To their surprise, we immediately cut their advertising budget by 10%… and then increased their sales by 30% – (we hit similar numbers for a young legal tech startup with practically no budget as well).  

It wasn’t magic. By leveraging a combination of Google and Meta marketing, email campaigns, and a few of our other favourite tools, we made every marketing dollar count.

We focused on the data and what people were actually doing, rather than what they said they’d do.  We put tools in place to understand user behaviour on the site and figure out: 

• How they got to the site
• What kind of content (ad or organic) they had seen before coming to the site
• What they clicked on during their visit
• Which actions on the site preceded a lead becoming qualified
• Which actions on the site led to a sale down to the road
• What encouraged users to take “good actions” on the site

For those who think B2B = LinkedIn, we didn’t start using it until the company had established a baseline of data and experimentation in place ( and after driving cheaper traffic via other channels and retargeting those that took meaningful interactions via the LinkedIn Insights tag.

TL;DR: Sales and marketing can be cruel to those who don’t have the tools in place to adapt. We urge you to embrace the shifting nature of lead generation, AI search, and customer motivations. Whether you are rolling out your first campaign or your 500th, there are new rules to the same old game – and the buzzword “data” is more accessible than you may think.

What The Article Will Cover 

1. The digital toolkit needed for a startup or SMB.
2. How to shape your website to experiment and get leads.
   1. Example & application for Startups
   2. Example & application for SMBs
3. How to make sure your ad accounts don’t get banned.
4. When to run your experiments & how to test your messaging to get it just right.
5. How to keep tweaking and refining with other tools and strategies.
6. What comes next.

For a startup, our toolkit will show you how to take product marketing seriously from the start and define and refine your go-to-market strategy and flow. 

For an SMB, we’ll show you how to take a step back and evaluate what has been working for your marketing efforts, what hasn’t, and, most importantly, why.

The Digital Tool Kit

It doesn’t matter if you’re a nimble startup launching some groundbreaking AI healthtech product or an established SMB looking to optimize your online marketing efforts – make sure the basics are covered:

• Meta Business Manager Account (I promise you your customers are here – more later).
• Meta Pixel (formerly Facebook Pixel)
• Google Ads Account 
• Google Analytics (GA4)
• Google Tag Manager (GTM)Session monitor (We prefer Microsoft Clarity or Hotjar)
• Another specialized channel (for many, this is LinkedIn, but it can be Pinterest, Reddit, email marketing, etc).
• Asset Creation Software (Adobe, Figma, Canva, etc.)
• Time & Patience
• (and a Website)

Ensuring you have the above list checked off will help you understand your audience, track performance, and make the necessary adjustments to optimize conversions. It also might make or break your long-term success.

Without the above foundation, you risk inefficient ad spending, account restrictions, and a fragmented view of your audience’s behaviour. 

It might seem like a long list, but it’s not. It’s the scaffolding that will support every decision you make in your marketing strategy.

For a practical guide on setting up these foundational accounts, including Meta Business Manager and advertising accounts, explore our guide on Lesson 3: Getting Set up – Before you begin

How to shape your website to run experiments and get to sales

In the short term, here are the steps for your digital marketing journey: 

1. Set up your basic accounts and tools
2. Experiment with ‘good enough’ landing pages
3. Begin testing messaging and value propositions
4. Test and iterate
5. Integrate more powerful tools over time 

The ‘Good Enough’ Website

For any startup (and most small to medium-sized businesses), your online marketing efforts typically begin with a website. But it doesn’t have to be perfect. Functional and intentional is the goal, and you don’t want to waste time that could be better spent elsewhere.

With a ‘good enough’ selling site, you can begin to understand: 

• Engagement behavior
• Intent-to-purchase behaviour
• Follow through-to-purchase behaviour (even before you are actively selling!)

This is increasingly important as you build out sales and marketing best practices down the road. In the short term, it will also provide real data on scalability, such as MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead), SQL (Sales Qualified Lead), and CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost), even if you have zero or low revenue numbers. 

If you capture the right data, you can leverage it across the stakeholder spectrum and utilize your existing momentum as a proxy for your business’s future success.

Start-up seeking validation or improving lead generation efforts:

Landing pages to test your offerings (whether the product is live or not). 

