Leading marketing at a scaling SaaS with a dual-motion GTM model

What Changed

Growth no longer depended on increasing acquisition spend. The business grew faster on the same spend and kept doing so as volume rose, because the two motions ran as one system built to scale rather than a campaign that peaked and faded. Marketing stopped being a cost line item that the CEO had to take on trust and became a function that reported its own efficiency. Reaching two different buyers no longer required two manual functions. From there, the company scaled using this model, and we have since entered two new markets.

Commercial Outcomes

Business Performance

• CAC payback reduced from 15 months to 8 months

• Trial-to-paid conversion increased to 40%

• Overall PLG conversion reached 52%

• Enterprise ABM generated £93K from a £15K investment

• Monthly free-trial volume increased from 40 to 120

Organisational Impact

• The company scaled efforts on the same spend and kept growing

• Entered new markets with the improved GTM model

• One commercial operating model supported both self-serve and enterprise buyers

• CRM and lifecycle reflected customer behaviour rather than internal processes

• Marketing and Sales operated under a single shared acquisition strategy

Strategic Decisions

I set the ICP, which defined who the company built and sold to. I influenced the pricing models, which were unclear and needed to be revised, and set pricing for the Polish and German markets as I launched the product in those markets. I owned the full marketing budget of approximately €100K and decided how it was spent, reporting on spend efficiency directly to the CEO. I designed the dual-motion model, product-led growth for the self-serve buyer and structured ABM for the enterprise committee, and worked with the Chief of Business Development to make it land in the sales motion. I killed the initiatives that generated activity but not revenue, including Meta lead generation and gated content, once product-led growth proved the better route. And I rebuilt the CRM and lifecycle around how each buyer actually moved rather than how the org chart assumed they did.

The Commercial Challenge

The company was acquiring customers at a high cost through a single sales-led motion, with a payback period long enough to strain a 30-person business. It needed to reach two very different buyers, the self-serve SMB who wanted to evaluate alone and the enterprise committee who bought collectively, without funding two separate functions to do it, and it needed to expand into new markets without a template for how.

Marketing activity generated demand, but investment decisions were largely disconnected from commercial outcomes. Pricing lacked consistency across markets, lifecycle communications were underdeveloped, and acquisition channels that delivered activity rather than revenue continued to receive budget.

Executive Summary

I ran marketing for a scaling legal-tech SaaS, reporting directly to the CEO, owning the strategy, the budget, the team, and the commercial decisions behind how the company went to market. I redesigned the commercial model around two distinct buying journeys, combining product-led growth for self-serve customers with account-based marketing for enterprise buyers.

I set the ICP and influenced positioning, took the product into two new European markets and priced it for them, and rebuilt the motion around how each buyer actually behaved. The engine that resulted sustained trial-to-paid conversion at twice the industry benchmark, tripled monthly trial volume, and nearly halved the cost of acquiring a customer.

My Role

I led marketing operations and the marketing function, managing an in-house team spanning web development, paid search, and social, as well as freelancers and agencies, and working cross-functionally with sales, customer success, and product. I ran customer communications and email marketing and built the CRM that sales and customer success operated on, so the commercial teams ran on infrastructure I owned. My role also covered GTM strategy, budget allocation, ICP definition, PLG implementation, enterprise ABM, commercial reporting and international market expansion.