I lead your B2B marketing and show you which parts are paying off.

Mark Barrera in his hat

I'm Mark Barrera, a B2B marketing consultant in Austin. I lead search, paid media, content and reporting, and you work with me directly.20+ years in marketing, from PCMag, Mashable and Offers.com at Ziff Davis to the leadership teams at TrustRadius and Bluehost.

Book a callSee how it works

After our first call, I audit your marketing for free and send you what I find. Then you decide if you want me to do the work.

Congress Avenue, Austin
example-freight.com
Sample audit readoutMade-up example
Pricing page drives most demo requests from searchObserved
Best deals come from carrier partner referralsYou told me
Homepage names the category, not the problemObserved
How many buyers see you in ChatGPTUnknown
Brands I've worked withPCMagOsanoMashableTrustRadiusOnramp FundsBluehostOffers.comAragornZiff DavisNewfold Digital

How working with me works

Three steps. The first two cost you nothing, and if I'm not the right person for the job, I'll say so on the call.

  1. We talk

    A call about what you want to get done, what's working, what isn't, and who does the work today.

  2. Free

    I audit your marketing

    I do the homework and send you a written readout of what I find and what I'd do first. It's yours to keep either way. I don't need access to anything for the first look.

  3. A project or a retainer

    If you want me to handle the work, I scope it in writing. Projects run $2,000 to $60,000, from a tracking setup to a multi-month rebuild of a program. Retainers run $5,000 to $30,000 a month, from one channel to a multi-channel program I lead, with a first term of three to six months.

More on how I work, what the audit covers and how I price it

Inside the free audit

How do you sell?
From the call

What you tell me

You tell me what's working, what isn't, and what your team believes is driving pipeline.

Outside-in

I look from the outside

Your site, Google, AI answers, your ads and your competitors' ads in the Google, LinkedIn and Meta ad libraries, and how you report on all of it.

Comparison

I compare it to what you told me

What your team believes is working, next to what the evidence shows.

Readout

You get a written readout

Each finding is labeled observed, you told me, or unknown, with what I'd do first.

Call notesMade-up example

What you can hand me

People usually call me when a program has stalled, when a working program needs to grow faster, or when nobody agrees on which numbers to trust. Start with one program or hand me the whole thing. The audit tells us which makes sense.

Project · $2,000 to $60,000

One program to improve or expand

A defined job in one area, such as search and AI discovery, paid acquisition, the content buyers rely on, or peer reviews and customer evidence. Before we start, we agree on what will change and how we'll measure it.

What you get
  • A plan built from the audit
  • The work itself, done with your team
  • A fixed fee, agreed in writing up front
Project · $2,000 to $60,000

A problem that crosses several parts of marketing

Leads go up while useful sales conversations fall, or a website rewrite keeps stalling and nobody can say why. I go through the campaign data, CRM records and pages involved, then recommend changes and help make them.

What you get
  • Interviews with sales, marketing and leadership
  • Inside access to your CRM, ad accounts and analytics, which the free audit doesn't use
  • A written answer and the first moves to make
Retainer · $5,000 to $30,000 a month

Ongoing marketing leadership

I take responsibility for an agreed part of marketing as a fractional growth leader. I work with your staff and outside partners, make the decisions we've agreed are mine, and stay with the work while the results come in.

What you get
  • Regular time with your team and leadership
  • A monthly report that says what changed and why
  • Help hiring your own marketing team when it's time

I'm not the right fit if you need a large team producing volume, such as dozens of ads or articles a week. An agency is built for that. When I'm the right fit

What my monthly report sounds like

The same month of data, written up two ways.

"Organic visits rose 12%, mostly to blog posts that don't lead to demos. Demo requests from search were flat. I'm moving two writers onto comparison pages in November."My report (made-up example)

What people say about working with me

From the outset Mark has demonstrated an ability to bring structure in his areas of ownership and lay out a clear plan for achieving stated outcomes.
B2B marketing leaderFrom a written review of my work
He has brought clarity to the changing landscape of B2B buying behavior, challenging the team and leadership to think differently about how we go to market and how we measure the efficacy of our investments.
B2B marketing leaderFrom a written review of my work
Mark manages to combine technical skills, business savvy, customer-facing prowess, and people leadership all in one. He's got domain expertise in spades, crushes goals, builds great teams.
Megan HeadleyLinkedIn recommendation
He is excellent at client service, has a deep understanding of what works and doesn't work, has been hands on in his approach and can quickly cut through the BS.
Sean JacksonCEO at OnKey. LinkedIn recommendation
He understands the business as a whole and how the nuts and bolts build up to it.
Jeffrey L.Now at Google, reported to Mark. LinkedIn recommendation
Mark is a top notch SEO strategist and was essential in our web turnaround project.
Andrew HarschSpinSci, a former agency client. LinkedIn recommendation

You work with me directly

There's no account manager and no handoff to a junior team. I don't bring a freelancer bench, so the person on the call is the person doing the work.

20+Years leading marketing
~50Team I grew from a handful at Newfold
2013Sold my agency to BuzzShift

Field Notes

Where I write up detail that doesn't fit on a services page. The guides each work through one decision, such as how to approach AI search or what goes in a board report.

DataWhat caused 53 pipeline problems I investigated this year26 came down to a number that was wrong. The first explanation was right once.
MeasurementHow much AI-driven demand does referral tracking miss?The referral report made AI look small. Customer answers pointed somewhere else.
ReportingWhen the lead plan is on track and revenue isn’tLeads ran about 20% over plan while closed deal size fell by a fifth.
Paid searchCutting paid search spend when the board asks for itLowering budget caps cut the bidding signal by close to 90% in a week.

All Field Notes

Outside work, I'm happiest with time to fish, cook or get out on the water with my family. A little more about me.