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Our Latest Ideas
We partner with exceptional Management teams and investors to drive growth and commercial performance. We create content based on concepts and tools that we've found to be consistently helpful when trying to accelerate business growth.
Fastest finger first – the role of enquiry response time in conversion
We’re continuing our series on alternative indicators of growth, looking at whether any ‘vanity’ metrics are correlated with or...
Dave Kirby
Feb 1, 20244 min read
Alternative indicators of customer acquisition success: email open rate
Many marketing reports I have reviewed over the years have focused on ‘vanity’ metrics like impressions, likes and views - which look...
Dave Kirby
Jan 22, 20243 min read
Why you should mystery shop your own business
Among the many ‘data gathering’ approaches that I learned as a strategy consultant, I always found mystery shopping to be one of the most...
Dave Kirby
Dec 21, 20235 min read
Unlocking Market Insights: A Checklist for Actionable Qualitative Research
I once sat in on an expert interview at the start of a market research project, as a silent observer. I had to bite my tongue as the...
Simone Girardeau
Nov 30, 20237 min read
Marketing economics – how much should we spend on marketing?
The question of “how much to spend on marketing” is one that every business should ask itself. The answer is often “what we spent last...
Dave Kirby
Nov 21, 20237 min read
Using a matrix to frame decisions and represent data – or, an ode to the four-box grid
Most of us have probably at some point written a list of the pros and cons, or advantages and disadvantages, of a particular decision in...
Dave Kirby
Nov 3, 20234 min read
What is customer acquisition? The power of a name.
I’m fascinated by nominative determinism – the notion that our names can influence our professions or personalities. Usain Bolt, William...
Dave Kirby
Oct 7, 20233 min read
What is strategy?
'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?' If there was one lecture at university that impacted my professional path...
Dave Kirby
Oct 7, 20234 min read
Ten essentials for a marketing update to a private equity board
Perhaps your business has just received private equity investment, or you’ve recently joined a private equity backed business as the...
Dave Kirby
Sep 26, 20235 min read
What is ‘Spray and Pray Marketing’ and why is it a problem?
Have you ever read the marketing section of your board pack month after month, read a long description of activities, but been...
Dave Kirby
Sep 19, 20233 min read
The power of customer advocacy
What’s the most effective, cheapest, and in every case where I’ve measured it, the biggest marketing channel that will never feature in...
Dave Kirby
Sep 12, 20234 min read
Should investors undertake Customer Acquisition Due Diligence?
Compared to its importance in post-deal value creation and frequency of discussion around the board table, Customer Acquisition rarely...
Dave Kirby
Aug 29, 20235 min read
Pricing – the hardest (proven) value creation lever?
Have you been frustrated by conversions about pricing you’ve had as part of a Management team, or as an investor? Throughout my time as...
Dave Kirby
Aug 16, 20235 min read
A customer research checklist – how to get it right first time
I’ve run more than fifty primary customer research exercises and have probably made every mistake there is to make. This is one of those...
Dave Kirby
Jul 14, 20236 min read
Defining an Ideal Customer Profile by understanding customer problems
An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a description of the customers that you would most like to acquire for your business. In other words....
Dave Kirby
Jul 7, 20236 min read
The flaw of averages and its role in measuring marketing ROI
I’ve recently revisited Sam Savage’s "The Flaw of Averages: Why We Underestimate Risk in the Face of Uncertainty", a book he published in...
Dave Kirby
Jun 19, 20234 min read
One question to ask your marketing leader – where would you spend your next £1?
Of course, this could be £100, £10,000 or £1 million depending on the size of your marketing budget today - but this one question has...
Dave Kirby
Jun 14, 20235 min read
Customer segmentation: the problem with pen portraits
How many times have you seen a set of customer ‘pen portraits’? The format is ubiquitous, normally a series of densely written pages of...
Dave Kirby
Jun 5, 20233 min read
Search Headroom analysis: using your SEO rankings to drive your digital marketing strategy
Around two thirds of trackable web traffic comes from search engines, whether from paid listings (paid search or PPC) or organic/free...
Dave Kirby
Jun 2, 20237 min read
LTV to CPA ratio – understanding some real-world customer lifetime value examples
LTV, or customer lifetime value , is one of the most important metrics for your business to understand. It equates to your ability to...
Dave Kirby
May 23, 20235 min read
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