Growing up, I always dreamed of getting paid to do something creative. Over the past 10 years, through hard work, smarts, courage, and a little bit of luck, I've climbed my way out of my mother's basement, and turned into a well-seasoned marketer.
I was an early employee at a small tech company in New Hampshire called Dyn that today has well over 350+ employees. I helped start the Business Development team there with a few others, and morphed that role into a really unique marketing experience. The rest is history.
I've had campaigns featured on Mashable, Fortune/CNN Money, The Eagle Tribune, The Next Web, and more. I mentor for one of the Top 20 Startup Accelerators in the country, built several brands from scratch, generated millions of dollars worth of leads, and tens of millions of impressions.
Most recently, I co-founded a startup with a few friends in Boston with the goal of building a reputation graph called WhoQuest. We've been spending the past year working on finding product market fit, and building a sustainable community.
Today, I want to build a brand that can be the next household name for their industry. I want to do things that write the book, not just follow it. If you do too, feel free to connect with me.
Marketing Mentor @ I helped several startups in the 2013 summer healthcare accelerator with advice on branding, online marketing, business development tactics, and tips on how to make great digital first impressions.
I'm planning on getting involved in future classes. If you need help, email me! From June 2013 to Present (2 years 7 months) Head of Marketing @ Founded out of Flagship Venturelabs, WhoQuest was an experimental startup that helped people find others using crowdsourcing. Led WhoQuest’s growth acquisition, community, branding, and content strategy through two tranches of funding.
-Researched several verticals to find potential problems in the online reputation space.
-Experimented with several different forms of positioning for the platform.
-Built a marketing plan that helped generate thousands of users, and hundreds of thousands of visitors.
-Designed product tweaks that leveraged current users to build channels, including partnerships, social media, content, SEO, and media placement.
-Optimized landing pages to achieve an average 28% conversion rate for first time visitors.
-Wrote copy for all web content, including landing pages, in product, and bulk and transactional emails.
-Managed a successful college brand ambassador team with well over 15 students.
-Collected data and analytics from users to make improvements within the product, including user interviews, user testing, focus groups, and events tracking in Google Analytics.
-Oversaw a project to make community questions indexed into search engines. From August 2014 to August 2015 (1 year 1 month) Greater Boston AreaMarketing WhoQuest @ Spun out of Flagship Venture's lab, WhoQuest is a place where anyone can ask “who” questions and others answer about their friends. From August 2014 to June 2015 (11 months) Chief Marketing Officer @ Cruising into work everyday on an sleazy corporate helicopter blasting Kenny Loggins, I serve on the executive team for 11 person healthcare startup.
ChartSpan is a free iPhone and Android app that allows you to manage your health records like it isn't 1985.
These are some of the things I've accomplished there:
-Rebranded an untrusted healthcare brand (71%) into a brand scoring a 94% trust score.
-Developed a big picture marketing plan that included brand archetyping, targeting, user acquisition, engagement, and distribution.
-Masterminded our pre-launch growth strategies. Secured over 5000+ email sign ups with no product, and a very limited budget.
-Managed a brand that raised $1 million seed round in January.
-Hired and staffed a team of freelancers and contractors for various marketing projects.
-Average online traffic had a 371% increase, month over month.
-Created a Twitter music campaign on Mother’s Day that garnered hundreds of email signs up, reached 1.3 million impressions, 140 tweets, 90+ contributors, 50 + retweets, and over 4500 unique visitors to the website. All of this cost nothing except time.
-Ran partnerships, marketing alliances, and business development for product distribution with partners with thousands of members.
-Assisted with product vision, product roadmapping ideas.
-Conducted market research, forming focus groups and advisory boards to give feedback on product roadmap ideas. From July 2013 to September 2014 (1 year 3 months) Marketing and Promotions Specialist @ Ever want to come up with marketing stunts that makes someone like your brand? That's what I did for Dyn. I created, planned, and executed experimental marketing campaigns that helped bridge both online and offline audiences together.
When I first joined Dyn, it was a small 20 person company just branching into the B2B space. When I left, it was a 300+ person, B2B internet powerhouse. While I worked there, here are some things I accomplished:
-Piloted and designed the marketing blueprint for the sales team’s.
-Started the Business Development team with 2 others.
-Helped get Dyn into companies like Quora, StumbleUpon, Novell, LivingSocial, Salesforce, Tumblr, Yahoo, Github, NFL, UPS, Yelp, CareerBuilder, Hulu, WestJet Airlines, and thousands more.
-Brought in over $1.2 million in recurring revenue with various guerrilla marketing campaigns.
-Had campaigns featured in Fortune, The Next Web, The Eagle Tribune, TMCnet for various marketing campaigns' uniqueness and success.
