Bianca Johnston Customer Research

Independent Customer Research Consultant

Shopify

Integrated Campaigns Lead

Senior Market Researcher

LoyaltyOne

Market Research Manager, AIR MILES Reward Program

Market Research Consultant, AIR MILES Reward Program

Market Research Specialist, AIR MILES Reward Program

Espresso

Espresso is  an integrated brand agency that drives media-agnostic thinking in brand strategy, marcom, advertising, and custom technology products.

Account Supervisor

I help you do research right and become a more customer-centric marketer | 🇺🇦 🇨🇦

🤔 Making decisions based on gut rather than data? 
😕 Marketing efforts not giving you the ROI you’d hoped for? 
🤪 Trying to do your own customer research and feeling out of your element? 

Ask any successful marketer and they’ll tell you the key to growth is to know your customers. But from there the advice gets a little…well, fluffy.

I share tactical, no-fluff tips on how to do customer research right, so you can: 

- Uncover customer truths 💡
- Optimize your marketing and content ⚙️
- Drive business growth 📈

I have 13 years’ experience in market research and marketing roles, across industries and customer segments. I’m a big believer in no-BS marketing and love sharing actionable advice on how to do research right so you can quit winging it and start winning! 🚀

Bianca Johnston 🔮✨

Lumos

I lead all of our product marketing initiatives from product launches, sales enablement and training, to competitive intel. Highlights include:

• Built the GTM for new category of SaaS App Management, which included driving P&M for multiple audiences (IT, Finance, Compliance), webpage copy, sales enablement, and customer comms
• Created sales enablement program which included weekly trainings, competitor battle cards, case studies, one-pagers, sales decks, sales playbooks; led to increase in win rate
• Managed cross-functional relationships with marketing, sales, product, CS, and exec leadership for three tier 1 launches, and systemized the GTM motion to decrease end-to-end launch time by 20%
• Partnered with product management and inform product strategy; led to prioritization of spend management features in roadmap and increased win rate against top competitor

Senior Product Marketing Manager

Writer Unblocked

B2B SaaS has never been more competitive. That's why building a strong founder and company brand has never become more important. 

I help founders build their personal brand alongside their company's through:
- Positioning & Messaging Support
- Sales Enablement
- Product Launch and GTM support
- Linkedin Ghostwriting
- Content/Blog Copywriting
- Email Newsletter Copywriting

Founder, Product Marketing and Content Strategist

Zapier

I led our upmarket initiative for product marketing. Responsibilities included building out our sales enablement strategy from scratch, owning positioning and messaging, competitive intelligence, and advocating for upmarket features with our product team. Highlights include:

• Developed personas, messaging, and positioning to inform upmarket marketing programs and sales collateral 
• Built out sales enablement strategy from scratch and created library of 10+ case studies, 1-pagers, pitch deck, and battle cards for top 3 competitors to help sales close more deals
• Created sales education program with buy-in from marketing, product, and support to educate sales, product advocates, customer success, and partnerships are educated on P&M of new products and features
• Own upmarket competitive intelligence program and keep track of top 5 competitors to inform sales on competitive positioning as well as product on roadmap planning

Product Marketing Manager

Secureframe

Forbes' Next Billion Dollar Startups 2022

I was the first marketing hire and employee 16 at Secureframe, and was tasked with building out our product marketing foundation. Some highlights below:

• Led GTM strategy for new product lines (HIPAA, ISO 27001, PCI) by building P&M and overseeing various acquisition channels (website copy, email, social and paid media, PR, sales); led to increase in new revenue
• Managed comp intel and voice of customer program to gather industry trends to inform product strategy; led to rebranding company as one-stop compliance platform and decrease loss rate against top competitor
• Drove 5 cross-functional launches and company announcements, end-to-end, with senior stakeholders across sales, marketing, product, and C-suite; standardized launch process to decrease launch time by 20%
• Created 30+ customer-facing collateral for sales including team trainings, case studies, whitepapers, one-pagers, pitch decks, playbooks, demos, battle cards, FAQs, and partner blogs; increased win rate

Product Marketing Manager (1st Marketing Hire)

Transfix

Forbes' Next Billion Dollar Startups 2018

Sole PMM, lead all GTM efforts for digital brokerage and SaaS product offerings across multiple channels (press, email, web, in-product, social, paid media), product launches, positioning and messaging, sales enablement (case studies, blogs, whitepapers, 1-pagers, trainings, customer demoes), competitive intelligence, lifecycle marketing, email marketing, content marketing and customer marketing

Highlights include:
• Led GTM efforts for new SaaS products by developing positioning and messaging and managing acquisition channels (email, social media, paid media, press, sales); achieved 150% of Q4 acquisition goal within 3 weeks 
• Conduct competitive intelligence reports and present findings to exec and product team to influence roadmap
• Created 30+ sales and product enablement materials across team trainings, case studies, sales cadences, whitepapers, 1-pagers and FAQs to support sales with prospecting and closing deals, and educate customers
• Oversaw marketing reporting across sign-up page, weekly customer emails, and SaaS product usage to identify emerging trends and provide lifecycle recommendations to improve customer adoption
• Having my sales team call me a rockstar

Lead Product Marketing Manager

On Deck

Selected as one of 100 participants out of thousands of applications for a top tech talent fellowship. Alums include former C-suite execs, directors and VPs at Khan Academy, Flexport, Google, Crunchbase, Lyft, Uber, Postmates, Foursquare, and Eventbrite.

