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Case Study
Building a marketing function as the first in-house marketer
Organization
Idle Smart
Kansas City, MO
Idle Smart helps Class 8 trucking fleets automatically save fuel, protect batteries, and prevent breakdowns.
Role
Marketing Manager
Translate business needs into marketing strategy and playbooks with clear KPIs tied to business goals. Manage vendors and set strategy.
Objectives
Build a kick-ass marketing function in a tech-resistant industry:
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Strategy, Playbooks & Ops
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Website & Brand overhaul
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Establish GTM, CRM, & lead-gen processes
-- Branding & Website --
Transforming the Website from Detractor to Lead-Generator
Challenge:
When I arrived at Idle Smart, the website wasn't attracting the right leads and often created friction or confusion during the sales process. With no prior in-house marketing support, there hadn't been a translator between the technical product and the way it solved customer needs, so it lacked effective marketing copy.
My goal was to rebuild the site to attract enterprise-grade customers without an enterprise-priced upgrade.
Approach:
After extensive interviews and research, I wrote the content, mapped the flow, and built low-fidelity wireframes and mockups so a vendor could simply execute rather than create from scratch.
I found a local, highly collaborative team who helped rebuild the site and complete the brand refresh in under 90 days, including a full Wix-to-WordPress migration, with minimal downtime.
Former Website:
Updated Website:
Results — 1 Year After Launch
Results after 1 Year using a fully organic strategy paired with strategic PR initiatives:
~20 → 7.6
Avg. Google Position
<30 sec → 165 sec
Boosted Time on Page over 5x
+35%
Search Impressions (YOY)
+68%
Increase in Referral Traffic
10x
Increase in avg. inbound deal size
7.9%
Organic Conversion Rate
Expectation Alignment
Positioning Accuracy
How customers actually used the solution vs. how it was positioned.
Branding
Mind + Market Share
Distinction of brand and solutions to others in the market.
Value Gaps
Customer Communications
Internally perceived customer value vs. actual customer value.
Communication Strength
Internal Alignment
How consistently and effectively the team describes what we do.
Differentiation & Strengths
SWOT/PESTEL
Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and differentiators.
Culture & Values
Mission/Vision/Values
The team's core values and operating philosophy.
Process
The updated website and branding were built in tandem, and strategically built around the brand's ICPs, Buyer Personas, and updated analysis of the competitive landscape.
In order to establish the marketing fundamentals and positioning, I needed to learn the company and the product inside and out. I interviewed every team member and talked to customers directly to understand:
Building the Idle Smart Brand
Challenge 1:
Make the brand stand out without changing the logo.
The logo had been recently updated before I arrived. Because so many competitors in trucking use blues and greens, I wanted to make the brand as unique as the product without adjusting the logo.
Solution:
Layer the existing light blue/green logo with deep blues and cool-toned nighttime imagery; a distinct look that quietly signals the product works at night, while drivers are asleep. Pair with a sans-serif type system and high-contrast color use for accessibility.
Sample Brand Assets:
Challenge 2:
Balance innovation with trust and proof.
Idle Smart is a tech company, and a category creator at that, selling into an industry that's wary of new technology.
Updated Website:
Solution:
Incorporate technology with people's experiences
Make the site distinct from typical industry sites without tipping into "too techy," and make sure it aligns visually with the customer portal's existing UI.
Visit idlesmart.com >
-- Content Strategy & Engine --
Replacing Ad Spend with a Content Engine
Challenge:
Digital ads weren't producing valuable leads. They often had extremely low engagement and content wasn't aligned with the fleets we were targeting, so the leads we did get were poor fits. There was no one to capture what Sales and Customer Success were actually hearing from fleets and translate it into a digestible, jargon-free brief for our partners.
Approach:
Stop the budget bleed right away. Trying to create ads without reliable source material, briefs, clear goals, or an SEO strategy simply wasn't a viable long-term plan.
While not recommended by our agency partners, I paused ad spending temporarily until we had reliable, customer-centric product messaging, source materials, and a website that could support great ads.
Process
01
Get to know the company
Dig through historical product and marketing materials and communications. Conduct 1-1 interviews with everyone, from sales to the C-Suite. Interview customers, sit in on product discovery calls, and listen to sales call recordings. Conduct extensive online research and begin social listening. Use findings to create key materials.
02
Redirect ineffective ad spend
Pause aimless ad spend that generated poor-fit leads. Focus on building briefs and processes, and defining actionable KPIs linked to broader company goals. Shift budget from ads to rebuilding the website, organic SEO, and PR.
03
Build systems and Core Materials using customer pain points
Create Content Strategy and Playbook, Marketing Calendar, Content Tracker/Library, Content Request System, plus a working process with marketing partners. Define ICPs & Personas, Strategic Messaging Guidelines, target audience, positioning, and brand voice/tone based on learnings from data and interviews.
