Case studies

Powering the people who power startups

Bamboo Orchard is a venture studio that needed a full service marketing suite to acquire and retain clients through its agency based model.

Our marketing partnership with Bamboo Orchard worked across its entire business, including its internal marketing and advisory and implementation on its client’s marketing.

This unique relationship was designed to give Bamboo Orchard a one-stop-shop, using Soba: Private Label’s combined B2B and B2C expertise to tackle Bamboo Orchard’s own marketing and the marketing of its clients.

By deploying Soba’s team across their business, Bamboo Orchard was able to add a full marketing function to its existing services of brand, governance, and software engineering, as well as focus on its own client acquisition - which led to a new revenue stream and the closing of several long term contracts by the Soba team.

These new clients included:

  • - A home fitness company

  • - A dating app

  • - An international hydroponics company

  • - A professional network

  • - A sustainability focused FinTech

As well as leading to new revenue and new deals, our partnership with Bamboo Orchard has allowed them to have ongoing marketing support across email, content marketing, LinkedIn, and lead generation.

“As a creative partner, Soba has given us a range of solutions to marketing challenges like copywriting, direct marketing, customer acquisition, and creative and strategic thinking.”

Adib Bamieh, Bamboo Orchard

The irresistible sales proposition

Apple, famous for, well, pretty much everything, needed a B2B sales proposition for its Apple Music / iTunes product to improve corporate sales.

They partnered with the Humaneers to develop a proposition that would speak to the business market and show them why they should be getting subscriptions for their teams.

In this pitch, the Humaneers went up against Boston Consulting Group (and won) because its approach was to develop a simple, human, and easy to buy proposition.

We ran a half day workshop with key stakeholders in the Apple Music / iTunes and sales divisions to examine the emotional and rational elements of their proposition in the B2B market.

This included:

- Taking them through the proposition development process

- Finding and solving the problems with the existing proposition

- Developing a simple, human, easy to buy proposition that was tailored to the B2B market

We left Apple with:

- A B2B tone of voice

- A strategy for net new sales

- Updated and effective sales collateral

“Our workshop last year was one of the most impactful conversations on PTPM's positioning since I scaled up. We're fully booked until August, 100% utilisation through a quarter for the first time. THANK YOU!”

Kevinjohn Gallagher, PTPM Studio

Building a marketing department for action.ai

A cutting-edge conversational AI company was moving out of the product development stage and into its go-to-market strategy phase.

Before they could launch their product, the company needed to build an entire marketing department from the ground up, and prepare it for its go-to-market launch.

With no existing CMO, they needed resource to build a marketing department, set an annual budget, and formulate a solid strategy - without the cost of investing in a full time team.

So they called in Soba: Private Label.

We deployed one senior marketer into the company to act as a CMO, and build out the company’s entire marketing function.

This included:

-Implementing an appropriate CRM

-Developing a robust 12 month marketing strategy

-Setting and managing a workable, but affordable, budget

-Formulating the core structure of the marketing department and necessary roles

-Preparing the company to make its first full-time hire.

“Through Soba’s knowledge and expertise, we were able to review our market position and communications, and also to ensure that our systems for monitoring leads and campaigns are fit for purpose. This work with Soba continues to provide the foundations for our marketing and lead generation.”

Dr. John Taylor, action.ai

Using sales to build an acquisition portfolio

Heligan Partners is an investment firm that wanted to acquire smaller financial management firms in order to grow its portfolio. It partnered with the Humaneers to find and qualify firms for acquisition.

Using its existing relationship with Heligan Partners, the Humaneers was able to provide insight into the type of small to medium sized firms preferred by Heligan and build and curate a comprehensive database of these firms for analysis and qualification.

We worked closely with the Heligan team to generate and implement a sales campaign that combined email and cold calling outreach, using our unique SENSES approach, and deliver a database of potential acquisitions.

Within two months of working with Heligan, we had introduced them to two financial management firms that fit its criteria for acquisition and were ready to have a conversation about being acquired.

“Working with Seb and the team with their no-BS approach was a breath of fresh air. They rewrote our entire website to clarify our whole proposition, and helped us show why 21st Century businesses need RevOps (and why they should use us to do it).”

Jamie Shuck, fluidity

Advertising and copywriting services for Kore.ai

Kore.ai is one of the world’s leading AI companies for business and generates hundreds of new contacts each month - ranging from university students to CEOs of international organisations.

Delivered in association with VUX World, we worked with the Kore.ai team to create an evergreen nurture flow for their newly acquired leads.

The team had implemented HubSpot and regularly sent newsletters and event invites to its database, but didn’t have a structured lead nurture programme in place.

The Soba: Private Label team worked with Kore.ai’s Director of Demand Generation and internal HubSpot team to develop a lead nurture and qualification sequence to take the leads generated by VUX World’s marketing activity, and qualify them for Kore.ai’s sales teams.

Our team created a 10-week, repeatable, lead nurture funnel that Kore.ai could continue to use in all of its activity with VUX World, and beyond.

This partnership resulted in large, across the board upticks in email marketing engagement from the leads, often outstripping the amount of engagement driven by the emails sent by Kore.ai's internal marketing team.

At the close of the project, Kore.ai indicated that it would continue to use the lead nurture flow created by our team in perpetuity.

“From the first informal call to the delivery of some very sharp, focussed (but also very witty and enjoyable) copy for 3 product landing pages, I rated the experience of working with Soba very highly indeed.”

Shane O’Doherty, GRAFT

Launching a new business in the market

Nohr is a startup advertising agency that had spun out of Leo Burnett. Needing to quickly stand on its own two feet and create sustainable growth, Nohr engaged the Humaneers to develop a target list of prospects, qualify those prospects, and then turn them into new business.

The Humaneers worked closely with the CEO and Creative Director of Nohr to develop the prospect list and create sales messaging that reduced lead times and resulted in higher than average closure rates.

We created an end-to-sales campaign, bespoke databases of prospects following Nohr’s ideal client profile, sales messaging and delivered email and cold calling using our unique SENSES powered approach.

The results were £4.5 million generated for Nohr in two years and the Humaneers acquiring Kitcatt and Digitas as new clients from the campaign.