Your ‘’good enough’:

1. Should address a core problem directly.
2. Provides a concise explanation of how your solution works.
3. Has social proof or data of some sort.
4. Highlights a clear call to action (e.g., “Join Waitlist,” “Download Beta,” or “Learn More”). 

For each core selling pain point that affects your ideal customer, set up a single landing page. Write a compelling headline for each landing page, and let the language you have heard your customer use (pain points, aspirations, barriers)  inform the rest of the content on the page. Yes, it’s okay to reuse content for some parts of the page.

Startup Example:

If you’re targeting B2B with a new HR software:

1. Your “good enough” site might feature a landing page with a headline like ‘Stop Stressing Over Onboarding Chaos.’ It might go on to explain how your product works with the existing hiring process, and how 100s of companies are sharing the same problem and solving it with your solution today, and how they feel about it. 
2. You might also do another landing page, with a new headline: ‘Get The Most Out of Your Newest Hires, Fast.’ This might go on to explain how your tool will enable employees to get up to speed and contribute quickly.

The first headline example addresses a pain point in HR’s time management and cognitive load. 

The second is about employee productivity. Same solution, different positioning – thus, the experiment.

Seems simple? It is. It’s designed to learn if a specific pain point resonates with your intended audience and then leads to conversion actions. 

Once your different landing pages are set up:

1. Leverage ad channels (and email, and SMS) to drive traffic and measure results.
2. Track each pain point and the following customer actions on the site with UTM codes, Google Tags Manager, and Clarity, to see if different pain points or hero text leads to different outcomes. 

This minimalist approach allows for rapid deployment, enabling you to test core assumptions about your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and see which offerings have the potential to gain traction and scale. 

Key Takeaways for Early Stage Startups

• You do not need a multi-page, award-winning website straight away.
• Build a couple of pages that are driving to a conversion that is meaningful for the business. 
• Track data collection and customer conversion behaviours to determine what works and what doesn’t. 

For insights into launching a functional website for early tests and what components it needs, refer to our guide on [Link to Lesson 4: “Launching a ‘Good Enough’ Website – 4”].  For a practical guide on setting up and running initial audience engagement campaigns, refer to our guide on [Link to Lesson 5: “Running a “Likes Campaign” – 5”].

Improving lead generation and sales efforts as an SMB or expanding into a new service:

If you are an SMB, your focus might shift slightly from building your first online presence (and testing your first product offerings) to strategically leveraging or adapting the existing digital channels to validate a new product, or bolster sales of an existing one. 

Even if you are looking to bolster existing offerings, the next section has valuable information to consider when you’re validating your next product.

Example of an SMB Trying To Market a New Product or Service

Imagine you are an established regional accounting firm looking to launch a new advisory service for family-owned businesses struggling with intergenerational wealth transfer. 

1. Your “good enough” landing page could live on the existing website or instead be hidden – unless someone is given the direct URL to reach it – like through an email outreach or an ad.
2. The landing page might feature a headline like ‘Ensure Your Family’s Business Legacy Lives On After You.’ 
3. This page should also offer a clear explanation of your solution, social proof, and a clear call to action (e.g., “Download Case Study,” “Speak With An Expert,” “Request A Free Consultation”).
4. You would then use targeted ads (e.g., Google Search Ads or Meta) for “family business succession planning” or adjacent topics that relate to the periphery of your audience in order to drive traffic to this specific page you are trying to test the messaging of.
   1. You can also use a sample size of your existing customers’ emails.
5. Like everything else we talk about in this article, measure results on the page (see the startup example above) or learn more about tracking conversions and messaging below. 

*A note if you are already having success with ad channels. Be sure not to cannibalize other ads you might be running (or closely related services) that are already experiencing success. Pick a specific geographic area to run the experiments in, or use specific keywords, to narrow the focus and avoid interfering with your other activities. 

Key Takeaways for SMBs:

• Adapt or add focused landing pages rather than overhauling your entire site for every test.
• The landing page should drive towards a single, measurable conversion that validates a new idea, message, or feature.
• Don’t let your past business and success bias what the data is showing you.

For insights into launching a functional website for early tests and what components it needs, refer to our guide on Lesson 4: “Launching a ‘Good Enough’ Website.

If This is Your First Time Advertising on the Channel, Prime Your Accounts So You Don’t Get Banned.

