Head of Product Marketing · Athens · 2022–2024

MarineTraffic: turning one vessel-tracking product into four commercial products.

SECTOR

Maritime data and API

STAGE

Scaleup, acquired

MARKET

Global

ROLE

Head of Product Marketing

PERIOD

2022–2024

TEAM

0 → 4

COMPANY

marinetraffic.com

Data & API Maritime

The situation

High usage, low monetisation clarity.

MarineTraffic had one core product, vessel tracking, and an enormous, wildly varied user base. Ports, terminals and agents. Vessel owners, managers and brokers. Global traders and analysts. Photographers and enthusiasts. Everyone used the same product, and everyone used it differently.

Commercially that meant no defined ICPs, no differentiated value propositions, and no packaging logic. The company was not short of users. It was short of a reason for any particular user to pay more than any other.

01 · What this engagement produced

13 of 34 outputs

Research

Competition

Segment, position and price

Message

Launch and enable

Measure and maintain

Solid is what this engagement actually produced. Dashed is what it did not reach.

02 · The diagnosis

The product wasn't the problem.

The instinct with a single product and flat monetisation is to build more features. The usage data said something else: different users were solving completely different problems with the same feed. A port needed to know when a ship would arrive. A fleet operator needed to know where its own vessels were. A trader needed to know what the whole market was moving. Same data, three jobs, one undifferentiated product.

03 · The mandate

Build product marketing from zero, and turn usage into products.

I joined to build the function. There was no product marketing team. The remit ran from research through positioning to launch and enablement, across a portfolio that did not yet exist as a portfolio.

0 → 4

Team built

product marketing managers, one per product line

1 → 4

Products created

+30%

Enterprise pipeline

04 · When I arrived, when I left

When I arrived

When I left

One product

Four commercial products

No segmentation

Defined ICPs per product

Generic usage

A named buyer per product

No packaging logic

Pricing structured by coverage and fleet size

No product marketing function

Four PMMs, one per line

05 · What I built

5 workstreams

Four products, found inside one.

01Usage research and segmentationWho the customers actually are, from behaviour rather than assumption.

01 Research

Worked with the data team to analyse usage patterns across the base
Mapped behaviours to workflows, then workflows to buying triggers
Defined ICPs across ports and terminals, vessel owners and managers, traders and analysts
Separated the professional base from the enthusiast base, which had been counted as one

02Competitive intelligenceA structured view of a category nobody had mapped.

02 Competition

A fifty-question competitive grid across five direct competitors, every cell sourced
A twenty-company market monitor tracking traffic, keywords and social reach quarterly
Battlecards built from that grid rather than from opinion

03Productisation, the turning pointFour commercial products, defined by workflow.

03 Segment, position & price

Port Call Optimisation, for ports, terminals and agents
Fleet Operations, for vessel owners and managers
In-Transit, for cargo owners and supply chain
MT Central, for traders, analysts and enterprise users
Each with its own scope, buyer and pricing logic

One product, four buyers

Vessel tracking

One feed

Port Call Optimisation

Ports · Terminals · Agents

Fleet Operations

Vessel owners · Managers

In-Transit

Cargo owners · Supply chain

MT Central

Traders · Analysts · Enterprise

Same data. Four jobs. Four products.

04Positioning and messaging per productA different story for each, from the same underlying data.

04 Message

A messaging framework per product, split by user, influencer and buyer
MT Central's elevator pitch: "a single source of truth for a complete global picture of vessel tracking"
Personas defined down to the decision-maker: operations managers as users and influencers, ship owners as buyers, cargo owners in supply chain, construction, oil and gas and manufacturing

05Launch & enablementFour products are only four products if sales can sell four products.

05 Launch & enable · 06 Measure & maintain

Sales narratives and decks per segment
Demo flows per product
Pricing and packaging structure across the range, from a free tier to fleet and global coverage plans
A launch process the team reused rather than renegotiated

06 · The outcome

What changed commercially.

+30%

Enterprise pipeline

1 → 4

Commercial products

0 → 4

Team

Competitors tracked quarterly

07 · The judgment call

Creating products without building anything new.

The obvious route was to ask engineering for more. What the segmentation showed was that four products already existed inside the one, they just had no names, no boundaries and no prices. Drawing those lines was a marketing decision with a commercial consequence, and it did not require a single new feature to ship.

You do not always need new technology to create new products. Sometimes you need to decide who each one is for.

08 · What this proves

Five things, if you're deciding whether to hire me.

I find products inside usage data.

One feed, four commercial products, no new engineering.

I build the function.

Zero to four product marketers, one per product line.

I do the competitive work properly.

Fifty questions, five competitors, sourced and refreshed.

I price and package.

A structured range from free to enterprise.

I move the commercial number.

Enterprise pipeline up 30%.

Frameworks installed

Product OracleThe Half-Life MapLaunch TiersThe FiftyTrust MetricsThe Messaging Matrix