I’m a veteran digital marketing and technology consultant who serves as a senior strategist for Converseon, a social listening company driven by AI. I’ve worked with many Fortune 500 clients, including Walmart, 3M, Dow Chemical, IBM, Allstate, Pearson, and many more. 

I designed groundbreaking software using machine learning and natural language processing, as the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of SoloSegment. This followed my 30-year career at IBM, rising to Distinguished Engineer, an executive-level technical position. 

I held various roles at IBM, including eight years at IBM’s customer-facing website, ibm.com, most recently as the Manager of ibm.com Web Experience, where I led 65 information architects, web designers, Webmasters, programmers, and technical architects around the world.

I hope to have the opportunity to help you in similar ways. If you’re interested in talking to me about a consulting opportunity with your company, I’d love to hear from you, so please contact me.

”Mike joined our MatchPoint team in the early stages of product development. We believed that his expertise in search technology would help guide the development of MatchPoint’s contextual search algorithms. And we were right. But, even more valuable than his technical contribution was the practical business judgment that Mike brought to bear on MatchPoint’s evolution. He has contributed to all phases of the MatchPoint project, from user interface to launch strategies and marketing, and has become an invaluable, and valued, member of the team.” 

– John Victor, President of eNR Services

Core consulting Areas

Digital Marketing Consulting

When people learn that I am a digital marketing consultant, they often ask, “What kind of consulting do you do?” I sometimes surprise them with my answer: “I help companies make money from their marketing investments.” That’s usually not the answer that they are expecting, which is OK with me.

Too often, consultants answer that question by explaining what they know. And yes, I know search marketing, and social media marketing, and web analytics, and AI—the list keeps growing as digital marketing keeps growing. But knowledge isn’t enough. What’s really important is the ability to analyze your organization and help you identify what’s missing.

For some companies, they know exactly what to do, but they don’t know how to get everyone in their large organization to do what’s needed. That’s a problem I’ve solved while working for IBM and with many other large clients. Other companies need technical advice in search, social, or their web usability. Still others need to integrate all of their digital marketing programs into a cohesive and measurable system that helps them continuously improve. 

My consulting centers on:

  • AI Transformation. The possibilities of AI for your business are so powerful, that it’s time to change the way you think about your work. Business leaders must approach AI adoption as they do other types of business transformations. It’s not about the technology—it’s about you, your business, and how you can make your marketing shine.
  • Creating a Listening Organization. Social media creates new opportunities for listening to customers at very low cost. Learn more about your customers than ever before.
  • Attracting Traffic to Your Site. I “wrote the book” on search marketing and I help companies worldwide to draw visitors to their website through search, social media, and other techniques at the lowest possible cost.
  • Maximizing Your Digital Marketing Value. Most companies have no experience with direct marketing and can’t determine how to measure the value of their site, especially when your sales occur offline. I help clients to use their analytics and testing capabilities to improve your marketing value by increasing your marketing’s persuasiveness. My experience at IBM and with Fortune 500 clients can be easily applied to any company’s marketing program.
  • Applying Advanced Technology to Improve Website Marketing. Many websites are unable to make use of web analytics data, unable to personalize their site, or suffer from poor results from their site search engine. They also find it difficult or impossible to update the site frequently or to determine the value of IT investments. By taking a business approach to these problems, I can help determine the ROI of such projects and advise on agile development techniques that keep projects short and costs low.
  • Improving Large Websites. My experience with IBM taught me that big websites are different. Larger organizations have different challenges to coordinate their resources with policies and other corporate governance to make sure that all employees execute the improvement plan. In addition, corporate cultures are critical in assessing the right steps to improve web performance. I spent decades increasing conversions on IBM’s large website—let’s do the same for you. 

For more information on me, check out my full bio. If you’re interested in talking to me about a consulting opportunity with your company, I’d love to hear from you, so please contact me.