While working on your “good enough” landing pages, you should be warming up your ad accounts in the background so you don’t get banned.  

A smart initial step is to run a simple, low-cost engagement campaign, like a Facebook or Instagram Likes Ccampaign, Google Responsive Search Campaign, Pinterest Awareness campaign or a LinkedIn Awareness Campaign (be careful, though, LinkedIn is expensive).

This serves multiple strategic purposes: it signals to the ad platform that you are a legitimate business with real engagement, it helps build an initial audience base, and it warms up your ad accounts, preventing potential bans. 

Hot Tip: If you are an SMB running a validation experiment to try out a new product or offering, consider setting up a separate alias account brand to test in the earliest stages. 

For a practical guide on setting up and running initial audience engagement campaigns, refer to our guide on Lesson 5: “Running a “Likes Campaign”.

Start To Run Experiments and Test Messaging

Start by figuring out your pain points, and then make simplified ads that highlight your solution via headlines.

You don’t need fancy video or image ads to speak to the heart of the problem you are solving for your potential customer. Yes, you will want to get there, but going back to basics is the fastest and cheapest way to experiment until you get things right.  Move to the fancy ads once you can really make them count.

Other Tools to Add to Your Digital Marketing Data Foundation

I’ve talked about the very beginnings of capturing data and other resources that will help set you up for success for your online marketing and sales funnel. 

Once you have the basics, there are some other and measurement tools you can leverage to better understand on-platform analytics, track deal progress and score leads, create email activation flows –  all intending to let you spend more time on the customers who are going actually to contribute to your bottom line: 

• Core Analytics & Ad Tracking Platforms:
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems:
• Customer Feedback & Experience (CFE) Platforms
• Marketing Automation & Email Platforms:
• Competitive Intelligence Platforms

Tactical Lessons on How to Implement Your Digital Launchpad

Ready to build a robust digital foundation for your business? Explore our comprehensive guides for step-by-step instructions and best practices:

• For Setting up Essential Accounts: Lesson 3: “Getting Set up – Before you begin
• For Building Your First Website/Landing Page: Lesson 4: “Launching a ‘Good Enough’ Website
• For Priming Your Ad Accounts and Audience: Lesson 5: “Running a “Likes Campaign’

Here are a few reasons to go the agency route rather than hiring more staff.

Time & Money

Finding qualified candidates is a daunting task. Not only is it time-consuming, but it’s also expensive and stressful. “It costs employers an average of $4,129 and takes an average of 42 days to fill an open position.” (ADP) And that’s on the low end. Some sources suggest at least three months to find the ideal candidate and then another six months before you break even on that new hire. From drafting the job description, posting it, sorting through stacks of resumes, coordinating interviews, decision making, onboarding… it adds up quickly. And even after going through that lengthy process, there’s no guarantee that it will work out. So all that time & money could have been a waste and you have to go back to the drawing board or turn to an agency which you could have done in the first place. While on the surface, an agency will cost more per hour, they’ll use way fewer hours.

Immediacy

If you think you need additional support, it’s probably already too late. You could have used that resource months ago. And as discussed above, that new hire won’t be ready any time soon. So you’ll likely be playing catch up for the foreseeable future. With an agency, they can start immediately. Even if hiring a full-time staff member or team is the end goal, starting off with an agency can help an organization transition and start building right away while you take the time to find the right people to add to your organization.

Flexibility

Forecasting is challenging. Trying to figure out if you have enough work to hire full-time staff or even a full team can be a bit of a shot in the dark. Why not test the waters with an outsourced agency for a specific project, rather than dropping $80K+ on each designer? If you like what you see, consider committing to a longer-term retainer, that still provides you with month-by-month flexibility, and the ability to ramp up or down without needing to hire or fire.

“As a flexible model, outsourcing provides companies with an opportunity to quickly bring on board experts they wouldn’t be able to source otherwise, at a fraction of the hiring cost.” (Forbes) With an agency, you’re backed by a team with a depth of experience rather than an individual specialist.

We’re all remote now

A year and a half ago, one of the biggest drawbacks of choosing to go with outsourced talent rather than hiring internally was not having everyone under the same roof. We all know that’s now a thing of the past. “When companies are looking for savings now more than ever, outsourcing teams becomes a viable cost resilience strategy.” (Forbes) We’ve adapted to having our workforces spread out, so outsourcing is even more of a seamless transition.

