How Studytube rebuilt its entire go-to-market while the old machine was still running
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A go-to-market engine that had outgrown its own playbook
Studytube is a learning platform that makes skill-based learning accessible to organizations across Europe. The product is mature and has product-market fit, their international footprint keeps expanding.
But the go-to-market engine had been built for an earlier stage, and hadn't kept pace with how fast the product and market moved. Studytube had already started to notice this internally. When Unmuted ran a fresh audit of the numbers in December 2024, it confirmed the kind of drift that builds up in any busy, fast-growing operation.
Google Ads cost-per-deal had climbed to an unhealthy level, most of the LinkedIn budget was going to lead gen ads that brought leads but not intent, and one programme could trace just a single deal back in HubSpot.
What made it harder was the scale. When a machine that big is running, turning parts of it off feels riskier than leaving it on, even when the data says otherwise.
When the buyer journey changes faster than your marketing does
Farzad Henareh, CCO at Studytube, had seen the shift coming. Conversion rates from lead to SQL were declining, and the problem wasn’t just about lead quality, it was intent.
“The buyer journey was changing. Our customers were doing much more of their own research online. All the touchpoints we were putting out weren’t having the right impact anymore. We were too focused on demand capture instead of demand generation - the real work of educating the market and influencing how buyers think about their challenges.”
Farzad knew the company needed to rethink its approach, and he was candid that recognizing the problem and solving it are two different things.
The core narrative hadn’t been refreshed in a while, because the product had evolved and the market had shifted while the go-to-market story stayed put.
“Our proposition and narrative need constant attention, especially when you’re growing as fast as we have. The translation from our product and proposition to our go-to-market had a gap.”
Rebuilding the marketing team, and finding a partner to match
To make the change, Farzad set out to transform the team, hire a new VP of Demand Gen with a broader view of ‘go-to-market’ and find an agency that could match his pace. He'd heard the name Unmuted through his network, so he did his own research around the philosophy, approach and playbooks first.
What he saw reminded him of his eight years at a US-based company, where go-to-market moved faster.
“I saw strategies that reminded me of how things were done during my time at a US business. They’re more progressive there, and that’s often where we lag behind here in Europe. I thought: this looks right.”
He invited Unmuted Founder Max van den Ingh to Studytube's office for a long conversation. He validated the approach through three checks:
- Did the story make sense?
- Did the team have the right skills and background?
- Did Unmuted have the right experience to solve Studytube’s challenges?
All three checked out. Farzad brought the business case to his CEO in a single meeting, alongside other changes he was making to the marketing team, and got approval.
“There was a lot of change happening at once. I wanted to tackle it all in parallel, transforming the team, hiring a new VP of Demand Gen, and bringing in Unmuted. Their expertise and execution capacity let us move much faster than we could have alone,” says Farzad.
Changing the narrative, then rebuilding everything else
One of the first major workstreams was positioning. Building on the strategic direction Studytube had already mapped out, Unmuted helped sharpen the narrative and translate it consistently across the go-to-market. The team chose to position Studytube as the platform that makes skill-based learning accessible to any organization.
That foundation shaped everything that followed: the ad strategy, the website, and the content pillars. The team rebuilt Studytube's multi-language Webflow site from scratch. Which was a highlight of the engagement, and something Studytube's team was proud of.
Then came the L&D Impact Podcast, a long-held ambition. Together they built the full setup from branding, episode format, a snippet library, YouTube integration, and a daily release cadence. It quickly became a recognized voice in the L&D community.
Farzad highlights: “I hear from so many people in the market about the podcast. I recently spoke with a CHRO who told me certain episodes are on repeat at their company, a serious enterprise client. I've heard that multiple times. It's become a real fixture.”
One finding changed everything: personal posts pulled 10x the reach of company posts. The team, supported by Unmuted, rebuilt distribution around company, leadership and employee channels.
Concrete playbooks that accelerate innovation
The channel count went from two to five-plus as the team added Meta retargeting, YouTube, YouTube Ads, and LinkedIn organic, putting the story directly in the feed.
Thought leadership clips from the podcast became the highest-performing ad format in the account, consistently pulling over 3% CTR. Account-based marketing playbooks were rolled out for specific verticals.
Case studies were produced at a quality level that was, in Farzad’s words, “a serious lift of quality” from what had been done internally before.
The engagement even came full circle. Having started by fixing performance marketing, Unmuted ended up helping with employer branding.
Studytube had four to six open roles with only a handful of qualitative candidates, so the team developed a video format built on the same principle that authenticity works in recruiting just as it does in demand gen: real employees, opinionated, no script, filmed in a studio.
“Every step we needed to take, we took with Unmuted’s help. The go-to-market narrative, the website, the podcast, case studies and campaigns. It’s been a complete transformation of how we go to market.”
When the numbers reflect the work
The broader GTM transformation started to show up in the numbers. Sharper positioning, a stronger demand-generation approach, better campaign execution and improved conversion across the funnel all contributed.
On the budget side, a six-figure sum moved toward higher-intent activity early on, first by pausing underperforming campaigns, then by shifting the bulk of Google Ads spend off broad-match keywords with little buying intent. That freed up money.
The foundational work lifted conversion 20-30% at every stage of the funnel, from lead to SQL to opportunity.
The collaboration lasted close to two years. In that time, Studytube moved from a marketing setup built for an earlier stage to a modern demand generation engine across five-plus channels, anchored by clear positioning, a recognized podcast, and a team that operates fundamentally differently.
A final note for anyone in B2B SaaS considering demand gen support
Asked what he’d tell a company considering Unmuted, Farzad is clear in his answer:
“Unmuted is an ideal strategic demand gen partner with concrete playbooks. They give you the execution power to innovate and make real impact quickly. What makes them particularly effective is the combination of strategic thinking and specialists across content, video, strategy and design. You can set the direction together and then actually execute against it quickly.”
What he values most, beyond the deliverables, is the dynamic. Unmuted lifted the internal team, helped the new VP of Demand Gen get going quickly, and made the work more enjoyable.
“I saw Unmuted as an extension of our team during an important phase of the transformation. The objective was never to outsource our go-to-market capability, but to accelerate it. Over time we built more of those disciplines and capabilities into our own team, which is ultimately exactly what you want from a strong partner.”
