Springrise: leading marketing across more than 20 companies

I had seen companies move from one marketing channel to another without understanding why the previous attempt had failed. They would produce content, try email or buy advertising, expecting results quickly. We wanted to spend time on the business first. Who buys? What are they trying to solve? Why would they choose this company? Those answers gave us a basis for deciding what work was worth doing.

Our on-demand CMO model let a company bring in marketing leadership before hiring a full internal department. We would review the existing work, agree a direction and manage delivery. When the company was ready, we could help it move towards an internal team. I had worked with both in-house teams and agencies, and knew that the right arrangement would change as a business grew.

We started with engineering-heavy companies because long sales cycles and complex services made their marketing difficult. Often the people who understood the product best had little time to explain it to buyers. We found similar needs in finance, software and physical products, so our work expanded into those fields too.

I helped clients choose priorities, shaped their messages and reviewed content. Much of my time went into coordinating the work: getting information from product experts, briefing writers and designers, arranging reviews and following up with development or advertising partners. We worked with translators and internal client teams too. Plans, activity logs and reporting helped me keep track of progress and see which decisions were holding up the next task.

With Tech Group, we gave machine building and factory automation clearer sections on the website. We turned technical input about engineering, sourcing, assembly, testing, installation and lifecycle support into explanations buyers could use. We worked through structure, copy, design feedback, content entry and launch checks with the developers. Later came missing Estonian translations, recruitment pages and company-video coordination. With Krakul, we worked on IoT and autonomous-technology positioning, website copy, technical articles and customer stories. We explained the problem, possible alternatives, the engineering process and the result so a buyer could understand the work.

Finance required particular care with accuracy and approvals. For Punk Finance, we researched the application journey, coordinated website and calculator design, prepared educational content and translations, and managed search, social and later email campaigns. For Monestro, we worked on investor positioning, multilingual website and onboarding copy, educational content, blogger outreach and the paid launch. We also managed search and social campaigns for Cachet's digital insurance offer and prepared multilingual advertising copy for IuteCredit. I learned to check product details and risk language with the people responsible before publishing.

For Flowit, we wrote about automation services and robotic process automation, or RPA, while managing multilingual search campaigns and tracking. Envoice needed positioning, website structure, revised onboarding emails and Google and LinkedIn campaigns, including work aimed at Xero users. With Worksup, we developed educational content for conference organisers, structured onboarding emails and worked on Pipedrive, Outfunnel and CRM sales funnels. We also worked on AIToldYou's service pages and Salesorder's website, content planning, search campaigns and regular reviews. Each product had its own buyers and sales process, even where people or technology overlapped.

The Crafty Robot brought us into consumer robotics through Smartibot positioning, tracking, shopping connections and ongoing Google and Facebook tests. With Palazzo Interiors, we worked on customer segmentation, positioning, channel planning and a search-advertising review. Taiga Concept needed product and company presentations and customer-pricelist material. I gave Fashlab feedback on its platform and onboarding, and we prepared marketing guidance for designers and a webinar communications plan. These assignments ranged from campaigns we ran to material and plans we prepared for the client to use.

Other clients needed help preparing for sales or investor conversations. We worked on Ender Turing's customer mapping and go-to-market planning, KYC Pass's positioning and plans for sales and investor materials, FIND.Fashion's retail and fundraising presentations, and Digimatch's German-market-entry one-pager and website structure. That work helped organise what the companies wanted to say and to whom. Winning customers and closing investment still depended on the conversations that followed.

Working across more than 20 companies gave me experience I would have struggled to get in a single marketing role. I had to understand industrial buying decisions, financial products, software onboarding and consumer purchases well enough to lead the work. I also had to recognise when I needed more input from the client before asking our team to proceed.

The website launches were substantial pieces of shared work. Krakul's site went live in September 2020, Tech Group's in October and Punk Finance's in January 2021. Alongside those projects, we published educational content about RPA, IoT, autonomous technology and industrial buying questions, and managed ongoing acquisition and CRM work. The sites and content gave sales teams information they could use in customer conversations.

I was pleased when repeated client questions led to something others could use too. My 16-step LinkedIn guide came from requests for practical help, and the digital-sales article drew on our experience of understanding buyers, writing useful content and following up. Handing work over to Krakul's new internal marketer mattered as well. It gave the company someone inside the team to continue the work we had started.

I learned to spend more time on the explanations a buyer needs. For an engineering service, that might mean responsibilities, testing or support over the product's lifetime. For a financial product, it means terms and risks. For software, it includes what happens after registration. I could help make those explanations easier to follow, but I needed the product experts involved to get them right.

A lot of delays came from work passing between teams. A writer could be ready while interview input was missing, or a finished draft could wait for approval. Campaigns sometimes had to wait for a website. I learned to agree earlier who would provide the information, approve the work and implement it, then follow up on those commitments before they delayed everything else.

I also learned to look beyond the campaign figures. A visit or registration could leave someone stuck before they became a customer. With Monestro, we investigated registration and onboarding difficulties while managing acquisition. With industrial clients, current technical information and sales follow-up remained essential. I became more careful about separating the work we had completed from the business result we still needed to achieve.

By 2021, I realised that running an agency did not give me the excitement I had expected. I enjoyed parts of the work and had learned a lot, but wanted to build our own products again. We continued serving clients while WOF Labs grew, then wound down Springrise in 2022. That experience helped me recognise the difference between work I can do well and work I want to keep doing for years.

I still start by asking what a customer needs to understand before making a decision. At Springrise, that could be how a machine would be tested, how an application worked or what a new user should do next. Answering those questions gave us better briefs for websites and content than starting with a list of channels.

When several teams are involved, I want clear agreements about who provides information and who approves the work. I also want to know who will maintain it afterwards. The Krakul handover reinforced that for me: someone inside the company needs enough context to keep the work useful once an outside team leaves.

Our automation and software clients made me pay attention to the steps after someone first shows interest. I carry that habit into product work. If users cannot finish registration or understand the next step, I want to look at that before spending more to bring people in.