Ben Harris
Strategy & planning
Where the leads come from. Positioning, funnel and a plan that fits the budget and team you actually have, not a textbook one.
Ben Harris. Marketing, Auckland, New Zealand.
Strategy, design, and code.
I'm a B2B marketer who also designs and builds the work. Strategy, design and front-end code, from one person, so ideas get out the door instead of dying in a slide deck. I run Cut the Waffle on the side, and yes, the name is a promise.
Strategy SEO & AEO Design Front-end 12+ years
- Now
- Author-it
- Also running
- Cut the Waffle
- And
- The Occasion Co.
Why me
I close the gap between sales and marketing.
Most marketing builds what a marketing manager thinks sales needs. I build what sales actually needs, the content and tools that help them win the deal, and I bring the SEO and GEO that fills the top of the funnel in the first place. Two teams that usually talk past each other, finally pulling the same way.
Proof
Who I've done this for.
In-house at two of these and the founder of the other two. Same job either way: make the marketing earn its keep, then be able to show the numbers behind it.
-
Author-it Marketing Lead -
FUJIFILM Design & digital lead -
Cut the Waffle Founder -
The Occasion Co. Co-founder
What I do
I cover three jobs at once.
Most marketing needs a strategist, a designer and a developer. I've spent years being all three, so there are fewer handoffs, fewer things lost along the way, and work that ships faster. Here's what that looks like in practice.
+ How I actually work
I started in data and print, moved into design, then into digital and marketing leadership, and picked up code along the way. That's why I can take an idea from a rough thought to a live, measured thing without a pile of handoffs.
I like small, sharp teams, quick feedback, and shipping something real rather than polishing a deck. If a job needs a landing page, a calculator and the campaign behind it, that's one person here, not three briefs.
SEO & AEO
Getting found in Google and getting quoted by AI answers. It's my day job at Cut the Waffle, and it's changing fast.
Content & copy
Plain writing a sceptical, technical buyer will trust. Short, clear, no waffle.
Interactive tools
Calculators, configurators and ROI tools built in real code. They rank well and keep people on the page.
Design & brand
Brand systems, proposals, sales decks and the odd building wrap. Illustrator and InDesign are home turf.
Automation & ads
HubSpot, Google Ads and LinkedIn, set up so the leads keep coming without me babysitting them.
Tools I live in
HubSpot 
Google Ads 
Google Analytics 
Illustrator 
InDesign 
JavaScript 
Shopify 
WordPress 
Webflow 
Figma 
Framer 
Notion ChatGPT Claude Selected work
Stuff I've made, and what it did.
A mix of B2B marketing, my own products, and one board game that got a bit out of hand.
Hire me 
This is where you hire me. SEO, GEO and AI setup for B2B teams, run by one person who also builds the work.
Case study 
One site went from 74 to 460 ranking keywords, with NZ traffic up from 36% to 85%.
Build 
Calculators that rank on page one and fire qualified leads straight into HubSpot and Slack.
Content 
One-pagers, brochures and decks that lifted proposal close rates by more than 50%.
eCommerce 
Product, brand, Shopify build and ongoing SEO. Page one for most of the range.
Free tool AI Visibility Check
A free GEO scorecard for any page, in one click.
For fun 
A hand-made present that ran away to a million likes.
What I'm on right now
AI changed how people search. So I built for it.
Cut the
Waffle.
My B2B SEO and AEO consultancy. It helps companies rank in Google and get cited by AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude, because a lot of buyers now ask the robot before they Google.
"Rank in Google. Get cited in AI. Stop waffling on."
500%organic traffic, Author-it 73×more AI citations
AI Visibility Check
A free Chrome extension I built for Cut the Waffle. It runs an instant GEO check on any web page and hands back a score, grading the title, schema, answer structure and the trust signals that decide whether AI will cite you.
78 See any page's score in one click.
Party trick
You can't arrange your way out of a messy AI context.
Shuffle these notes around as much as you like. While the files contradict each other and half of them are out of date, the model has nothing solid to stand on, so it guesses and calls it confidence. Structure has to come first. Press the button and watch what changes.
You What's our tone, who's it for, and what does the product do?
Model Honestly? No idea. I've got six conflicting brand guides, a product manual from 2017 and a folder called "final_FINAL". Ask me again once someone tidies this up.
Want one of these?
I build the AI engine behind your business.
The messy-to-model trick above is exactly what I set up for real: the context, structure and guardrails that make AI genuinely useful for your sales and marketing, instead of confidently making things up. That's a Cut the Waffle job.