-Increased event marketing ROI by 30%
-200% Increase on social media follower growth
-Ran several social media campaigns that reached millions of accounts.
-Helped manage a brand that raised a $38 million A-round in October 2012.
-Helped build traffic to Dyn's Top 10,000 Alexa Rank.
-45% Increased Attendance at Dyn's open house DynTini events.
-100% Increase on Banner Ad Clickthrough Rates
-Trained new hires from the Dyn marketing, sales, and business operations team. From May 2011 to January 2014 (2 years 9 months) Mentor @ After working as a startup mentor for the Iron Yard, I kept in touch and helped the founders and their marketing team with marketing advice hear and there. From March 2013 to June 2013 (4 months) Business Development Team Lead @ From June 2010 to May 2011 (1 year) Strategic Marketing Manager @ Marketing Strategy Consulting for the Kandessa Brand,QSR Buzz, a new, innovative, and thought provoking online magazine writing about Quick Service Restaurants in the Northeast. QSR Buzz focuses on innovative green initiatives, effective hospitality, and the ever-changing role of technology and social media.
Responsibilities include:
-Manages all marketing related activities for Qandessa’s brand QSR Buzz.
-Developing and plansning marketing campaign to target quick service restaurant owners.
-Write copy to develop and retain both new and regular readers.
-Represents QSR Buzz at various trade show and restaurant related events.
-Design market research that is relevant to developing a target readership.
-Scheduled and coordinates social media marketing strategies.
-Explores potential business partnerships with others in the industry.
-Films and designs video/blogs for web site content.
-Manages all public relation and SEO strategy.
-Assist principal/president with business related decision making.
-Handles media planning for print and web advertising. From January 2009 to December 2010 (2 years) Business Development Specialist @ From January 2010 to June 2010 (6 months) Associate Producer @ I am in charge of bringing in and managing new and existing accounts for Mills City Studios. Mills City Studios is a production studio based out of Lowell, MA, and they focus on making high definition television programing/cinema, and television and web commercials for businesses. Anyone interested should send me a message, or a connection request.
My responsibilities include:
-Works with President to develop new business for the marketing production studio.
-Manages and implements social media strategy to increase studio’s recognition.
-Develops relationships with potential clients to ensure present and future business.
-Helps assist gathering sponsors for the studio’s television specials, including Fighters: Road to the Golden Gloves, which airs on NESN January 27, 2010 at 9 PM E.
-Designs and reviews company’s press kit to reach out to sponsors.
-Plans out potential new business plans to increase revenue.
-Develops new leads for sales associates to reach out to.
-Works with advertising and marketing firms to help assist them with their video/media services. From May 2009 to May 2010 (1 year 1 month) Viral Marketing Intern @ From September 2008 to June 2009 (10 months) Research Analyst @ Part of a research team conducting research about the cognitive strengths and weaknesses among high performing from Fortune 500 companies. Work will be used for a book written by Chuck Martin (Co-Author of SMARTS) and published by the AMACOMM in late 2010.
My activities:
-Part of a research team focusing on cognitive functions and how they impact work performance across a vast amount of industries.
-Contacted participants to take part in the research.
-Organized and designed surveys used for the research.
-Analyzed and reported results with a team of researchers From May 2008 to September 2008 (5 months) Cognitive Funtions of Consumer Researcher @ While attending the University of New Hampshire, I was a member of a large market research project that studied the cognitive functions of customers in the high-end electronics industry.
My activities:
-Conducted primary research on how cognitive functions of the brain impact consumer buying behavior during the purchasing of high-end electronics.
-Published by the Whittemore School of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire.
-Designed a research plan, and used guidelines in accordance to university’s Institutional Review Board. From January 2008 to May 2008 (5 months) Marketing Researcher @ While attending the University of New Hampshire, I was a member of a large market research project that studied the demanded technologies of future cell phones among college students (Generation Y). Work was published by the Whittemore School of Business and Economics.
My activities/responsibilities:
-Conducted university wide primary research regarding future cell phone usage and trends.
-Published by the Whittemore School of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire.
-Recognized by various international press outlets.
-Designed market surveys, tailored to gathering accurate, nonbiased data.
-Worked and analyzed data as a member of a research team. From January 2008 to May 2008 (5 months)
Bachelor's of Science, Marketing @ University of New Hampshire - Whittemore School of Business and Economics From 2005 to 2009 Pinkerton Academy From 2001 to 2005 Ryan O'Hara is skilled in: Guerrilla Marketing, Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Online Advertising, Social Media, Advertising, Digital Marketing, Salesforce.com, New Business Development, Marketing Strategy, Market Research, Public Speaking, Blogging, Team Building, Teamwork
Websites:
https://www.whoquest.com/profile/drryanohara/public/