How Starred built a full marketing engine without growing their in-house team

When ambition outgrows what a small team can realistically deliver

Starred builds recruitment analytics software that helps companies collect and act on candidate and TA stakeholders feedback. A strong product, a thriving customer base and a marketing team that was working as hard as it could… but running into the same ceiling, over and over again.

Klaudia Lorenc had just been promoted to Marketing Lead which meant more responsibility, but same small team. Her background was in content so paid marketing was unfamiliar territory. And any time the team needed video production, design, or web updates, they had to pull from departments that had their own priorities to manage.

When their in-house performance marketer left in 2024, the question wasn’t just who would take over paid. It was whether a single hire could realistically cover what the role had grown to require.

“We had to steal from the design team, and that put a strain on the product team,” Klaudia explains. “We made it work, but it wasn’t optimized. It wasn’t efficient. It was very stressful.”

The plans Starred had were always more ambitious than what two and a half people could realistically execute. A single new hire would have solved the paid problem while leaving every other gap untouched. An agency, on the other hand, could cover everything at once.

“If we just rehired a performance marketer, we would only have budget for one person with one specific skill set,” Klaudia says. “That would also limit how much we could grow.”

Finding a partner that understood B2B SaaS from the inside

Klaudia evaluated four agencies before deciding on Unmuted. Most agencies she spoke to had the same reflex: lead generation tactics, campaign-first thinking, and a generalist approach that didn’t account for Starred’s B2B SaaS model.

“The other agencies didn’t really understand the point we were at and the limitations we had. Unmuted just got it.” – Klaudia, Marketing Lead at Starred

What made the difference was specificity. Unmuted works exclusively with B2B SaaS companies which meant Klaudia didn’t have to explain the context, the constraints, or the stage Starred was at.

The engagement model worked differently than most agencies too: a fixed monthly retainer, but without locking Starred into a predetermined split of design hours, content hours, or campaign budgets. The focus could shift based on what mattered that quarter. “That flexibility was really important,” Klaudia explains.

From broken tracking to a full marketing infrastructure

Before Unmuted, Starred's tracking was broken and MQLs were volatile. There was no connection between ad spend and demo requests; no way to show leadership what was actually working.

“We were putting in so much effort but we had almost nothing to show for it,” Klaudia reflects.

Onboarding with Unmuted changed that quickly. A structured intake, a dedicated onboarding page, and a positioning workshop in the first weeks gave the collaboration a clear foundation from the start. For Klaudia, who had never set up an agency relationship before, the process itself was a relief.

“I really felt like we were hitting the ground running from the start. There was progress that was guided enough but flexible enough to work for us. And you guys just knew what you were doing.” – Klaudia, Marketing Lead at Starred

The positioning work that came out of those early workshops became the foundation for everything else: the LinkedIn and Google Ads structure, the ad creative strategy, the website optimization, the thought leadership video series featuring Starred co-founder Lars van Wieren. Engagement increased by 250% during the active video period, and the content generated material that fed directly into paid campaigns.

Most importantly, what had been invisible was now visible. For the first time, Klaudia had a comprehensive dashboard to show leadership a direct connection between ad spend and demo requests – something that simply hadn’t existed before.

“We are now able to track demo requests to ads, when before it wasn’t at all connected,” Klaudia says. “That setup has given us a lot of clarity internally, as well as for me to understand what works.”

When the agency becomes part of the team

What Klaudia values most about the collaboration isn’t any single deliverable. It’s what the partnership makes possible beyond execution.

Working with an agency that specialises in B2B SaaS means the knowledge transfer goes both ways. Klaudia, whose background is in content, now leads a function that spans paid, strategy, analytics and brand. With Unmuted, she was able to come into those new areas faster than she would have alone.

“I feel like I learn new things all the time. I come to you guys for advice a lot. But also, all the content you publish on LinkedIn – the whole team, even the members I don’t directly work with – I learn from that too. You feel like an extension of the team.”

That dynamic also plays out internally. When Klaudia advocates for a marketing investment with leadership, she’s rarely doing it alone. Having an external team behind a recommendation carries weight that internal voices sometimes don’t.

“To have someone external tell you something, it kind of hits different. Even if I would say the same things. Having you guys have my back makes it a lot easier.” – Klaudia, Marketing Lead at Starred

From chaos to clarity

Looking back at where Starred started, the transformation is hard to miss: the tracking works, the strategy has a foundation it didn’t have before, and there is far more consistency in how the function runs.

“Before, it was the blind leading the blind. It was stressful, disconnected. We were putting in so much effort but had no way to measure results. Now there is so much more clarity. I don’t approach a new quarter thinking, ‘What do we do?’ We have consistency. We keep auditing. We keep learning. I just feel way more at peace.”

With the foundations in place, what comes next is the work Klaudia had been building towards all along: bigger ambition, bolder execution, and finally within reach.