Listen closely.
Then make a choice.
Customers can tell us what happened, what they tried and why they chose you. I use that evidence to inform the positioning and copy. The choice of where the business goes still belongs to you.
Marina Vassilyovska · Good Skeptic
Hello,
I’m Marina.
Your marketing counterpart,
before and after the hire.
I help founders with their first marketing hire and the work that follows. You work directly with me: on the role, the choice of person, and the marketing you build together.
A little about how I got here
Since 2009Working in marketing
In-house, agency, independentExperience across different ways of working
Research, positioning, content & copyThe work I bring to the table
Why this work
I’ve been the first hire, too.The hire was made.
The questions remained.
I’ve worked in marketing since 2009, across in-house, agency and independent roles. I’ve also been the first marketing hire.
The founder had paid for help choosing a marketer. After I joined, we still had to work out what I was there to own.
That experience is part of why Good Skeptic covers both the hiring decision and the work afterwards. Choosing someone is one decision. Agreeing the first priority, what they can decide, and how you’ll work together takes attention too.
“Own marketing” needs to mean something on a Tuesday.
I work with you and your marketer on those decisions, then help with the research, positioning, copy and campaign direction that follow.
How I think
A few things I bring
to the table.
The questions I ask are meant to help us decide what to do next.
Listen closely.
Leave room
to change your mind.
I want to know what supports an idea, what could explain the same thing differently, and what we still need to find out. That makes the next decision easier to discuss.
Work on
the actual work.
My particular strengths are customer research, positioning, content and copy. That might mean clarifying the message, working through a homepage draft or giving a campaign a clearer direction.
A closer look
Here’s what that looks like.You can see
how I work.
These examples make the thinking easier to inspect: the role we’re hiring for, the agreement a new marketer starts with, and the creative work itself.
Worked exampleA more useful first marketing role
Worked exampleA shared starting point for the first hire
Speculative campaign conceptContent Snare: from customer problem to creative
These are demonstrations of the work, not claims of client results.
Explore working togetherA conversation is a good place to start.
Let’s talk about
your hire.
Tell me what you want marketing to take off your plate
and where you are with the hire.
We’ll start with a 20–25-minute conversation.