Marketing strategy // working session
Building the engine.
Where marketing goes next: the moves that turn it from a set of projects into a department that runs like a business. None of it is final. This is the thinking, laid out for a read and a reaction before it goes wider.
The agenda
Six objectives to align on.
Garrett's search presence
Take control of what shows up when he's searched.
Social strategy
LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. Each with its own job.
The event calendar
The year the department runs on, built around G2E.
The team
Who does what, and the one role we still need to hire.
The budget
The engine needs fuel. Here's a model to size it.
How we measure it
What we hold the spend against at year end.
Objective 01 // priority
Own the first thing people see.
When someone searches Garrett or Valicy, the results are a first impression nobody is currently managing. Our job is to shape how he shows up online, deliberately and low-maintenance. Not press handling. Just making sure the right things are there and stay there.
NOW // WEEKS
Take control
- Claim and optimize every profile that ranks: LinkedIn, company listings, industry directories
- A strong LinkedIn presence for Garrett, posted and active, since it ranks near the top for a name search
- Structured data and the right pages on the Valicy site so we own more of page one
- An owned bio and photo set that becomes the canonical result
OVER THE YEAR
Shape the story
- Occasional articles and thought leadership under Garrett's name, ghostwritten and light on his time
- A refreshed headshot and bio set so the visuals are current
- The Grover Gaming sale framed the way we want it read
- Steady, quiet management so the good results stay on top
What I need: agreement that this is a priority, and a little of Garrett's time up front. The profiles he already has, a fresh set of headshots, and a sense of how he wants to be seen. Light lift for him, handled by us from there.
Objective 02
Three channels, three jobs.
Each platform reaches a different audience for a different reason. We can only sustain three of them if one effort feeds all three, which is the whole point of the engine below.
Be the most credible voice in land-based gaming.
Audience
- Operators and distributors
- Industry peers and press
- Prospective hires
Content
- Product and cabinet reveals
- Trade show presence, live
- Employee and culture features
- Garrett's thought leadership
Cadence
- Start at 2 a week, build to 3+
- Company page plus leadership
- Employee advocacy amplifies reach
Show what it feels like to work here.
Audience
- Employees across markets
- Local communities
- Families and alumni
Content
- Internal events and milestones
- Hiring in local markets
- Community and CARE moments
- Behind the scenes
Cadence
- 1 to 2 posts a week
- Event-driven bursts
- Groups for internal community
Make the brand look as good as the product.
Audience
- Younger talent pool
- Industry followers
- Brand-curious visitors
Content
- Product beauty shots
- Show and event Reels
- Design and motion work
- Culture in visual form
Cadence
- 2 to 3 posts a week
- Reels weighted heavier
- Stories for immediacy
// the content that makes it credible
Turn our people into the voice of the brand.
The strongest B2B content does not come from a company account. It comes from people. We build a thought-leadership program around a handful of voices, each with their own theme, then ghostwrite most of it and run every piece by them before it posts. Mixed with video and graphics so it never reads like a wall of text.
Garrett
Industry vision and where gaming is headed
Chris
Building and running the business
John
CARE and the culture behind the work
Sony
Product and the craft on the floor
Hunter
Brand and marketing, filling the gaps
Each theme becomes a steady drip of posts, articles, and short videos. Ghostwritten to save everyone time, always in their voice, always approved before it goes out.
// how the volume is actually feasible
One capture becomes many pieces of content.
We are not writing original posts from scratch for every slot. That never survives contact with real work. Instead one event or product moment gets captured once and turned into multiple versions of content we can use in a variety of ways: a LinkedIn post, a Facebook album, short video, stills, a carousel. The people themes above supply the rest. Catch runs point on the social planning and execution, with intern support as we scale. That is what keeps a real cadence honest instead of aspirational.
Objective 03
The year runs on the calendar.
Marketing should plan around the business, not beside it. One master calendar of every show, launch, and internal event becomes the spine everything else hangs on. Trade show season, G2E above all, is the gravity the whole year orbits.
Q3
Build up
Social system live. Booth and collateral finalized. Content pipeline stocked ahead of the show.
Q4 // G2E
The show
The flagship moment. Capture everything on the floor. It feeds content for months.
Q1
Convert
Work the leads and footage. Recruiting push while the brand is hot.
