Career & credentials

Victoria L. Shepherd

Marketing leader — healthcare & regulated categories

Marketing leader with 18 years building brand and demand programs, including ten years inside a major health plan. Experience spans healthcare, consumer apps, B2B SaaS, specialty finance, and e-commerce, with a focus on accurate claims, trusted brands, and measurable growth.

Download ATS résumé (.docx)Get in touch

Tampa, Florida · victoria@welcomeplacemarketing.com

LinkedIn — Victoria L. Shepherd

Professional experience

Aug 2024 — Present

Healthcare Success

Healthcare marketing agency

SEO & Digital Marketing Manager (Contract)

Lead growth strategy for a portfolio of multi-location healthcare organizations, aligning brand, content, web, and earned media to acquisition and engagement goals.
Grew organic impressions from 3.3 million to 3.8 million (approximately 15.2%) year over year, while managing click-through pressure from AI-generated and zero-click search results.
Own the path from first search to booked appointment; implemented server-side tracking to close attribution gaps left by third-party booking systems.
Ran conversion-rate audits across 17 client sites and landing-page tests that turned optimized pages into top-converting entry points.
Built a content brief workflow adopted by the content team, cutting a 46-brief batch from roughly 20 hours to 6 and setting portfolio standards and SLAs.

Sep 2024 — Present

Welcome Place Marketing

Independent consultancy

Founder & Principal Consultant (concurrent)

Advise executives and marketing teams on brand positioning, creative strategy, content, and earned media.
Direct paid search and landing-page strategy, pairing channel planning with conversion testing.

Apr 2023 — Present

New Caregiver

Consumer health platform

Co-Founder & Chief Marketing Officer (concurrent)

Co-founded a direct-to-consumer platform; own brand strategy, positioning, and customer experience end to end.
Built the content and lead-capture ecosystem around a decision most customers are making for the first time.

Jan 2024 — May 2024

Zyter | TruCare

B2B healthcare SaaS

Senior Director of Marketing

Led product and campaign marketing; partnered with product and sales on positioning and launch.
Implemented HubSpot CRM and built segmentation strategy to sharpen targeting and sales enablement.

Mar 2022 — May 2024

Insurety Capital

Specialty finance

Vice President of Marketing

Owned marketing for a specialty finance company serving Medicare agencies — website, sales enablement content, and conference strategy.

Nov 2021 — Mar 2022

Atlantic Training

B2B SaaS / e-learning

Marketing Director

Directed demand generation across email, landing pages, social, and content, owning the multi-channel calendar.

Nov 2020 — Oct 2021

Yes.Fit

Consumer fitness app (Inc. 5000)

Director of Marketing

Managed six marketing managers across brand, acquisition, and retention for a consumer subscription app.
Earned national television coverage for a nonprofit virtual race created with the Humane Society of Tampa Bay.
Built and ran the company's first customer experience team, owning onboarding, retention, and social service triage.
Drove a segmented review strategy producing a 4.6-of-5 rating across more than 300 reviews within twenty-four hours.

Feb 2011 — Mar 2021

Florida Blue / GuideWell

Health plan

Senior Manager, Marketing Strategy · Senior Manager, Social Media · Digital Content Strategist · Marketing Manager

Planned and ran 360 consumer acquisition campaigns across paid social, search, video, audio, direct mail, and broadcast.
Delivered 51% more inbound calls year over year on 48% less paid social spend; direct-mail calls +200%, paid search +24%.
Launched a telehealth campaign that lifted appointment starts 450%+, returning a $3.42 CPM against a $25.00 target.
Created a brand video that generated 82 million impressions, six earned articles, and an NPR interview syndicated 152 times.
Raised overall conversion for an urgent-care brand 27% year over year and built test-versus-control measurement frameworks.
Launched a medical-center brand into social and digital, generating 19 million impressions and 4 million reach.

Sep 2008 — Feb 2011

LinkShare, a Rakuten Company

Global affiliate marketplace

Digital Marketing Specialist

Ran paid search, organic search, and social for a two-sided marketplace connecting retailers and publishers.
Owned daily budget management and performance reporting against client sales goals; grew one client’s organic traffic 30% in two months and another’s conversions 78% over a year.

Core competencies

Brand & creative: Brand strategy and positioning; creative strategy; integrated campaigns; earned media and public relations
Demand & media: Paid social, search, video, audio and direct mail; channel mix and spend optimization; CPM, CTR and CPA; lifecycle and email
Digital experience: Website strategy and migrations; conversion rate optimization (CRO); user experience (UX); landing pages and funnels
Search & AI visibility: Search engine optimization (SEO); answer engine optimization (AEO); generative engine optimization (GEO); technical SEO; schema architecture; content strategy
Measurement: A/B and test-versus-control design; funnel and attribution analysis; Google Analytics 4; Looker Studio; marketing operations and SOPs
Leadership: Team building and hiring; managing marketing managers; product, sales and analytics partnership; agency and vendor management
Regulated practice: Compliance and legal review workflows; claims substantiation; healthcare E-E-A-T; brand governance

Industry thought leadership

Contributing writer — Search Engine Land (2022–present) and Search Engine Journal (2009–2023).
Editorial Board Member — Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing.
Speaker — Pubcon: AI search, generative engine optimization, and the future of organic visibility.

Published articles & speaking

Certifications

AirOps Distinguished Content Engineer — Advanced Cohort: Systems-Level Content Engineering (2026)

SEO & AI-search services About Victoria