Blackthorn is a marketing strategy and consulting agency that helps established businesses improve how they are found, chosen, and trusted.

Our work brings together SEO, content marketing, local visibility, reputation management, AI search strategy, and senior marketing leadership. We help organizations make sense of complicated marketing challenges, decide what matters most, and turn good ideas into work that actually gets done.

Blackthorn was founded by Casey Curtis, a marketing and operations executive with more than 15 years of experience across B2B, B2C, ecommerce, healthcare, science, professional services, and multi-location organizations.

Senior expertise, built into every engagement

Casey has developed and led digital strategies for organizations including NASA, The Met, Fred Hutch Cancer Center, Insulet’s Omnipod, Dover Saddlery, Trident Seafoods, ThriftBooks, and many others.

Her experience ranges from grassroots campaigns built with limited resources to highly integrated marketing programs involving multiple channels, technologies, agencies, and internal teams. She has worked hands-on inside accounts, led major client relationships, managed multidisciplinary teams, advised senior executives, and helped organizations connect marketing activity to broader business goals.

That range shapes how Blackthorn works. There is no standard playbook applied to every company. The right strategy depends on the business, its customers, the market, the team, and what the organization can realistically execute.

Every engagement is senior-led by Casey. When a project calls for additional expertise or execution capacity, Blackthorn brings in trusted specialists from Casey’s network across marketing, business development, analytics, technology, HR, and operations.

Marketing expertise backed by operating experience

Before founding Blackthorn, Casey served as GM and EVP of Digital Strategy for a mid-sized digital agency.

She worked across marketing strategy, client delivery, business development, financial performance, service design, technology, employee development, and day-to-day operations. She helped build the systems and processes needed to deliver consistently strong work while keeping clients, employees, and the business healthy.

During her leadership tenure, the agency achieved:

• Average client relationships of more than four years

• Average employee tenure of more than four years

• An 80% reduction in the CEO’s involvement in day-to-day operations

• Significant growth in the size and value of client engagements

That operating experience gives Blackthorn a perspective most marketing consultancies do not have. A strategy is only as good as the organization’s ability to execute it. Strong recommendations still fail when ownership is unclear, teams are working separately, vendors are moving in different directions, or the available budget is focused on the wrong work.

Blackthorn considers both the marketing opportunity and what it will take to make the work successful.

Experience built for complicated work

Some marketing problems are complicated because of their size. Others are complicated because content, technology, teams, and competing priorities have accumulated for years. NASA’s Science Mission Directorate had both.

Casey led the SEO strategy behind the consolidation of more than 600 NASA websites into a more cohesive digital ecosystem. The work went far beyond keyword research. It meant evaluating an enormous content footprint, understanding how people searched for complex scientific information, shaping a clearer information architecture, protecting existing organic visibility, and aligning stakeholders across multiple programs and technical teams.

That experience continues to shape how Blackthorn approaches complex marketing work today. Whether a business has six locations or hundreds of websites, the fundamentals are the same: understand what people need, bring order to the complexity, protect what is already working, and give the organization a practical path forward.

What working with Blackthorn feels like

Blackthorn is a good fit for organizations that want senior thinking without unnecessary theater.

We ask questions, look closely at the work already in motion, and identify where strategy, execution, or ownership is breaking down. Recommendations are grounded in business value, available resources, and what can reasonably be accomplished.

Casey is comfortable in the weeds, in the boardroom, and in the slightly awkward meeting where everyone knows the current plan is not working but nobody has said it yet.

Clients can expect clear thinking, honest recommendations, and an experienced partner who is willing to address the difficult part of the problem. If an investment makes sense, we will explain why. If something is unlikely to produce enough value to justify the time or expense, we will say that too.

Marketing is the focus. Operations is part of the advantage.

Blackthorn primarily helps established companies grow through SEO, content marketing, local SEO and reputation management, AI search strategy, and fractional marketing leadership.

We also advise agency owners on service design, delivery, systems, profitability, business development, and the employee experience. Most people do not start an agency because they dream of spending their days untangling resourcing models, inconsistent deliverables, and mysterious margin problems. Casey has done that work and knows how much easier an agency becomes to run when the fundamentals are sound.

The two sides of Blackthorn are closely connected. Strong marketing creates demand. Strong operations make it possible to deliver on what the marketing promises.

Why Blackthorn?

The Blackthorn tree is known for its resilience, protective qualities, and ability to grow in difficult conditions.

Those qualities reflect what we want our work to do. Growth matters, but it should not come at the expense of clarity, stability, or the people responsible for making it happen. Good strategy should help an organization become more effective and less dependent on constant urgency or individual heroics.

Blackthorn exists to help businesses solve difficult problems, build stronger foundations, and create growth they can actually support.