Below I have broken down the most important areas in which I can assist you. These areas of “consulting” are close to my heart after many years of experience in helping different start-ups grow and LinkedIn Marketing Solutions expansion into the Nordics. I must add that growing is not enough, sustainable growth is a better framework as it also sets you up for long-term success.

Mission

First of all you need to have a clear mission. What problem is it that you want to solve? For most companies this is quite clear. However, it is worth revisiting your company’s “mission statement” once in a while to make sure it is up to date and something everyone in your organisation has integrated in their everyday work.

Strategy

Once your mission is clear it is important to decide on what strategy you want to embark on to achieve your mission. How are you intending to “go to market”? Is it through international expansion? Through digital channels? Mature companies often need to “reset” their strategy to help generate new growth. Oftentimes this means adopting a more digital approach in everything from communication, marketing & sales to customer relations.

Lean

I encourage a lean approach to approach sustainable growth. It is important to stay lean and adopt an agile approach to make sure you don’t spend too much time on strategies and tactics that won’t resonate with your audience. Instead of the classic “waterfall” approach I recommend to starting with an iterative process of learning, building and measuring small incremental iterations of what you “think” is the right funnel, content, channels etc for your audience. Start with an MVP (minimum viable product) rather than hacking away on a “perfect” solution. The MVP should be the answer to a hypothesis you have on what is needed and want to test. See it as an experiment.

Goals

Setting measurable goals is key to success. Whether it is a sales oriented goal; such as generated revenue, or a more soft goal; such as improving internal processes, you need to make sure the goal is easy to understand and measurable. Ideally you will be able to measure how likely you are to reach your goals every week. Once you have clear goals (e.g. quarterly goals) you need to set up KPIs that will tell how your efforts are trending towards the goals. A good framework for goals and KPIs is to set up OKRs (objective key results). The aim of this framework is to make sure everyone in the organisation understands the overall goal of the company and how each team and individual has their own goals that drives results towards the overall goal.

Channels

Different products and services requires a different channel mix. While I have worked with traditional off-line channels such as TV, Retail and Sales forces, my sweet spot is really digital channels. A good framework to look at channels, aside from Sales, is to divide them into three categories; 1) Paid channels 2) Owned channels and 3) Earned channels.

1) Paid channels in particular is what I have most experience from. In this category you would find channels like below to name a few:
- Paid search (google, bing)
- Paid social (facebook, instagram, youtube, linkedin, pinterest, snap etc)
- Display (media buying) and ad networks
- PR & Influencer/Ambassador marketing

This channel category is typically the bread and butter for most “modern” companies to drive revenue through lead generation or direct sales.

In my opinion PR and Influencer/Ambassador marketing should be part of the paid category as there is a cost associated with driving these channels. However, the type of content and story telling is typically very different from the other paid channels as these channels are more prone to build awareness about your brand, and not necessarily generate revenue directly.

2) When it comes to owned channels you are typically looking at all interfaces you “own” yourself such as your website, blog and community. This is where potential customers can learn more about your product and where you typically drive traffic from your “paid channels”. In this category you need to think about providing with relevant and engaging content that ultimately drives conversions.

3) Earned channels is typically happening outside your owned channels and refers to mentions, shares and reposts done by either customers or just anyone that refers to your brand. “Word of mouth” is a typical earned channel and only happens when you create real value for users, to an extent where they share about their great experiences from interacting with your product or service. NOTE: this can obviously go in the wrong direction as well if there a negative sentiment spread around instead of a positive endorsement.

To sum up; I’m a strong believer in looking at the marketing and sales activities as a holy trinity - you can’t really be successful if you only focus on one of these channels on long term. You need to have a perfect mix of the three to be able to achieve sustainable scale on long term.

Talent

I have recruited more than +100 specialists. As several of my assignments have been to build growth teams, I have had the chance to recruit specialists in these areas:
- Channels (PR, SEM, SEO, Affiliate, Social Paid, Media buyer, Ad networks)
- Branding (Brand manager, Community, Designer, Copy)
- Growth (CRO, BI Analyst, Insight specialist)
- CRM (Email marketeer, Push, In-app messages)
- Customer Experience (Customers service, Quality manager, Agents)

- Sales (Account managers)

In general I strongly believe in fostering an “autonomous” environment where talents feel empowered to run their area of responsibility as they want. This requires profiles that are willing to take risks. Typically I would look for talent with a high level of motivation to learn and who wants to challenge the status quo. As a manager I have learnt at first hand that self-going & solutions oriented people brings tremendous value.

Expansion

Throughout my career I have helped companies expand globally. International expansion can look very different depending on the type of product or service your company offers. In general a very local approach is necessary to succeed. However, a small team with HQ in e.g. Stockholm, should not be afraid of testing new markets. Before hiring a local team outside of HQ, I would suggest to look at certain “organic” metrics that can shed light on how well your offer is received in a country before you even did a local effort. Of course, the decision on what country to expand to has to be based on proper market research and alignment with overall company goals, but my point is that looking for early indicators of how your offer is performing even before you have officially launched, can help you make the right prioritisation.

My experience from working in matrix organisations, where you have e.g. a country manager with certain local resources, and a central growth function run from HQ, tells me it is a feasible way forward initially. However, rather soon content production & planning probably needs to be distributed to the local office to make sure the storytelling and channels are the “super” local. The execution however, can often be run from HQ, as long as there is a good process for sharing insights between the local and global teams.