Q2
Regional
Smaller shows and internal events. Plan next year's G2E from the summit.
What I need: John owns assembling the full calendar, internal and external. It's the one input everything else waits on, and he's closest to it. Target: first draft within two weeks.
Objective 04
Who runs the engine.
Strategy and delivery are different jobs, and separating them is what lets the department move fast. The structure below is my recommendation. The designer tracks in particular are an idea to take to John and the team, not a decision, so this is the shape for leadership to react to before it goes anywhere.
FRACTIONAL CMO
Hunter // Strategy and governance
Annual plan, budget, brand governance, positioning, executive brand, vendor selection, and how this department is built. At arm's length, on retainer, not a salaried line.
Marketing Director
Delivery
John
- Runs the team day to day
- Calendar and campaign execution
- CARE initiative
- Spend authority to a threshold
Designer // proposed track
Brand & Print
Brittany
- Trade show and print
- Brand collateral
- Cabinet and product marketing, shared
- Scorecard and path to senior
Designer // proposed track
Digital & Systems
Edwardo
- Web and email
- Merch and brand systems
- Cabinet and product marketing, shared
- Scorecard and path to senior
Open role // JD ready
Motion Graphics
To hire
- Game promos and product spots
- Motion graphics and animation
- High-craft product content
- Animates, does not film
// still to validate with the team
Right now Brittany and Edwardo are both generalists, which means neither fully owns anything and neither has a clear path to grow. The idea is to move them off generalist and into tracks: one on brand and product, one on digital and content. Each gets ownership, a scorecard, and a real path to senior. I have not run this by John or by them yet, and I would not want to. This is a shape for leadership to react to, and if it is right, John and I take it to them together, the right way.
Objective 04b // the hire
How the video hire actually happens.
This is the one net-new role: a motion graphics specialist for game promos and product animation, the high-craft work that raises how everything looks. The job description is finalized. Here is the process from open role to producing.
Define
Job description finalized. Scope, output, and what good looks like are set.
Fund
Approve the role in the budget. Range is on the staffing tab, NC market rate.
Source
Post and network. Motion designers and animators, reel-first screening.
Hire
Portfolio and reel review, then offer. Target start ahead of G2E.
Ramp
90-day plan with defined deliverables. Producing promo and motion work by the show.
Scope, so we hire the right person: this is a motion graphics designer, not a videographer. They animate game promos and product spots, they are not out filming events. Day-to-day social capture runs through Catch and interns. Those are different skill sets, and the motion designer is the one worth a full-time seat.
Objective 05 // the engine's fuel
Run it like a business unit.
// the proposal
Let's build the budget together and check the temperature.
Right now marketing has no budget guardrails. That's the gap we were brought in to close. A multi-million-dollar company should run its marketing the way it runs any other unit: every dollar with a line, an owner, and a number to check it against.
I built a working model, attached. It's not a number to approve. It's a framework. You give me the revenue figure and the percent you're comfortable with, and it sizes every line live: staffing, ads, events, content, print, merch, and tools. Then we can see the shape of it and decide together what to fund.
A sample allocation, at illustrative numbers
These percentages are the starting point, not the answer. Events carry real weight here because the year revolves around the show calendar. We'll move all of these together once the top-line number is set.
Objective 06
What we check it against.
A budget you can't measure is just spending. Once the number is set, every line gets a target and we report against it monthly. At year end, two questions.
QUESTION 1
Did we spend it?
Budget utilization against plan. Under-spending is as much a signal as over-spending. It means we mis-planned or moved too slow.
QUESTION 2
Did we spend it well?
Cost per result against target. Leads, hires, event return, search coverage, social growth. The smart half of the question.
Everything else rolls up to those two. The full KPI list is on the last tab of the budget model, ready to take targets once the number is set.
To leave with
Four things to move this forward.
A revenue figure to model against
Even a rough range gets the budget real. Whatever you can share.
A read on the right investment level
What feels right for Valicy to commit to marketing, and who else needs to weigh in.
Support for the video hire
It is the unlock for everything social. I want to start sourcing before G2E.
Thirty minutes with Garrett
To gather the raw material for his search presence.
With those, I'll come back with a costed, sequenced plan for the year. The roadmap page stays the living version, and you'll get a one-page state of the union at the top of every month, so you always know where marketing stands without having to ask.