EXPERT WITNESS AND EXPERT SERVICES

I’ve been an expert witness in cases for plaintiffs and defendants and also served as an industry expert for market analysts and investors. I serve legal and financial services clients who need an expert in any of the following areas:

  • Digital marketing, especially search marketing, social media, web analytics, and return on investment.
  • Software, especially web and digital technology, search technology, natural language processing technology, AI, agile/lean development processes, and software patents.

I spent three decades at IBM, retiring in 2008 as a Distinguished Engineer, an executive-level technical position held by fewer than 400 people. I have been granted 12 U.S. patents, I was on IBM’s Patent Review Board from 2006 to 2008, and I frequently evaluated patents central to IBM’s business interests. During my tenure at IBM, I spent eight years managing ibm.com, leading a team of 65 information architects, programmers, and web designers, pioneering agile development techniques. Other projects included developing search technologies, such as the first commercial linguistic search engine, and introducing automatic categorization technology.

I am certified as a Distinguished IT Specialist by The Open Group and as a Web Analytics Specialist by Data Shaping. You can see all my credentials here.

I am the co-author of the best-selling Search Engine Marketing, Inc., now in its Third Edition, the co-author of Outside-In Marketing, and sole author of the acclaimed Do It Wrong Quickly. I have extensive professional speaking experience, including corporate training and have taught at multiple universities. I speak internationally to many different types of audiences, both technical and non-technical.

I provide professional expert witness consulting services. I have written reports, been deposed, and reviewed exhibits and affidavits. My litigation work is thorough and unbiased, and my professional speaking experience ensures that I am comfortable explaining technical information to non-technical audiences. I also earned the Certified Speaking Professional designation by the National Speakers Association.

I also provide industry consulting to financial analysts in the field of digital marketing and AI. I often provide insights into industry behavior to allow analysts to form judgments about market trends.

For more information on me, check out my full bio. If you’re interested in talking to me about expert witness or other expert services, I’d love to hear from you, so please contact me.

SOFTWARE PRODUCT MANAGEMENT CONSULTING

As technology has become more and more important to businesses of every kind, software product management has grown in demand. I’m a certified product manager through Pragmatic Institute and I have served as a product manager for multiple IBM products over the years. If you’re not sure whether you need any consulting on product management, ask yourself these questions:

  • Is your business highly dependent on custom software? Whether the software is being developed by your internal team or by a vendor to your specifications, you are responsible for how it works. I can help you make sure that you are spending your resources wisely.
  • Are you sure that the software solves the problem that you have? I am experienced in lean development, a technique that quickly determines whether software meets its business purpose, before you’ve spent a lot of time developing the wrong thing.
  • Is your technology team moving fast enough? I am an expert in agile development techniques, which streamline software development processes and place them under the control of the business team, so software is created, tested, and put to use faster than with older approaches.

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you might need my help. As an IBM Distinguished Engineer, I regularly turned around poorly-performing software projects and helped the existing team reach new levels of success. I hope to put my technical and business experience at IBM and with my clients to work for you, too.

For more information on me, check out my full bio. If you’re interested in talking to me about a consulting opportunity with your company, I’d love to hear from you, so please contact me.

Website Search Consulting

I’ve spent most of my career on search consulting, including developing search engines and serving as product manager for IBM’s search engine software product. But my most important experience is improving search results for ibm.com’s site search engine, and doing the same for other clients, most notably through my work as Chief Product Officer at SoloSegment, where we transformed site search for companies as large as John Deere.

Website search is not, at its heart, about technology–it’s about helping customers find what they are looking for. Because if they can’t find it, they can’t buy it.

It’s sad but true that most website search experiences are lacking. People love to hate the search engines, but the truth is that the search technology is typically fairly good. It’s everything else that we miss:

  • We don’t know what words people are searching for
  • We don’t have the content people are looking for
  • We don’t know how to get the right content to show up in the search results

It’s the management of the search experience, rather than the technology, that is typically the difference between a good site search experience for your customers and of a disappointing one. And remember, when they are disappointed, they go somewhere else to buy.

