Scaling an Start-up to
generate >£5m in Rev.
Operations, Analytics & Strategy.
Overview.
Operations, analytics & insights.
Overview The company was formed from well-established professionals within the industry who had already made a name for themselves within previous firms. They had the expertise, the experience and the numbers to prove it.
Their model was based on what had worked previously, after all they had secured over £5bn worth of investment throughout their professional career, however the performance was less than favourable.
The challenges.
The contract was initially to improve their marketing efforts. By looking at the data from gathered reports it became apparent there were structural and communications issues related to the poor performance.
As a result, the contract expanded into improving three key areas: Operations, Digital & Communications.
01
Operations
- Departments operated in siloes.
- External agencies had autonomy.
- No feedback loops across functions of the business.
- Little clear directives.
- Inadequate reporting & tracking system.
- Bottlenecks in workflow.
02
Digital
- Poor data structure: key performance metrics weren’t captured.
- Loose digital strategy.
- Unclear objectives.
- Linear marketing funnel.
- Bottom funnel focus.
- Lack of brand.
- No online credibility.
- No segmentation.
- Unleveraged social accounts.
03
Results
Showcasing the results from working on this project. Scroll to the bottom of the page to view what we had achieved.
01 Operations: Previous.
There was a fair degree of oversight on the operational value within the organisation. The relationship across the functions of the business was fractional and had a direct impact on revenue and profitability.
The diagrams below illustrate the old operating marketing function and the divide in control over the start-ups go-to-market strategy. The workflow can be summarised as follows:
1. The Organisation allocates product. (Internal)
2. Product communicated to agencies running lead-gen campaigns. (External)
3. Agencies would provide leads to the sales department of the organisation. (Internal)
Workflow per agency.
The client would deliver products to the agencies based on an agreement: X amount of leads per month for a fee.
Once the product was handed over, all 11 agencies had autonomy, until leads were delivered, with no feedback loops on campaign performance (see figure 1). This meant an abundance of campaign-level data was under-leveraged.
Linear marketing structure.
Operating with 11 external agencies became a project management task for the start-up that required resources which weren’t available. This made it difficult to install accountability measures, which had a direct impact on Revenue.
With the old operational model the following issues arose:
- It was unclear how each agency were optimising campaigns and what variables were tested.
- Quality of the lead and what type of lead generated. From MQL => SQL.
- How data was captured, processed and utilised for campaign performance.
- Missed opportunities for collective insights from expenditure.
- No campaign performance reports fed back to the client.
- Agencies would be competing against each other with similar ad structures for the same products.
- Lack of continuity from a brand perspective.
- Unclear when each lead was generated.
01 Operations: Resolves.
Top-level overview.
This new operating model allowed for optimal use of resources by installing four key phases in the product cycle for an efficient route to market strategy.
- Planning: Directives.
- Build: Creative & Marketing.
- Action: Sales team
- Learn: Analysis & Reporting.
Workflow efficiency.
Research had shown there was an internal communications issue which would have a free-for-all approach to feedback on campaigns, inhibiting performance. Missed deadlines, last minute changes & bottlenecks in workflow led us to refine the functions of each department.
Optimising for success.
In the early roll-out of any systemic change, it is important to leave room for refinements to the system. What we encountered after installing the feedback loops were an influx of requests to the marketing and creative department.
Refining the directives-led initiative significantly reduced the limiting step in the new route to market strategy.
Once the directives were signed off by the executive team the product went into the ‘creation & implementation’ phase. The only further changes allowed were cosmetic tweaks, decided by the marketing department.
This created an environment to test variables and refine our messaging informed by the data gathered across the functions of the business.
Initially, we received pushback from the sales department, but ultimately, we saw an increase in output, longterm.
02 digital strategy
Prior to the new structure there was no real system in place for building campaigns, no effective content strategy and only a bottom of the funnel focused marketing strategy. The content created was generic. With no differentiating factor as to why they were different. With their ambitious goals to be the market leader, there needed to be and end-to-end funnel delivering value to their consumer.
Effective campaign deploy with strategic variable testing.
This model was build in order to improve ROAS. With the little amount of data fed back to the client, we installed a model, with foundations built from OKRs, allowing us to align our campaign performance with quarterly objectives that would gather campaign performance data. This new structure delivered the following:
- An effective reporting system delivering insights on:
- Best performing product.
- Variables with high yields.
- Staggered approach to variable testing – to isolate what works with no ambiguity.
- Flexibility in strategy: an iterative approach rather than forming assumptions, which would refine on performance informing future campaigns.
- Quarterly objectives broken down into weekly optimisation targets.
Setting objectives & scaling.
This strategic deployment focused on building out campaigns with objectives:
- Brand awareness
- Delivering consistent value to the prospective consumer.
- Traffic
- The objective to drive traffic to the respective destination – blog articles/website dependent on which funnel.
- Conversion
- Leverage traction from B.A & T campaigns to home in on consumers likely to convert.
Rather than dictate to the algorithms, we ran iterative testing leveraging FB, Insta & Google with a wide net. Through data analysis we were able to interpret results and effectively niche our audience, building out an end-to-end funnel.
Building an end-to-end value focused funnel.
The previous strategy focused on the bottom end of the funnel which narrowed the scope for potential investors to become converted customers.
The first goal we had was to convince the client where the potential lies and how they are significantly missing opportunity from a value driven approach.
This meant abandon the old way of marketing – what they were used to and adopt a nurturing approach.
Framing the market opportunity.
As part of this new value-focused strategy, we explored the missed opportunity within the market.
The previous structure was set to target those interested in ‘investment’ with a specific product.
Research showed those ready to buy were <1% of the potential market.
We conducted both primary and secondary research; analysing the market, our clients competitors and both the client and the markets target customer, in order to understand competitor strategy, market placement and customer needs.
This was the foundation for the client’s digital strategy.
03 Results
What started as an ambiguous set of challenges turned into a well-defined objective. By framing the issues and executing strategies methodically we were able to take the client’s product to market successfully, pathing for a successful future. Thank you to the team involved.
>£5 Million Gross
digital & Brand strategy.
Data structure integration.
Operations improvement.
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