Startups.com Case Study: 3 of 6 Channels Validated

Startups.com: validating new channels without full-time hires

Gave a lean in-house team flexible, senior growth capacity: ICPs, a channel strategy across four products and experiments that validated 3 of 6 channels.

My role: growth lead. Led by Tristan Gillen with Tom Dewhurst, as founding partners of Growth Division, with a HubSpot and B2B marketing specialist.

The challenge

Startups.com sells courses, software and advice to small businesses across eight brands, with a small in-house marketing team. The CMO wanted to test new channels without committing to full-time hires, which meant finding people who could handle both strategy and execution across several channels, and shift resources as results came in.

What we did

1. Built ICPs and a channel strategy per product. Using the Bullseye Framework, we mapped ideal customer profiles and channel options for four products: Subscriptions, Zirtual, Founders Groups and Bizplan.

2. Ran structured experiments to validate or rule out each channel. Every channel got a clear hypothesis and success criteria before any spend.

3. Followed the data. Direct outbound email was hard to justify on ROI, so we moved to automated LinkedIn direct outreach, which converted at 10%. Facebook and Instagram ads for Zirtual returned 2x on ad spend. LinkedIn Ads and affiliate marketing (via PartnerStack) were ruled out.

The results

10% conversion rate on LinkedIn direct outreach
2x ROAS on paid social for Zirtual
3 of 6 channels validated, with clear evidence to stop investing in the other three

What other startups can take from it

Ruling a channel out is as valuable as validating one. A fractional growth team let Startups.com test six channels with senior people, keep the three that worked, and avoid hiring full-time specialists for channels that never would have paid back.