If you’re leaving sales on the table with a less-than-stellar site search experience, I’d love to help. If you’re interested in talking to me about a consulting opportunity with your company, I’d love to hear from you, so please contact me.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CONSULTING

Until recently Artificial Intelligence was a little-known specialty, but I’ve been working in this area since the 1980s. Suddenly, AI is the new hot area, so after 40 years I am an overnight success.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is an umbrella term for a broad range of AI techniques that help computer programs “understand” text. Most of my work in AI has been in NLP. Some uses for NLP include:

  • Part-of-speech analysis. Sometimes, it can be extremely helpful to know the difference between a noun and verb. NLP can identify each word’s part of speech in dozens of national languages.
  • Entity extraction. Knowing a word is a noun isn’t always enough. It can be very important to identify a word as a name of a company, or a city, or the name of a person, or a place. Entity extraction can pull those words out of running text and identify exactly what kind of proper noun they are.
  • Sentiment analysis. It’s one thing to find text that mentions your company, but is it a positive or negative opinion? Sentiment analysis tells you.

Over my career, NLP has undergone a huge shift from being based completely on linguistic rules to adding great reliance on machine learning algorithms that provide for more accurate answers. More recently, generative AI produces text that is as readable as that of a human author, but has its own risks.

NLP technology has many uses for businesses–everything from identifying your brand’s popularity in social media to automatically processing resumes for job seekers. Some uses for NLP identify sales leads to increase revenue, while other uses focus on reducing the costs of jobs that human beings had to perform. I also have lots of experience with human-in-the-loop NLP systems, where the technology does 70% of the job and humans clean up the parts that computers don’t yet do well.

If you have lots of text that you think a computer could analyze, I’d love to help. If you’re interested in talking to me about a consulting opportunity with your company, I’d like to hear from you, so please contact me.

EXECUTIVE AND CAREER COACHING

I’ve had many years of experience coaching business people to improve their careers, but was at one time reluctant to bill myself as an “executive coach” or a “career coach” because it sounds a little too fluffy to me. I’m not the kind of person who will make you feel better about yourself if you’re not succeeding. The definition of success is driven entirely by what you say you want–if it’s work-life balance, that next promotion, to change careers or simply improve your performance–you decide what success looks like for you.

But trust me to hold you to it and to point out when you’re sabotaging yourself by not actually following through with what you say you want. Sometimes, that’s because you really don’t want what you profess to want, and other times it’s because you’re struggling to blaze a new pathway to get where you need to go.

No matter. I’ve worked with hundreds of folks over the years to help them get where they really want to go. Much of my coaching was done on the job at IBM. I retired from IBM in 2008 as a Distinguished Engineer, so I have vast experience in helping technical and marketing people with their careers. And a Distinguished Engineer is an executive-level technical position at IBM, so I’ve had my fair share of working with executives and prospective executives, too.

Since leaving IBM, I’ve worked with many executives as part of the other consulting work I do, mainly in digital marketing and AI. So that’s another reason that I shy away from the fluffy aspects of coaching: because I believe that coaching is best done when your coach understands the job that you do. That’s why I specialize in coaching people in technical and digital marketing jobs, and people in the technology industry. That’s what I know.

Alan Saporta, a VP of Technology and an expert on mentoring, offered some kind words about my impact:

“Simply put, Mike Moran has had the greatest professional impact on my career anyone could ever have had. Over the years of my continuing to seek his advice I’ve found that he possesses an innate sense of just the right questions to ask and when to ask them. He partners with me to get to the underlying truth. He challenges and enlightens. He is an authentic, patient and artful coach. I look forward to each and every one of our conversations.”

Angie Brown of ABBrown Analytics shared,

“I’m 2 weeks into my first engagement as an independent analytics consultant, and just wanted to drop you a note to say thank you for the guidance and clarity you helped me achieve. I’m a ‘think-out-louder’ so having someone to discuss my concerns and questions with was hugely valuable, and being able to discuss them with someone with so much experience and industry respect was amazing.” 

If you think I can help you, I’d be happy to arrange a free session to see if there’s a fit. Whether you want to work with me directly or through your company, please contact me so we can get to know each other.

Contact me

If you’re interested in talking to me about a consulting opportunity, I’d love to hear from you.

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