The road here
From 120 million ballots to AI search.
Now Marketing Lead Author-it
I run the whole B2B marketing function. Pipeline, content, brand, sales enablement and product comms.
+ Read the full story
As Marketing Lead I own B2B marketing start to finish. The goal is simple: bring in qualified leads and grow revenue, while making sales' job easier and building trust with customers.
Day to day that runs from blog posts, LinkedIn and case studies to whitepapers, ads, landing pages, sales enablement, product and release comms, events and customer marketing.
Now Founder Cut the Waffle
My own B2B SEO and AEO consultancy. I help companies rank in Google and get picked up by AI answers.
+ Read the full story
I started Cut the Waffle for the shift to AI search. Buyers now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI before they click a blue link, so I help B2B companies show up in both places.
That covers SEO and AEO together, interactive tools, AI setup and brand context, and sales decks and brand systems. Recent results include 500% more organic traffic in six months at Author-it, and my own site going from 117 AI citations a month to 8,505 in seven months.
2025 Design Studio Manager FUJIFILM Business Innovation
Ran the design studio and led a brand refresh across every business unit.
+ Read the full story
I led the brand refresh across CodeBlue, Process Automation and Screens, pulling separate units into one clear brand.
I rebuilt marketing templates and proposal generators to help sales win more RFPs, and kept branding consistent inside and outside the business.
2021 Digital & Content Design Lead FUJIFILM Process Automation
Owned all marketing for the division. Website, ads, email, SEO, tools and events.
+ Read the full story
I looked after everything marketing for Process Automation: the website, Google Ads, email, a full SEO overhaul, business proposals and RFPs, infographics, interactive tools, lead gen, events and case studies.
The website work took New Zealand traffic from 60% to a steady 85 to 90%, with a big lift in organic leads.
2020 Co-founder The Occasion Co.
The laser engraving brand my partner and I started in lockdown. Still running it.
+ Read the full story
Amy and I started The Occasion Co. during the first lockdown in 2020, selling laser engraved gifts and decor. I built the brand and the Shopify store around a clean, simple buying experience, then handled SEO and ads.
We hit our six month sales target in the first month. We now rank on page one for most of our products and number one for a quarter of them.
2014 Designer / Programmer Orangebox
Sole designer and digital lead. Three Gold Pride In Print awards.
+ Read the full story
I grew from a communications programmer into the sole designer and digital lead, covering graphic design, internal marketing and multi-channel campaigns.
I moved us from one-off sends to fully automated campaigns in Mindfire, growing marketing emails and landing pages by 800%, and built and ran B2C and B2B sites in Pressero.
2010 Data Programmer Anton Group
Where the code habit started. Big data, bigger print runs.
+ Read the full story
I joined as a trainee and went full time in three months. I used PReS, Cygnus and Printnet Inspire for data and document work, handling up to 28 million mail packs.
The standout job was composing 120 million ballots for the Kenyan election, including documents for more than 2,000 councillors.
0%
more organic traffic in six months at Author-it
0×
growth in AI citations on my own site, 117 to 8,505 a month
+0%
higher proposal close rate at FUJIFILM after I rebuilt the system
0×
longer on the page after I replaced FUJIFILM's static calculator
The usual questions
Before you ask.
Short answers. If yours isn't here, the form below goes straight to me.
+ What does Ben Harris do?
I'm a B2B marketer in Auckland who also designs and builds the work. Strategy, copy, design and front-end code from one person, so there are fewer handoffs and things actually ship. I'm Marketing Lead at Author-it and I run Cut the Waffle, my own B2B SEO, GEO and AI-setup consultancy.
+ How do I hire Ben?
Through Cut the Waffle, which is the business end of all this. The quickest start is the website audit at $497 plus GST: a technical SEO, AEO and content review of your site, a prioritised plan with real code in it, and two hours with your dev team to get it landed.
+ What is GEO, and how is it different from SEO?
SEO gets you ranked in Google's normal results. GEO, which some people call AEO, gets you quoted inside AI answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI Overviews. Plenty of buyers now ask a model before they ever run a search, so the two jobs need doing together rather than one after the other.
+ Does Ben work with companies outside New Zealand?
Yes. I'm based in Auckland and work with B2B teams anywhere. Most of the work runs async, and I keep time each week for calls in your timezone.
+ Can Ben build interactive tools and calculators as well?
That's a big part of it. I build ROI calculators, configurators and assessments in real code, wired into HubSpot and Slack so sales gets the lead while the person is still on the page. They rank well and people stay on them three or four times longer than they would on a gated PDF.
Say hello