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Marketing with heart + soul.

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  • LinkedIn

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    • Hi, I'm Jessica.

      I'm a strategist with 16 years of experience helping brands turn complex topics, knowledge, and ideas into marketing that makes people feel something.

      I've been the founding marketing hire at two startups and a senior content leader at mid-size and enterprise companies. Across those roles, I built content programs from scratch, ran demand gen, launched products, and wrote for executives, flagship events, and sales teams.

      Today, I work as a freelancer, offering senior-level judgment without the ramp-up time or a full-time hire. I deliver everything from big-picture content and messaging strategy to individual campaigns. But if you're looking for someone to help you crank out 'AI-at-scale,' keyword-stuffed, soulless marketing, I'll have to politely decline. I selectively use AI to speed up my process, but not to outsource my thinking.

      I believe with my whole heart that all good content starts with a compelling point of view. That's why I help brands tell stories that matter, share opinions worth considering, and show up authentically and unmistakably human.

      If your marketing needs a sharper point of view (and a teeny bit less jargony BS), let's get to work.

      → Send a message or connect on LinkedIn.

    • Portfolio

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      Annual trends report

      B2B SaaS | Financial services

      I analyzed the data and wrote Hearsay's 2024 Content Study, pulling out social selling trends and line-of-business benchmarks for financial services. I also surfaced the headlines that turned it into press coverage.

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      Corporate milestone celebration

      B2B SaaS | Film and television production

      I dug into the company's history and pulled out the most human parts of its origin story, because nobody reads an anniversary post for the timeline.

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      Customer case study

      B2B SaaS | Freight shipping and logistics

      I ran a gap analysis, and paper products had the best opportunity-to-penetration ratio, so that's where the case study program started. I interviewed the customer and wrote about how they cut manual tendering by about 85%. Sales now uses it in post-demo follow-ups and nurture flows.

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      Corporate thought leadership

      B2B SaaS | Financial services

      I developed an "Ask the Expert" blog series featuring subject matter experts across the organization. This one focused on five barriers to long-term social selling success. In-house experts are commonly one of the most underused assets a marketing team has, and this series put them to work.

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      Executive spotlight

      B2B SaaS | Film and television production

      I penned a profile of the company's EVP of Residuals, the go-to expert on one of the most complex pieces of production payroll. The people behind a brand play a major role in building trust, and this guy knows his stuff, making him the perfect candidate for a spotlight piece.

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      Data analysis digest

      B2B SaaS | Financial services

      I turned a dense study of 2.3 million AI citations into a digestible blog post for financial services marketers. I built the story around the finding that mattered most to them: firms can directly influence 88% of the sources AI cites.

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      Expert-led guide

      B2B SaaS | Film and television production

      I wrote a how-to guide on end-of-year production payroll cleanup, built from interviews with EP's payroll tax experts. I asked the specific questions that get the details right, then cross-referenced the legislation so every line would hold up.

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      Customer story

      B2B SaaS | Healthcare

      I share how a major medical provider removed friction from the patient journey, built from their marketing leader's session at Yext's Healthcare Marketing Forum. I led with results: a 36% lift in provider search usage and a 711% surge in online appointments.

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      Sponsored content

      B2B SaaS | Real estate

      The goal of this piece is to show, not tell — in a non-salesy way — why owners of top independent brokerages are excited about maintaining ownership of the business they worked so hard to build while handing off the operational burdens. It shows the real human benefits gained by the broker and agents, as well as their buyers and sellers.

    • Nice things people said about me

      "I initially hired Jessica as our content manager and editor-in-chief, but quickly saw her strategic capabilities and promoted her. She's highly collaborative, a strong writer, and really cares about the quality of her work."

      — Kris Vann, Founder @ Richuel

      Nice things people said about me

      "Jessica is able to capture any tone and voice while making any subject interesting and easy to understand. She revamped the communications strategy for our annual flagship event, resulting in a 40% increase in attendance."

      — Ragan Pape, Senior Events Manager @ Yext

      Nice things people said about me

      "I am in awe of how Jessica consistently wrote interesting and informative content week after week. She just gets it! She played a major contributing role to our marketing team and helped drive inbound leads to record heights."

      — Carole Smets, CEO @ Princeton TMX

      Nice things people said about me

      "From writing compelling blog posts to sequencing the right messages for targeted ABM campaigns, I could always count on her to deliver high-quality, engaging content."

      — Vivien Wang, Marketing & Comms Exec

    • Phew! You made it to the pitch.

      Competing with robots wasn't on my mid-career bingo card, but here we are! Luckily, I've got the edge. Here's what makes me a worthy investment:

      My marketing works (I got receipts)

      • Early hire at a SaaS startup that reached unicorn status
      • Contributed $1.6M in ARR via a direct mail campaign
      • Built a program that captured 600 inbound MQLs/month
      • Content audit → narrative refresh → 30% traffic lift
      • Grew event reg by 40% with a revamped comms strategy
      • Operating Jessica Cates Creative since 2017
      • Supported a long-term client for 8 years (+ counting)

      Complicated is my comfort zone

      I've written about film and TV residuals management, real estate regulations, freight tendering, sales and use tax, and marketing compliance for financial services and healthcare organizations. If your product takes a 45-minute phone call and links to multiple .gov websites to explain, requires compliance and legal review, and you need someone who can write about it and make it make sense, today's your lucky day.

      Repurposing is my love language

      Hit the brakes on net new assets! You're sitting on a goldmine. That webinar no one rewatched is a blog series and a month of LinkedIn posts waiting to happen. I'll dig through what you've got and tell you what to refresh, reformat, and retire.

      Been there, shipped that (got the tee)

      I've been at this for a while, and I've already made the expensive mistakes. I show up with senior-level judgment at the ready on day one, no hand-holding required. Just point me in the direction of the brand guidelines, and set me loose.

    • Get in touch

      Questions? Ready for a quote? A good movie recommendation? You know what to do.

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