Market Problem:
Imports into the United States are tracked by U.S. Customs and are public records. Until 2004, only one company (PIERS owned by the Journal of Commerce) had purchased this data and made it available to subscribers. Without a competitor, PIERS had grown into a thriving subscription business but was also complacent in its market position and unprepared for new entrants challenging its position.
Who’s it for:
Fortune 500 competitive intelligence librarians, logistics business development managers, and sourcing professionals
What we did:
Zepol was launched in 2004 and grew to be a significant competitor to PIERS in the $20 million trade data sector gaining approximately 15% market share over 6 years. To achieve this growth, we utilized a lean startup mentality throughout the entire business from product development, sales, marketing, and support.
Zepol was an early adopter of sales and marketing tactics that are now common for startups. Leads came primarily from search engine marketing and utilizing content, both on our blog and media partnerships established through sharing data. Our sales team embraced a cloud CRM, online demos, and a structured sales process to achieve both pipeline growth and bottom-of-the-funnel conversion.
Throughout my time at Zepol, I ran our marketing programs, support team, and directed our developers (managing our roadmap and defining features). This led to the establishment of a QA process and product marketing-driven launches.
Success metrics:
- Grew company revenue from $182k to $3.2m in 5 years
- Establish paid and organic marketing programs that delivered 50+ leads per month for the sales team
- Transformed product from a single developer’s vision to a customer-driven product with insight cited in dozens of publications each month
