Opportunity

Create a common language for describing market dynamics or aligning teams on city-by-city strategy.

Axios Local expanded quickly into dozens of cities — each with different competitive landscapes, civic identities, audience densities, and revenue potential.

Leadership needed a unified strategic lens to answer foundational questions:

• What type of market is each city?

• Where does Axios have a natural advantage?

• Where should we double down, adjust, or rethink our approach?

• How do we tailor editorial, marketing and revenue strategy to local conditions?

Strategy

I built Axios’ first Local Market Typing Framework: a multi-dimensional strategic model integrating more than 200 internal and external signals to categorize each city into distinct strategic “types.”

This system combines:

• Local audience behaviors

• Competitive media landscapes

• Civic identity + economic drivers

• Professional influencer density

• Axios performance data

• Advertising + revenue patterns

• Market saturation + differentiation potential

The goal: give Axios a shared, strategic map of where and how to win.

Each city receives a data-backed “type,” paired with implications for editorial tone, product strategy, revenue narratives, and market-level decision-making.

Outcomes

📊 200+ signals synthesized into a single, repeatable strategy model

🗺️ 34 cities mapped into clear strategic types adopted by leadership

🎯 Provided the backbone for city-level strategy, from editorial priorities to positioning

📈 Informed resource allocation, advertiser framing, and expansion conversations

🤝 Enabled cross-functional teams to work from the same “market reality” for the first time

This framework became a central decision-support tool, helping Axios Local shift from intuition-driven planning to data-backed market strategy.

Process

Signal Identification & Data Mapping
Pulled data from LinkedIn, Census, local media ecosystems, Axios performance dashboards, ACV patterns, civic identity indicators and competitive landscapes.

Model Development
Built a weighted scoring system incorporating audience potential, competitive saturation, professional density, revenue readiness and differentiation signals.

City Typing & Profiles
Assigned each city a strategic type, with accompanying diagnostics: strengths, risks, opportunities, long-term potential.

Strategic Implications
Developed tailored recommendations for editorial tone, content mix, coverage depth, growth tactics and revenue positioning for each type.

Leadership Alignment
Ran reviews with Local, Growth, Product, Revenue and Editorial leadership to refine, validate and operationalize the model.

Skills I Applied

• Segmentation leadership

• Vendor management + methodological direction

• Mixed-methods research

• Strategic modeling

• Cross-functional alignment

• Executive storytelling