The Context & The Challenge

Despite the #1 highest rated SaaS platform for custom builders & remodelers having the most satisfied customers in the space, they had a challenge they couldn’t solve: scaling aggressively while maintaining their claim as the #1 highest rated platform.

The organization had solved the product and customer success challenges and were preparing those teams for scale, while the leadership team sourced a veteran sales org. leader to build an effective sales team. Meanwhile, I was brought in to build out the demand generation and harvesting program to feed growth acceleration.

The Results

Over a 12 month period, we produced the following results:

• New opp. volume increased 317%
• Trash lead volume decreased 34%
• Sales volume increased 199%

The results were meaningful and drove significant growth for the organization. Moreover, much of went into producing results like these (re)laid a foundation to long-term growth. Aggressive results tend to be a result of consistent and thoughtful work focused on solving a specific objective. That’s to say sometimes the approach and strategy are more important than the tactics.

It’s by this underlying belief that we set the program up for long-term success.

The How…

The core business objectives (CBO) for the marketing group identified after aligning on growth targets were to:

• Accelerate New Customer Acquisition
• Increase Retention of Newly Acquired Customers
• Increase LTV of Active Customers

With the areas of focus in view, we set off exploring by testing immediately, frequently, and concurrently. The goal was to be able to test start to finish in < 2 weeks and to be able to have concurrent testing running alongside each other. After about 60 days, and after loads of testing & exploring, it became apparent that the following areas needed to be addressed in order to build out a strategy to tackle the CBO to hit the growth targets.

• Brand Perception & Identity
• Web Experience & Management
• Paid Media Growth Strategy & Execution
• Lifecycle Communications
• Smarter Pipeline & Feedback Loops

The output from this exercise allowed us to focus resources on strategies that would focus on each of those five areas in order to help drive accelerated long-term growth.

The first to kick off was laying out a brand identity evolution.

This would have an immediate impact from all existing channels, and most notably the website — the mouth of any digital pipeline. In tandem, we worked rebuild the website so that future changes & improvements can come swiftly, that lead capture can be smarter, and that a robust content library could be leverage to measurably impact consideration.

There were multiple other versions of an updated brand mark and expression, but the above one was the best. How did we know? Testing.

• We tested immediate perceptions with head to head surveying.
• We tested marks and brand expressions with A\B landing pages.
• We tested design expressions in A\B email campaigns.
• We tested in multiple controlled spaces quickly and concurrently.

Major brand evolutions and public launches like this can be very risky. But, when it goes well, it can have amazing results.

Then, to relaunch the website…

While the hope is that certain KPIs improves, such as CVRs or SERP rankings, things can go south quickly. There’s a handful of different approaches to mitigating risks when launching a new site, but ultimately the testing approach mentioned beforehand has proven time and again to be the best approach to mitigating larger risks.

Overall, this launch of the new brand expression and web experience increased CVRs of the website’s lead capture by >300%!

On the paid media side, focus was on shoring up under performing and wasteful tactics along with some initial testing of new channels, testing into segmentation and messaging shifts, and refining lifecycle comms to drive early retention and longer-term engagement of customers.

Next… Grow Opportunities

After the launch of the new site and brand identity, we continued our testing and scaling. With the release of our new identity, we had a great showing at the major industry annual trade show which also helped to accelerate demand generation & harvesting.

While scaling inbound opportunities, we lowered trash leads from ~30% to ~10%.

Put another way, as we we’re increasing the volume of opportunities, we we’re improving the quality of those opportunities, which drove a greater conversion rate for sales at an accelerating pace.

Finally, Turn Opps. into Sales!

There was much more that went into the success demonstrated here. It was a cross-functional team effort that drove ideation, accountability, and swift action to drive results. Some of those include:

• Smarter Lead Capture
• Improved Sales Enablement & Training
• Delivering on Anticipated Feature Releases
• Customer Success Structure & Process
• Adjusting Pricing Strategy
• Lifecycle Testing & Customer Interviews

Other Thoughts & Factors

There’s never a silver bullet that will propel long-term growth for any organization. That’s not to say that there are not any tactics or events that can drive a short term impact and growth. There are. Take the trade show example from above. It obviously drove an immediate impact and had a ripple effect from it.

However, that event would never have been that successful without the months of tireless work leading up to it improving all of the facets touched on previously. Real, long-term growth comes from teams of smart people working and exploring collaboratively together towards common and specific objectives. It comes from making small progressive steps every day, not huge leaps every so often.

Most importantly, it comes from adopting an exploring, testing, learning, and implementing approach to driving strategy and tactics, which will ultimately set up a terrific foundation for long-term growth.