Marketing Strategist - Contract / Project-Based | $3,000–$7,500 initial engagement

Project-Based Marketing Strategist$3,000–$7,500 initial engagement
About Chief
Chief provides valuation and Quality of Earnings services for small-business acquisition financing. Our wedge is helping banks, lenders, and business development officers get better financial intelligence on the businesses they’re financing. We’re also launching Bad Apple, a book focused on small-business acquisition finance risks.
The Opportunity
We’re looking for a senior marketing strategist to take that existing book strategy and integrate it into a broader marketing strategy for Chief. The goal is to connect Bad Apple → market intelligence → lender audience → trust → valuation & QoE demand → Chief. We’re not looking for a social media manager or someone to simply produce content. We need someone who can look at our product, audience, brand, book, and existing expertise and develop a cohesive strategy for reaching banks, lenders, and business development officers.
You’ll help us determine:
Who we should be targeting and what we should say
How Bad Apple and Chief should work together
How LinkedIn, email, podcasts, speaking, partnerships, and other channels fit together
How we build credibility with lenders before asking them to buy
How thought leadership ultimately creates demand for valuation and Quality of Earnings
What should be executed internally vs. outsourced
The ideal outcome is a strategy that can be handed off to an execution-focused person. We’re also open to an ongoing relationship where we sync quarterly to review results and refine the strategy, or to having you execute parts of it yourself if your pricing makes sense.
What success looks like
We want to build Bad Apple into a trusted intelligence brand around small-business acquisition finance while establishing Chief as the company lenders think of for reliable valuation and Quality of Earnings work.
Success could include:
5,000+ Bad Apple book sales
A growing audience of lenders and M&A professionals
A strong LinkedIn presence and future newsletter
More podcast and speaking opportunities
Increased credibility and relationships with banks and lenders
Qualified conversations and demand for Chief’s valuation and QoE services
A repeatable marketing strategy that compounds over time
Who we’re looking for
You’re a senior marketer or strategist who understands B2B financial services, thought leadership, and demand generation. Experience in banking, lending, fintech, M&A, or another complex B2B market is a major plus. We care more about what you’ve actually built than your résumé.
How to apply
Please send:
Results: 2–3 examples of similar brands, companies, or experts you’ve helped grow + results
Proposal & Pricing: A few bullets outlining how you’d approach Chief + Bad Apple.
Sample deliverable: A relevant example of your strategic work, such as a positioning, marketing, content, audience, or campaign strategy.
Compensation
We expect the initial engagement to be a $3,000–$7,500 fixed-fee strategic project, depending on scope. After the initial project, we’re open to either a quarterly strategic advisory relationship or an ongoing strategy + execution engagement at an agreed monthly or project-based rate. We’re looking for someone who can understand the business quickly, give us a strategy we can actually execute, and help us build a marketing engine that compounds.

Work arrangement
No