235% growth in demo requests for Robin

The background: ready to turn on the marketing machine

It’s a common denominator in many of Unmuted’s success stories. A tech company has found a strong product-market fit, is ready to fire up its marketing machine, and then realizes something’s missing: a go-to-market strategy and a B2B marketing team to help execute it.

This was also the case for Robin. This sourcing tool allows you to search up to 10 CV databases at once, and you can use AI to find increasingly better qualified candidates faster. With their SaaS platform, they mainly focus on Dutch agencies in professional recruitment, secondment, and recruitment & selection.

The ambition: to double the customer base

Founder Aron Schilder approached Unmuted when he was ready to take Robin to the next level. It was now time for serious growth. During our kick-off he also expressed a very clear wish: the customer base had to double; could we help with that?

“If you have a startup with product-market fit and want to scale, call Unmuted.” - Aron Schilder, Founder

The strategy: inbound & account-based marketing

Based on our deep dive into the market and Robin's business model, we formulated a solid B2B marketing strategy.

We identified, based on existing search behavior, that there was a clear problem that Robin offered the solution to. Based on this insight, we saw enough opportunity with a solid inbound marketing strategy.

We also noticed in sales and CRM data, that when someone within the ICP was presented with the Robin proposition, they showed an above-average interest in starting a trial period quickly and often.

It was clear there was a strong opportunity to start with account-based marketing (ABM) by focusing our efforts on ICP-fit customers and presenting the Robin brand to them as directly as possible.

From experiments to playbooks: website optimization, LinkedIn and SEO content

Website optimization

As part of the Foundation phase of The Growth Program, we analyzed Robin’s current funnel to see where the biggest bottleneck was. For Robin, this was their website performance. 

With a few quick optimizations we were able to significantly improve the loading speed and therefore the conversion rate from visitor to demo request. This way, we ensured that the demand that was already there was not lost.

By implementing these improvements in the Foundation phase, we laid the groundwork for further growth.

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LinkedIn organic

Research from CRM data also showed us that many prospects came in via LinkedIn. At that point, LinkedIn wasn’t used much, other than the founder Aron consistently posting about new clients on his personal profile. This was already a smart tactic, as we are always extra happy to work with people who invest in their personal brand. 

To get more out of LinkedIn organically, we developed a number of content series. We started posting these consistently on the company page. We quickly saw the results of this in the 'how did you hear about us' field in demo requests – an early second win.

SEO content optimization and expansion

We noticed that Robin’s investments in content marketing over the past few years were paying off. There was already decent organic search traffic for a number of very relevant search terms.

But in the absence of an in-house content marketer, a number of problems had accumulated over the years as well. For example, blog articles lacked conversion points, were stylistically inconsistent, and there was quite a bit of keyword cannibalization. 

With some on- and off-page optimizations, some smart internal linking tactics, and removing some posts (while adding the appropriate 301 redirects, of course), we quickly saw organic traffic increase significantly.

Furthermore, keyword research allowed us to identify a number of gaps in Robin’s current content offering. By writing and adding this content, we were able to quickly secure a number of coveted relevant #1 spots in Google, partly due to the pre-existing strong topical authority of their domain.

This strengthened Robin’s SEO performance and even resulted in a number of relevant demo requests.

LinkedIn paid

After laying the foundation, it was time to start working on the identified target accounts through demand generation, brand awareness and customer acquisition LinkedIn ad campaigns. 

We were able to show good results with LinkedIn advertising campaigns very quickly, but we saw that the current website simply did not offer enough flexibility to set up a well-converting landing page.

For that reason, we chose to use Webflow to create a landing page with a sharp focus on the proposition and value for the user, without any distractions. This approach led to a strong improvement in conversion rate of the LinkedIn acquisition ads we were already running.

We also noticed that LinkedIn ads appeared more and more often in the 'how did you hear about us' fields in demo requests, despite the fact that attribution software indicated traffic or organic search as the source. This was yet another sign that the demand generation and brand awareness campaigns were clearly delivering results.

Now that we're warmed up: doubling down on what works and keep experimenting

In just 6 months, we discovered what works and will continue to build on those successes. In addition, we will continue to invest our time in setting up and running new marketing experiments with the goal of identifying playbooks that work. 

“Unmuted communicated about work delivered with transparency, relevance and at the right frequency. This gave me as a founder the opportunity to evaluate the impact of our collaboration and the investment again and again” - Aron Schilder, Founder

We look forward to continuing to work with the team, expanding the product and achieving even more success to continue to attract new customers for Robin.