Paul Nicholson
Building Brands. Driving Growth.
I help companies make sense of marketing. Yes. The whole, big, scary picture. From branding to advertising to events to PR and earned media, web, SEO, and social. I can help you see how it all works together and, more importantly, how to tie it all back to your Sales, Product, and Services teams to give your customers the best possible experience and to keep your organization humming efficiently and working effectively.
I’m a marketing, growth, and sales leader with more than 25 years of experience across B2B and B2C companies. From building the internal strategy and structure to working on external messaging and campaigns, I excel at translating complex solutions into human stories that drive adoption, earn trust, and inspire belief.
I am a real ‘player/coach’ who can work as a 1-man shop to start, then grow the business, lead teams, and build organizations. I love working with early-stage companies and growing businesses to develop winning go-to-market plans, using data and insights to drive large-scale growth.
I’ve worked with enough businesses to know that each one is unique. Each challenge requires a new approach. But there is also nothing new under the sun. I have years of diverse experience to draw on, enabling me to creatively apply best practices and fresh approaches to ensure business success.
I love sitting down with business leaders to learn about their needs, wants, goals, and roadblocks. Then I put together a complete go-to-market plan. From tactics to resources to P&L forecasting. I make sure we’re aligned on goals, mutually understand the plan (as deeply as you want to), and then drive execution – with testing, learning, and accountability to goals along the way.
Experience Matters
There aren’t many areas of marketing that I haven’t worked in, as both a leader and ‘the one pressing the buttons.’
I’ve also worked for a wide range of business types and sizes, giving me experience and expertise that bring a fresh approach to solving tough business problems. (You can read more about my working style here.)
I am a generalist in the truest sense of the word.
Scale
Fortune 50 to Pre-Revenue Startups
Been Around The Block
Over 25 years in Marketing
Diverse Experience
B2B, B2C, and B2B2C Expertise
SERVICES OFFERED
Examples of The Work I Can Do For You
- Marketing Structure and Strategy: Ensure alignment with your goals, meeting you where you are today, and setting you up for the future.
- Messaging Deep Dive: You probably have more than one audience, each with different needs and expectations (users, buyers, influencers, support, etc.). We’ll make sure everyone in your company across the marketing, sales, and services teams speaks in a way that resonates with each audience, without introducing any dissonance if/when they hear messaging for another audience. Note: If you have more than one product, that gets another multiple more complex. We’ll create a messaging matrix to ensure effective communication across the board.
- Multi-Channel Campaigns: Find out what the right mix is for your audience, brand, budget, and goals: Ads, search (including agentic/AI), webinars, PR/Earned Media, events, influencers, analyst relations, out-of-home, print, radio, and carrier pigeons if it’s the right fit for your brand. We’ll design and lay out the plan. We can make sure execution happens, too, either working with your team or executing soup to nuts for you.
- Branding Consult: Is your Brand adding or removing friction? If you say “neither”, then it could be doing more. Does it speak to what your customers are looking for? How, where, and when you present yourself says as much as the words you use.
- Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): If your ICP has fewer than 4 criteria, is a list of demographics, or includes more than 20% of your TAM, then you still have work to do. Focusing your effort on the best customers for your current product and current company state leads to efficiency and success.
- Marketing Analytics: Do you know your CPA from your CPM? We cut through the alphabet soup and build human-readable, automated dashboards that set you up for long-term success. You’ll be able to decipher symptoms from root causes. I’ll also teach you how to use marketing results as a research tool to improve your product and sales processes (and your marketing).
For the past five years, Paul has been my go-to for anything and everything marketing-related. He’s worked across both B2C and B2B roles—from scrappy startups to large companies—and brings a strong mix of data-driven thinking and great communication skills. I’ve learned a ton from him.
Dr. Karl Zelik
Co-founder, HeroWear LLC
TACTICAL EXPERIENCE
What I’ve Done
- Multi-channel online campaigns (display, video, search, webinars, etc.)
- PR/Earned Media, Guest Bylines, Analyst Relations
- In-person Events, Trade Shows
- Content-driven email programs with more than 1 million emails sent per week
- Influencers, Affiliates, Podcasts, Radio
- Out-of-home, Radio, Print
- Partnerships, Distributors, and Reseller Programs
- Social & Community
BONUS: Experience managing IT (hardware, tech stack), HR, Bldg security, etc
INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE
Who I’ve Done It For
- B2B
- Public Sector (K12, HiEd, Fed, SLG) IT/Tech
- SMB/Mid-Market Tech
- Healthcare Business Services
- Educational Resources
- Industrial Safety Tech
- B2C
- National, Multi-location Restaurant Chains (Casual & QSR)
- Online Clothing Retail
- Children’s Media / Mobile Apps
PAUL ON A PODCAST
FutureFuzz invited me to discuss my strategies for building HeroWear as not only a new product and a new company, but as a new category. The ultimate challenge for a marketer!
Recorded Nov 2025
Published Jan 2026