The client was a Marketplace mobile app that just launched their new business model and was eager to hit their first 100k USD of revenue in two quarters.

The problem was the lack of infrastructure that would allow this. The team has been capable of multitasking but was very stretched out and their hours got longer than a workday should be, and naturally, this affected their morale.

First thing in order was to meet the team, really get to know them, especially what inspires and motivates their creative thinking and collaborative work.

Next up was sizing the gap; how far are we from where we need to be? What would it take to get there? When we looked at it from afar it was clear that some tactics worked, but not intentionally.

The business model is new, no history in sales except a few outbound calls, and since they lacked strategy, it was all spray and pray.  Looking deeper, it was easier to calculate which moves could create the biggest returns, and those were to be pursued first!

Now back to the team. I looked at energizing their interest in learning new things and adding more tech to their workflow. We had 1:1 sessions, each tailored to their respective disciplines. The company has a copywriter who was multitasking, a graphic designer who hadn’t received any clear direction to follow, and a B2B account manager who had just joined a few days prior.

We discussed their roles and what they would ideally like to work on. I put the pen to paper on strategy, moved a few pieces, and everyone was happy to clearly see what we’re doing and where we’re headed. To lift team morale, I followed an exercise of mine that aligned the copywriter with the graphic designer and gave them clear expectations of what needs to happen to standardize the process. Now that they were in the right place of mind, motivation, and clarity, they followed through. It was done once and done well.

Now to make money.

Back to customer acquisition, and to avoid bias, we researched every possible way of making purchases happen. Even though the history was almost non-existent, we looked at it as part of our due diligence. Being a growth marketer sometimes feels like being in a dark room trying to know where to throw the dart.

You can’t see the dart but you make calculated throws and analyze them. Exactly like the game Warmer/Colder (Hot or Cold) and each throw gives you an indication if you’re getting closer.

So we drew the path of where we will throw, as in do different experiments, and followed through.

If you’ve never seen this iterative cycle visualized by data, here’s something

This is a timeline. See the first spikes since Jan, and how we tried to replicate them again in Feb (while implementing more tracking tech of course).

Then we tried something mid-feb but it wasn’t quite as expected so we followed through towards the end of Feb and it got warmer as expected.

So we got way more confident with our data and readings, and understood how to rhythm with customer acquisition so we did THAT at the end of May.

This is validation:

But we looked at this screen

And we hadn’t launched our value tracking yet

But when we did, it was beautiful

We knew how to acquire new users

And how to keep them happy and engaged (well, a pretty decent portion of them)

From customer acquisition, we were able to give credit where it’s due

See how people navigated the platform, you can visualize this as looking at several items before deciding what to really buy. It’s amazing when it’s that clear and simple!

Management and investors were happy because revenue was getting consistently higher. Here is a micro iteration working beautifully as intended.

This here was a milestone that we wanted to reach within 6 months.

Making $100K (375K Saudi Riyal) with almost $10K is solid proof of traction that opens doors to a startup that just launched 4 months ago. One can imagine how relieved and confident they will be, going after their series A.