Amanda Lankart
Marketing Operations & Program Strategy
Fort Smith, Arkansas
I make overwhelming operations manageable.
I come into companies where the work has outgrown the structure around it — too many priorities, reporting nobody trusts, marketing that can’t show what it produced. I keep what’s already working, cut what isn’t, build the systems and cadence that hold the rest together, and then either run it or hand it to your team.
Taking on two clients this fall. Owner-led and founder-led companies, where the person in charge is still close to the work. Advisory or hands-on, in Arkansas or remote. I especially like working with organizations whose work matters beyond the balance sheet — public safety, health, the environment, education, and the companies that serve them. That’s a preference, not a filter.
What I do
I take on a function and make it work.
Every job I’ve had has been the same shape. Someone hands me a function that isn’t working — or doesn’t exist yet — and I make it work, then make it survive without me. At the FBI that function was an enterprise training and communications program. At an agency it was marketing operations across several client accounts at once. Most recently it was the entire marketing function of a small intelligence firm.
The function changes. What it takes doesn’t. You have to know the work well enough to do it yourself, and you have to build the structure that keeps it from depending on you. Marketing is usually the work. Operations is always how it gets done.
Execution
Positioning and messaging, content and campaigns, SEO and email, product and pricing launches, brand and collateral, executive and internal communications. I execute rather than specify — and bring in specialists for heavy design and development.
Structure and cadence
A planning and reporting cadence. Project tracking with an owner and a date on every item. The tools, analytics, and integrations that make performance a fact instead of an argument. SOPs, workflows, and outside vendors briefed.
Continuity
Documentation, a written handover, and a briefed roadmap, so the function continues in your team’s hands rather than collapsing back to where it started.
How engagements start
Four weeks, fixed price, defined scope.
The First 30 Days
Fixed fee · Hard stop at four weeks- A written read on what’s working and worth building on, what isn’t, and what to do about both.
- A planning and reporting cadence, built and handed over — not recommended, built.
- A prioritized 90-day plan with an owner and a date against every item.
- A working session with your leadership team to hand it over properly.
This is a complete engagement, not an audition. You keep everything it produces — the read, the cadence, the plan — whether or not we ever work together again.
Every item in the plan gets an owner, and the owner can be yours or me. Some clients take it and run it with their own people. Others hand me the function and I run it, usually ten to fifteen hours a week, ongoing.
Both are normal. Neither is the default.
Record
What the work has produced.
An analyst-led intelligence firm selling to corporate security teams, executive protection professionals, and public safety agencies. I was the entire marketing function.
- Grew the site from ranking for 26 search queries to 201 in eleven months, with impressions up from 227 to 1,779 and organic sessions up 380% — no paid spend in either window.
- Re-aimed that visibility at actual buyers. The site had ranked for news curiosities; by the end its largest sources of visibility were executive protection intelligence, protective intelligence, and physical security intelligence.
- Published 34 pages and articles from a standing start, including fourteen Intelligence Journal pieces written for security directors and federal analysts who dismiss marketing language on sight.
- Coordinated five product and pricing rollouts end to end, each on a date set by the product. The tier restructure carried existing subscribers through a price increase with three unsubscribes across the entire engagement.
- Built the operating side alongside it: a master project tracker covering my work and the founder’s, the full analytics and email stack from empty accounts, an automated sync for paid subscribers, subscription-tier gating, brand guide and sales collateral, and outside vendors sourced and onboarded.
- Closed with a complete transition brief — systems, access, recurring maintenance, work in flight, and a prioritized roadmap — so the function could continue without me.
Integrated marketing for commercial construction and trades clients, working directly with owners, VPs of sales, and business development directors.
- Drove $8.6M in marketing-attributed proposals for a Southern California pavement contractor between January and November 2025, up 8% year over year.
- Grew that client’s inbound leads 151% year over year in Q1 2026 — 98 against 39 — with proposal dollars up 17% on the prior-year quarter.
- Ran a roughly 4,000-contact email program averaging 37% open rates against a 25–30% benchmark, and Google Ads delivering conversions at $93.30 apiece on modest spend.
- Built the lead tracking and reporting infrastructure that gave a Northern California client its first apples-to-apples comparison across two regional markets, and the dashboards ownership used to allocate budget.
- Coordinated sales, analytics, and creative across several concurrent client accounts, and established the planning cadence later adopted across two regional markets.
The Terrorist Screening Center, then the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group.
- Took a stalled enterprise training program serving 100 multi-agency personnel and 40 specialized trainers, redesigned its structure, curriculum delivery, and readiness metrics, and raised operational deployment readiness from 40% to 91%. The work earned the FBI Director’s Award for Excellence in Training & Professional Development.
- Designed and ran internal and external communications strategy supporting leadership alignment across a geographically dispersed workforce of federal personnel, contractors, and researchers.
- Redesigned a high-stakes operational program managing encounters with high-risk individuals, engaging director-level stakeholders across agencies to rebuild SOPs and workflows.
- Led the full transition to virtual training delivery during COVID-19 with no disruption to critical operational programs.
- Served as Special Assistant to the TSC Director, coordinating communications, operational briefings, and executive strategy across multiple intelligence community agencies.
Case study: eleven months building a marketing function
The numbers above in full, the query-by-query evidence, the five rollouts, and the reasoning behind how it was sequenced.
Read the case studyTurned an amateur operation into a professional organization.
Matt Helmkamp, Founder — Semper Incolumem
Background
Credentials.
B.A., English — Creative Writing — Texas A&M University
Next step
Start with a conversation.
Twenty minutes. I’ll ask how work moves through your company right now, and tell you whether I can help. If I can’t, I’ll say so and point you toward someone who can.
I also consider senior operations, marketing, and program leadership roles — in Arkansas or remote. If you’re hiring rather than contracting, say so and we’ll have that conversation instead.