We dig into your business
like it's our own.

Marketing Strategy & Fractional Leadership

Alkali has helped hundreds of founders and senior executives get more out of their marketing for more than two decades. Whether starting from scratch or building on a strong foundation, we combine refreshing creativity with data-driven analysis, ruthless prioritization, tech enablement, optimism and grit to drive quick wins and achieve long term goals.

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"Alkali has become my marketing secret weapon. I've now brought them into three companies, and each time they have made our business better." Matthew Zubiller, CEO, Your Behavioral Health

Services

Every Alkali project is unique. We collaborate with you to determine the ideal path forward, working with your existing team or bringing in our own trusted partners to achieve your goals. Common engagements are listed below.

"Alkali feels more like a member of our executive team than an outsourced marketing firm." Katie Edge, SVP, Abundant Venture Partners

Marketing Audit & Plan

We review your channels, campaigns, messaging, audiences, and how your team (and outsourced support) is working, often in less than a month. From there we build a plan that mixes quick wins with the longer term work that will help you grow over time.

  • Channel, campaign & messaging analysis
  • Audience gap identification
  • SEO, GEO & AEO audit
  • Quick-win prioritization
  • 6 to 12 month roadmap

Fractional Head of Marketing

We work with many companies that aren't ready for a full time senior marketing leader or want to take their time in hiring their next one. We fill that gap for months or even years, offering tightly integrated part-time support that feels like we're a member of your team.

  • Interim CMO or VP Marketing
  • Team hiring, mentoring & reviews
  • Budget & vendor management
  • Board-level reporting
  • Hiring your permanent lead

Positioning & Messaging

Our most brilliant clients often have the hardest time explaining what they do from their customer's perspective. We align what makes you special to what the customer truly wants. Then we help you flow it through all of your sales, marketing and internal communications.

  • Brand voice & story
  • Website & sales deck copy
  • Competitive differentiation
  • Audience & ICP research
  • Messaging frameworks

Launch & Campaign Marketing

Whether launching a new offering or targeting a new audience, Alkali can help you build and manage differentiated, cost-effective integrated campaigns that build awareness and engagement, and ultimately compel your target customers to take action.

  • SEO, GEO & AEO strategy
  • Nurture funnels & ABM
  • PR & events
  • Social media & content marketing
  • Paid search & social
"Alkali's marketing expertise, analytical approach, fun but authoritative style, and clear and proactive communication work perfectly for us. They have won over our entire executive team." Ryan Kennedy, Founder & Principal, Kickdrum

Selected Clients

We've launched software, sandwiches, rock bands and rock climbing tools. We've reached CIOs, school systems and supermoms. We've addressed healthcare's challenges from nearly every angle. Below are a few memorable engagements.

"I can't believe the progress we've made and the increase in leads we've achieved in such a short time." Kenny Ratton, CEO, Radiant RFID
Abundant Venture Partners
Fractional leadership gave the firm's health system alliance, venture studio, and portfolio companies access to continuous marketing and sales support and aligned communications.
Fractional Leadership
Aceable
Initial positioning and messaging for the platform, and later, analysis and go-to-market strategy as the company explored entering new verticals beyond driver's education.
Positioning & Growth Strategy
Expero
Refreshed corporate positioning, developed industry-specific messaging, and streamlined marketing and sales processes to better serve enterprise clients.
Messaging & Sales Enablement
Frog Street
Built the plan to take a highly regarded regional early childhood curriculum company national, growing beyond the markets where the brand was already known and trusted.
Campaign Development & Growth Strategy
HumanFirst
New positioning and continued leadership enabled a 5x increase in pricing, secured the company's first 7-figure enterprise deal, and directly contributed to a successful acquisition.
Positioning & Fractional Leadership
Kendra Scott
Developed SEO and content strategy to help a beloved Austin-born jewelry brand build the kind of organic search presence needed to become a high end household name.
SEO & Content Strategy
MapLight
Sophisticated branding, a new website, and internal alignment on messaging, mission, vision and values helped the biotech innovator prepare for a successful IPO.
Branding & Messaging
Nulo Pet Food
Interim CMO role, managing athletic partnerships, content and influencer strategy for a premium pet nutrition brand with a passionate and growing customer base.
Partnerships & Fractional Leadership
Quest Diagnostics
Built messaging, case studies, and campaigns around their analytics offerings, making complex clinical data services legible and compelling to healthcare decision-makers.
Campaign Development
Radiant RFID
Lead generation and sales enablement for an asset tracking technology company, driving meaningful increases in qualified pipeline in a short period of time.
Lead Generation & Sales Enablement
Rare.org
Built partner marketing materials designed to drive corporate engagement and funding for a conservation nonprofit working in some of the world’s most biodiverse communities.
Partner Marketing
Shipwell
Messaging strategy, ABM campaigns, and nurture programs for a logistics SaaS company looking to sharpen its positioning in a crowded and rapidly consolidating market.
Account Based Marketing
Twist Bioscience
Developed a new consumer-facing brand of rapid COVID tests for a life sciences company entering a crowded market with a high-quality product that needed to stand out on shelf.
Product Launch
VRBO
Created owner relationship marketing nurture and lifecycle engagement and re-engagement flows, leading to increased and simplified renewals for U.S. properties.
Nurture & Lifecycle Marketing
Your Behavioral Health
Helped a decades-old organization find and execute on “quick wins” while uniting multiple teams and processes into a single, unified and effective marketing organization.
Brand Unification & Leadership
"I brought Alkali on 'for a few months' to lead marketing. It took more than 2 years for them to convince me it was time to move on to a full-time hire. Their skills are broad, and their work quality and efficiency are the best I've seen, whether they are tackling strategy or execution." Chip Grant, Founder & Executive Chair, Watershed Health