Fellow, ODF2 + OD50-1

Crunchbase

•	Led and supported 8 GTMs by working cross-functionally with marketing, product, comms, customer success and sales to collect assets, support channels with appropriate messaging and audience selection, and meet deadlines
•	Launched product enablement program to support product team with product strategy and roadmap by providing weekly competitor intelligence reports, customer feedback reports, onboarding for new PMs, and P&M resources
•	Created positioning and messaging for Crunchbase Data across sales, investor, and researcher personas
•	Conducted competitive research on 80+ competitors across products, features and use cases and conducted 16 persona interviews to inform product positioning, messaging, and go-to-market strategy for new products 
•	Supported sales enablement to create 10 competitors’ kill sheets and 1-pagers

Associate Product Marketing Manager

Rothy's

Forbes' Next Billion Dollar Startups 2019

•	Conducted competitive research for international and category expansion, and presented research to senior management to guide overall GTM strategy for new launches
•	Managed Rothy’s Ambassador program through providing 19 ambassadors proper messaging and marketing material to help them put shoes on feet and drive $60,000 in additional revenue
•	Oversaw coordination of partnerships with ESPNw, Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Donor’s Choose and Exxpedition to ensure successful brand activation and increased awareness of Rothy’s
•	Organized IRL brand activations such as a mobile truck to drive $10,000 in revenue and reduce returned inventory

Brand Marketer

Slack

• Led Slack Administrator care package initiative by partnering with sales, customer success, and analytics to identify target audience, messaging and package items; delivered 400 boxes resulting in increased positive sentiment and feature adoption
• Created marketing assets for user education (ICYMI blog post, infographics, webinars, in-product messaging) viewed by 100,000+ customers which led to increased user engagement, adoption of features, and brand awareness
• Developed content for HR Station and Product Wall for Frontiers (Slack’s annual 1,000+ attendee conference), which included writing 8 take-away postcards, 50+ slide library, researching 5 user stories, and producing 20+ use cases 
• Operationalized processes for ICYMI blog posts and use-case infographics leading to 25% decrease in production time

Product Marketing

Morgan Stanley

I spent some time in finance but learned it wasn't my thing. Below are some of my highlights in my short-lived finance career:
• Developed expertise in fixed income products to aid analysts with 50 client calls a day
• Created chart book presentation as result of 123 customer feedback surveys which resulted in establishment of standardized
presentation to be used by sales people during road shows
• Conducted vendor risk management analyses on 250+ vendors via excel (VLOOKUP, pivot tables, IF statements) to highlight 41 vendor risk threats; outlined and communicated remediation process to analysts and managing directors

Wealth Management

“If you build it, they will come” - said every misguided tech company. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work that way. So what do you do?

The answer is marketing (and I might be a little biased towards product marketing).

I’ve been fortunate enough to work at some of the top tech companies like Slack and Zapier, to fast-growing startups like Secureframe and Lumos. I have experience with:
✅ Leading 21+ GTM and product launches for early, mid-stage, and late-stage B2B startups (including building product launch playbooks from scratch)
✅ Managing positioning and messaging for tier 1 product lines to tier 3 feature updates
✅ Owning sales enablement including sales trainings, case studies, email cadences, white papers, 1-pagers, battle cards, sales decks
✅ Creating competitor intelligence programs to inform sales messaging and executive strategy
✅ Working cross-functionally with product, marketing, sales, customer success, and the executive team to manage stakeholder expectations and get buy-in for product launches
✅ Building over 200+ marketing assets across landing pages, blog posts, in-product messaging, webinars, marketing emails, sales collateral, user education and more

Highlights of my career include:
⭐️ Owning the P&M, strategy and launch of a company-wide rebrand
⭐️ Hitting 150% of quarterly acquisition goal within 3 weeks of a product launch
⭐️ Managing the end-to-end product launch process from beta to launch for multiple products with million dollar revenue lines
⭐️ Having my sales team call me a rockstar and getting constant appreciation DMs for the collateral I built to help them close more deals

Industries of interest include B2B SaaS, future of work, workplace productivity, and AI (but always open to new industries and ideas).

Outside of work, you’ll find me traveling (40 countries to date), exploring the sights and sounds of NYC, making a mean Korean chicken wings, working out to burn off said wings, mentoring/coaching folks through negotiations, and hosting dinner parties and storytelling open mics to help strangers become friends.

Feel free to reach out over DM or samaneezm@gmail.com I always love connecting with new people (but please tell me why you want to connect!)

taplio

The Battle

Bianca Johnston 🔮✨

Samanee Mahbub

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