No red tape

“The Most Dangerous Phrase In Business: We’ve Always Done It This Way.” Sometimes an established organization needs to look externally to challenge the status quo and cut through the corporate bullshit. Having a fresh set of eyes on a project or problem can lead to unexpected, and perhaps simple solutions.

Someone external isn’t worried about hurting anyone’s feelings who might’ve come up with the current way of doing things. Or someone internal with a great idea might just need the support of someone external to give them the platform needed to voice their opinions.

“The Outsourcing Model Has Moved From Cost Reduction To Driving Innovation” (Forbes) At SnapPea we are always learning and questioning. We believe that true innovation comes from being open to new ideas, constantly learning and challenging assumptions. And as always, we believe every great product starts with an argument.

Designed by: Myah Stover, Steve McPhee, Steven Fyke, and Victoria Vandenberg

The refreshed SnapPea Brand Identity

The narrative of our brand refresh is composed of four key areas

1. The Evolution from “SnapPea Design” to “SnapPea”
2. A Fresh Spin on the Iconic Pea
3. Who We Are
4. Looking Towards the Future, with our CEO and Creative Director

Evolving from “SnapPea Design” to “SnapPea” for Scalability and Alignment

Old vs. New

Both our team and our clients alike, refer to us as SnapPea. This is a great opportunity to leverage the name we are known as informally, whilst removing any boundaries “Design” puts on perceptions of how we deliver value.

Over the course of our near decade of operation, a lot of people have thought we are a graphic design and marketing agency. Colloquially, that is what design can be known as. That’s a connection we are pushing away from. Current, past, and prospective clients have said “You do much more than design” and they’re right. So the way we outwardly present ourselves will reflect that going forward.

With our emergence over the past several years into design strategy, validation, supply chain management, supporting startup founders through the establishment of their organization, and product ownership, we have surpassed the realm of Design and have successfully built businesses from the ground up. For example, with our newly launched SnapPea Ventures, we have streams for both startups and corporates. No matter which division of SnapPea you work with, or which service model you engage in, our identity will remain the same: SnapPea, your partner to deliver your product vision.

A Tasteful Spin on our Iconic Pea

We started by turning the pea pictorial mark on an upward more positive slant, the goal here is to make an ode to positive trajectories and growth. Keeping its base shape and colour to retain years of building up the brand. Additionally, we updated the colour of the negative space of the pea to be darker: creating a bolder, more cohesive and refined look. The shape of the pea was slightly refined to reduce noise and make odes to the shapes of the new wordmark. The refined mark isn’t flashy, it’s easily identifiable and it will pair nicely with our clients/partners logos without demanding to be the centre of attention.

Why the 45˚?

As a team, we were looking into ways to intentionally decide the angle of the pea and came across this really cool finding: according to physics, if you throw something at the same velocity, it will travel the furthest distance if it’s launched at a 45˚ angle, even though all angles had access to the same resources. So, this design choice signifies that we will always find the most strategic route to support and propel your business forward.

Plus it doesn’t elude to a higher trajectory is best, even though visually it looks immediately obvious to be that. Instead, we follow facts, data, and the human factor to build what’s right and best for you, not just something flashy or trendy. So we updated our pea from a 15˚ angle to a 45˚ angle.

Who We Are

To begin our exploration, our team sent a questionnaire out to the entire company, with the intent of gathering everyone’s perspectives on what SnapPea means to them. We used those responses to guide the beginning stages of our design process, in conjunction with other sources of primary and secondary data. Here are the key themes we landed on.

A Statement from our Founder & Creative Director, Steven Fyke, as we step into this next chapter:

“At SnapPea, we’re constantly pushing companies – and ourselves – to be better. It’s growth that drives us – if you’re not trying to be better, you’ll never reach your potential. We work with clients to learn, grow, build, and teach so we can collaborate on an even playing field.

• No egos, no politics, just putting in the time and work to do what we do – better.
• We push our clients to be open, adventurous, and brave.
• We push our team to grow, so we can take on more
• We push our business to evolve, so we can support our clients more meaningfully.
• We push to make products that are new, interesting and compelling.
• We push to be better, not because we have to, but because we should.”