04
Amplify with earned media
Work with an expert PR firm to build brand awareness and credibility within the industry via a founder-and-company-focused visibility PR campaign.
05
Grow content depth and diversify channels
Diversify the types of content, breadth, and topics covered. Develop white papers, case studies, weekly blogs, YouTube videos and Shorts, emails, newsletters, webinars, etc., enriched by distinct brand and author personas.
06
Show up in the industry
Attend trade shows and events, and be present for industry holidays; create campaigns leading up to and following each major event and show off our attendance.
Results
Using a fully organic strategy paired with strategic PR engagements, the YOY results were:
7.6%
2x Avg. LinkedIn Engagement Rate
YOY
250%+
Increase in YouTube impressions and viewers
4
Well-known industry publications and 2 co-branded press releases
Press Wins
Jason Canon and Matt Cole x Jeff Lynch talk maintenance gains from reduced idling.
FleetOwner
Earned Media
Press release with a major industry player was shared in an article.
Thomas Watson x Jeff Lynch: How Idle Smart is revolutionizing idle management for trucking fleets
Jeff Lynch links automation to more uptime for food logistics fleets.
Content Examples
-- Product Marketing --
Making complex products easy to understand with simple, repeatable launch processes
Challenge:
Translate technical solutions into clear outcomes, and ensure Product, Sales, and Customer Success arrive on launch day with the same story.
Create GTM processes and comms plans with Product and Customer Success.
Approach:
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Create a shared GTM workspace and meeting cadence
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Product launch templates and repeatable GTM processes
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Determine key dates, activities, and timeline
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Develop GTM and enablement materials; ensure alignment and accuracy with Product before finalizing
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Q&A Session with Product to ensure the team feels confident in understanding and communicating the solution
Sample ICPs & Personas Template:
Sample Flyers:
Public Idle Smart Assets:
-- Sales Enablement --
Move Leads Through the Pipeline Faster and Boost Adoption
Challenge:
Arriving at Idle Smart, there was no documented lead gen process; when leads did come in, there was no clear way of handling them. HubSpot and Salesforce weren't properly integrated, and the data was disorganized and largely unutilized. Work with the Systems and Operations Manager to properly integrate our software and ensure accurate reporting. Marketing resources were few and far between, and many were inaccurate or outdated.
Approach:
Build a knowledge base, playbooks, snippets, emails and drip campaigns, host tracked documents, competitive battlecards, sales decks, participate in industry events, and set up automations and workflows. Built videos, playlists, and sales enablement resources. Build customized reports and Dashboards for Marketing and Sales.
Develop robust, easy-to-use tracking tools and frequent, time-relevant assets for every team. Create content request and management system. Set up AI sales and prospecting tools. Fix & build CRM HubSpot processes. Defined lead routing methodology, lifecycle stages and criteria, and attribution reporting.
Sample White Paper (Partial):
Enablement Videos:
All Videos
Enablement Tools:
Trade Shows:
-- AI & Operations --
Amplifying Impact with AI Skills and Tasks
Working on a small team means I need to scale my work without an increase in overhead. Using a paid Claude plan and integrations with my most-used tools, I build custom AI skills and workflows that multiply my output and help me spend more time doing what I love and less time executing repetitive tasks.
Here are a few of the tools I've built and use on repeat:
Brand engine
Brand Skill: Writing rules, five unique author voices, industry expert, SEO/AEO-trained, and structure rules, so drafts arrive 75% ready and always brand compliant.
Content ideation
Content Skill: Pulls the live Marketing Calendar, website, Content Tracker, Keyword Planner, competitor coverage, and returns content ideas and outlines ranked by saturation versus ownability.
Editorial check
Editor Skill: A skeptical self-editor built from dozens of recurring corrections and a strict set of writing guidelines. Catches AI tells and factual inaccuracies before anyone reads the draft.
Industry news brief
Automated Task: Scheduled bi-weekly - scans thousands of websites and industry publications, filtered for credibility and relevance, delivered as a 2-page scannable brief.
Competitive teardown
Competitor Research Skill: Analyzes thousands of sites and multiple categories of competitors, producing a fact-checked battlecard with strengths, weaknesses, and persona-mapped info.
Caption writing
Automated Task: Generates LinkedIn captions from the scheduled blogs for the month ahead, so the team can easily post content without starting from scratch.
Quick Thought...
While I have concerns about the sustainability of this technology, I can't deny its impact on our ability to scale work. Using Skills, Tasks, Projects, and storing knowledge across chats helps reduce the number of prompts required and hopefully generates less waste. Paired with effective prompting, and never using it to outsource actual thinking, I seek to minimize the negative impacts of the technology.