evolved, but the foundation held. The biggest difference for me was not having to figure things out from scratch and having a consistent way to approach launches and messaging across the team.
Sofia Tsekoura · Product Marketing Manager, MarineTraffic
The outcome
What changed commercially.
+30%
Enterprise pipeline
1 → 4
Commercial products
0 → 4
Team
5
Competitors tracked quarterly
The judgment call
Creating products without building anything new.
The obvious route was to ask engineering for more. What the segmentation showed was that four products already existed inside the one, they just had no names, no boundaries and no prices. Drawing those lines was a marketing decision with a commercial consequence, and it did not require a single new feature to ship.
You do not always need new technology to create new products. Sometimes you need to decide who each one is for.
What this proves
Five things, if you're deciding whether to hire me.
I find products inside usage data.
One feed, four commercial products, no new engineering.
I build the function.
Zero to four product marketers, one per product line.
I do the competitive work properly.
Fifty questions, five competitors, sourced and refreshed.
I price and package, not just position.
A structured range from free to enterprise.
I move the commercial number.
Enterprise pipeline up 30%.
Frameworks installed