In 2019, Krampus Republic was approached by one of its B2B clients who want to understand how to use their data to develop a growth strategy.
In this interview, the client talks with Krampus Republic about the process and final results.
In 2019, Krampus Republic was approached to consult with a client about how to leverage data to develop a growth strategy. The client wishes to remain anonymous to protect their growth plans. The company referred to in this interview will be known as Company1.
FACT: Businesses using big data experience a profit increase of 8–10% and a 10% reduction in overall cost.
Company Name: Company1
Industry: B2B Fintech Services
Year Established: 2017
Aim: Plan data-driven growth strategy
Action: Leverage client content as the basis for decisionmaking
Krampus Republic Representative (KR): Thank you for joining us and sharing your experience with our audience. Let’s jump straight in here. Why did you approach Krampus Republic as a B2B consultant?
Company1 (C1): Thanks for inviting us for this talk today. We chose to approach Krampus Republic for professional guidance to leverage our data to make the best choices about a growth strategy. We are a young B2B in a busy marketplace. There is plenty of room for growth, but we didn’t know what direction to choose. It made sense to look at our data to make the decision, but we weren’t sure what we were looking at.
KR: So before you approached Krampus Republic which growth strategy were you considering?
C1: We were honestly feeling overwhelmed by the choices. We had the market penetration, product development, diversification and market development opinions all laid out, but we couldn’t clearly see what opportunity would benefit the company.
We even tried looking at our data, but we weren’t making sense of what we were seeing. We understood that leveraging our data was the best way to grow, but it’s not so simple when you start looking behind the curtain.
On the one hand, new products seemed like a great way to drive growth, but we weren’t really in a position to be developing new products and we weren’t even sure that’s what our clients wanted.
KR: What did Krampus Republic consultants do for your company that was different from your own approach?
C1: They asked questions. As a neutral party that was not invested in the dynamics of the business, but only in the growth and values of the company, Krampus Republic were able to pose questions in a way that helped us define our goals and see how to reach them using the data we had.
They asked us what questions we wanted to be answered first – then we assessed the data.
They asked us to define our goals; What does growth mean? What level of growth do we want to achieve?
KR: And how did you answer those questions?
C1: We decided that growth meant the further penetrating the market. It seemed like the best fit for our business. It would fulfil our expansion goals, giving us more capital to invest in products and diversification at later stages.
In terms of levels of growth, we wanted to increase our base numbers by at least 10%, but not more than 50%. That’s a pretty big margin, but we didn’t really expect to find that level of growth. We had to put a cap on growth because we don’t have the human resources for rapid expansion. We wanted to control the rate of growth as much as possible. Our industry requires people with high-level interpersonal skills and excellence in task execution. Finding such employees takes time and intensive training.
KR: So you identified that customer growth was your main objective. What was the next step on your journey?
C1: Krampus Republic then started to assess our databases. They showed us which data was going to give us the answer to ‘where’ can we find new customers. Our website traffic painted a very clear picture, as did our social media data. While we were focused on clients in the UK, Ireland, and Malta, we were missing out on a huge pool of potential clients visiting our website from France, Germany and the Netherlands. It came as a surprise to use. We had focused on the English-language market in the EU, so when we discovered that B2B clients from other EU nations were interested in our services, we knew it was time to change tack.
KR: How did you choose to proceed?
C1: Well that’s the strategy bit! Krampus Republic showed us the data that supported our decision to expand and helped us to make a decision about what markets were open to us and how we should access those markets.
The decision was made to focus on improving client sign-ups from Germany. The data showed that most of our traffic was coming from Germany and France, and most of that traffic from Germany was spending time on our FAQ and blog pages.
When we looked at the social media stats, we could see that the engagement rate from the German market was much higher than that of the French and Dutch markets, which is why Germany became our focal point. We decided that our 10% market penetration growth would come from the German market, with an aim to secure that growth in 10 months.
We then planned a marketing strategy to reach our target audience.
Krampus Republic then pointed us towards their marketing partners who also had some brilliant ideas about email advertising, vlogging and raising brand awareness.
We were nervous that we might have to make some major changes to our marketing plans, but we really only had to modify things. We redrew our customer persona to include a far more international audience, and now we feel confident that when we are ready, we can use the data-leveraging methods again to determine which opportunities will be the most rewarding.
KR: And can we ask you how successful the strategy has been?
C1: Yes! We were at about a 6% market penetration (the market being the EU) rate for the past few years. It’s not a bad rate, but as I said, we wanted to reach about 10%. We have achieved a 15% market penetration rate over the past 8 months since we launched our new strategy. We believe that will increase as we improve our multilingual services. It’s been mostly about increasing distribution channels, but there are some other strategies in the plan.
We know we are offering a special product, but we didn’t want to put the horse before the cart. We want to expand under controlled growth. We need the right people working for us, and so do our clients. We want a steady organic growth that gives everyone time to adjust to changes.
KR: It sounds like you really value your employees and your clients.
C1: We really do. At the core of our company is a culture of care. We care about each other and we care about our clients. Business can be considerate of the people who make it all happen on both sides, and that is something we really try and share. It’s working for us. Our values are focused on the human elements of fintech, which is probably what makes us attractive in every language.
KR: Well it sounds exciting, and we know that you have big things planned for the industry as it pivots away from traditional finance towards online solutions. We are really proud to have worked with Comapny1 and to have been supportive of your success. Thanks for joining us today and sharing a bit about how you leveraged data to plan a growth strategy.
C1: Thanks, and we look forward to working with Krampus Republic again soon. We really felt that the team was so professional and just knew what we were all about in terms of caring in business. That’s important in B2B, and it changing fast!