Team

All of Alkali's marketers have led teams and driven strategy across a wide variety of businesses. We take on only a handful of clients at a time to ensure that you'll benefit from the undivided attention of committed and passionate senior leaders.

"Within weeks, Lauren was so effective and cared so much about my business that I came to think of her as my co-pilot in driving it forward." Elenor Mak, Founder & CEO, Jilly Bing
Lauren Arbittier Davis

Lauren Arbittier Davis LinkedIn

Founder & Principal

Lauren founded Alkali Marketing in 2006 to give small and growing businesses access to senior marketers who can both set strategy and dig in to do the hard work that brings it to life. She specializes in mission-driven marketing work, and is especially passionate about developing surprisingly simple yet powerfully differentiated messaging.

Lauren has held interim CMO and executive-level roles at Clairity, Nulo, Pinwheel, Planoly and Watershed Health, and was the first non-founder executive hire at Kinsa after leading marketing at Trilogy Software. She is also an avid mentor and advisor, a guest lecturer at Harvard Business School, and holds degrees from The Wharton School and the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering.

Strategic Account Directors

Our account directors each bring vast marketing experience to Alkali, and have worked with Lauren for over a decade. We cut our teeth leading efforts at both startups and large enterprises after classical training at UPenn, Columbia & UT Austin. We collaborate on every client, but each of us has a few areas of deeper passion.

"Alkali came in for a product marketing engagement, but their outstanding performance led to full fractional leadership. They are easily among the best consultants I've ever worked with." Andrea Coravos, Founder & CEO, HumanFirst
Susan Laves

Susan Laves LinkedIn

Marketing Audits & Sales Enablement

Susan thrives on digging into marketing and sales processes and figuring out how to transform them into an efficient, integrated lead generation and conversion engine. She loves the challenge of a B2B tech startup in a crowded space or a small to mid-sized company at an inflection point.

Leighton Hendrick

Leighton Hendrick LinkedIn

Technical Marketing & Analytics

Leighton's favorite thing is to "look under the hood" — website analytics, search and AI visibility tools, competitive benchmarking. She lives for the "a-ha" moment, lets data guide her to the most effective path toward a client's goals, and breaks down big challenges into a clear tactical game plan.

Nita Nehru

Nita Nehru LinkedIn

Product Marketing & Communications

Nita is passionate about taking technically complex or category-defining products to market: developing positioning that sticks, building the GTM infrastructure, and telling product stories that drive adoption. She loves the challenge of building where there's no playbook yet.

alkali

Let's see if there's chemistry.

"The Alkali team not only understands marketing, they understand the process of building companies. They are creative, strategic, and would be an invaluable partner to any startup." Chris Porch, Senior Operating Partner, Diversis Capital