Anonymised where it has to be. Specific where it can be.
A business turning over $300m was spending three million dollars a year on paid search, and every dashboard was green.
The customers it was buying turned out to be worth about $40 each, while a small group of large accounts quietly paid for everything, which is why nobody had noticed.
The spend moved. Not away from marketing and not down, but away from the segment that couldn't repay it, towards the one that could.
A technology business selling through an indirect channel, where lead volume was bought rather than earned.
Positioning was rebuilt around two vertical markets instead of the product line.
Inbound rose to ninety per cent of volume, at under $70 a lead.
An international marketing function running on reactive activity, with priorities set by whoever asked most recently.
Nothing in the reporting distinguished work that moved deals from work that filled a calendar, so the budget followed the loudest request rather than the best return.
Priorities were set against what actually produced pipeline, and tracked. Pipeline rose 24% without any additional spend.
A listed UK services business that had just posted its first profit, £300,000 on £20m of revenue.
Four years later revenue had doubled and profit was ten times what it started at, part of it bought in. Each acquisition came with marketing due diligence on the target, and one with an executive director seat while its former owners worked out an earn-out.
Then the business was sold.
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