John McKinney

I specialize in building and scaling marketing teams that drive results. At my current role, I built the marketing function and team from the ground up, leading the department to success. Previously, at an agency, I doubled the employee count, hiring and managing a high-performing team of marketers. I’ve also consulted brands on structuring teams with the right mix of FTEs and contractors to align with business goals, ensuring the right roles and talent are in place for sustained growth.

I specialize in crafting and refining Go-To-Market (GTM) strategies that drive measurable results. With extensive experience launching brands and expanding into new industries. My proven GTM playbook covers every facet of strategy—market research, positioning, messaging, and execution—ensuring alignment between sales, marketing, and customer success. Let’s create or battle-test your GTM strategy for sustainable growth.

With 8 years of experience in growth marketing, I specialize in helping businesses achieve sustained growth through data-driven strategies. By identifying target audiences, crafting marketing roadmaps, and leveraging tactics like paid ads, partnerships, and email marketing. Whether it’s strategic planning, execution, or optimization, I can help craft tailored solutions to meet business goals, foster innovation, and scale effectively.

With a decade of expertise in marketing automation, I specialize in transforming ideas into actionable strategies that drive results. As a former account strategist at a marketing automation company, I honed my skills in crafting seamless workflows and optimizing campaigns. For the past 8 years, I’ve been the go-to marketing automation expert at every company I’ve worked with, enabling teams to implement efficient, scalable solutions that streamline processes and deliver measurable outcomes.

I believe in the transformative power of a growth mindset—one that values continuous improvement and iteration in every aspect of life. By focusing on growth, challenges become opportunities, and failures are reframed as valuable experience. This mindset reduces perceived setbacks, fosters resilience, and drives innovation. I’m passionate about helping others embrace this perspective, empowering them to unlock their potential and see how growth can positively impact both work and life.

I’ve been thriving as a remote employee since 2017—long before it was cool. With over six years of experience managing fully remote teams, I know how to help individuals navigate distractions, stay productive, and balance life (even with young kids at home). I’m passionate about advocating for team members who are remote, ensuring they’re treated as equal contributors. I strive to create a culture where remote work is not just an option but a successful, respected way of operating.

User research is the foundation of effective marketing—data is your audience’s way of communicating; you just need to learn their language. The best messaging means nothing if it doesn’t resonate with your audience. Too often, brands fail to engage users as trusted partners. I can give tools that help systematically mine insights, from reviews of their own and competitors’ brands, to create messaging that truly connects.

I'm a verified Clickup Power User who started using Clickup way back in 2018 when it was first getting started. I love how incredibly robust it is for managing projects and tasks. I've used Asana, Basecamp, and many others and while many of those are really good, when I'm given the choice of project management tool, I choose Clickup every time.

ChatGPT has made my life so much easier. Beyond just the work it's able to handle for me, I use it extensively to battle test strategies and identify holes I'm not seeing. It allows me to run scenarios and so much more. It's an incredibly important tool in my tool belt.

The heatmapping and click tracking insights we get from Hotjar are so helpful. I've been using it to determine how effective our site and landing pages have been for years now.

By far my favorite Marketing Automation tool. It's easy enough to use that beginners can pick it up quickly while being robust enough that there are plenty of amazing tools for power users. The reporting and insights provided by our Hubspot are invaluable to our business.

I'm a huge fan of SEMRush, it gives incredible insight and allows for fantastic research into your SEO as well as your competitor's SEO. It's a tool we look at regularly to create improvement plans for our SEO.

I've been a Wordpress web developer for over a decade. It's such a powerful platform that makes building out sites a breeze. I've used it to build out sites for small community groups all the way up through SMB businesses and colleges.

I don't think I could work without Zapier. It makes connecting platforms and automating complex tasks between the apps a breeze. I love creating Zaps.