In this case study, I’ll document some of the work I did for a logistics client from 2021 to 2026 wherein I build their marketing team from scratch, tested and selected the best channels for them, updated their website for increased conversions, and much more.
Five years of building a B2B marketing function from zero
In April 2021, I was hired as the company’s first non-agency marketer. There was a WordPress site, a MailChimp list, a founding team with a strong thesis, and no marketing function. Five years later, this client now has 100+ warehouses, $1B+ GMV, is an Amazon-recommended 4PL, and achieved multi-year placements on the Inc. 5000, the Financial Times Americas’ Fastest Growing Companies list, and the Deloitte Technology Fast 500.
I’m moving on in June 2026. The initial “build and grow” directive has graduated into “maintain”, and my work shines brightest in the former. If you’re a founder looking for what one marketer can actually own from Day 1, this is the honest version.
What I walked into in April 2021
The brief I recieved: build a marketing function. Not “run the team” — there was no team. The early weeks were discovery calls with the co-founders pinning down the ICP, pricing, qualifying questions, and a clear revenue North Star.
From there, I owned:
- Brand, voice, and positioning
- Content strategy and editorial calendar
- Website rebuild and ongoing site management
- Paid digital testing across Google, LinkedIn, Meta, Bing, and Reddit
- Partner marketing program, including hiring and training the first Partner Marketing Manager
- Sales enablement — decks, case studies, ICP personas, event playbooks
- Budget, vendors, agencies, contractors, and hiring
None of those line items is unusual for a head of marketing. Owning all of them from scratch, on a lean budget, for a category many B2B marketers have never heard of — that’s the part I’ll miss.
Year 1: The website redesign that changed our growth curve
The first big swing was a full website rebuild, launched in August 2021. This got us a boost in inbound leads and conversion rates. We repositioned away from a narrow service that they were well known for to focus on the broader business they would graduate into. I built New service pages. Enterprise-oriented CTAs (Book a Demo, Contact Us) replaced self-serve signups. Sticky pricing-page CTAs with social proof. Session analysis via FullStory and Heap. A/B tests through Google Optimize.
By March 2022, monthly pageviews had almost doubled, and our newsletter open rate was more than twice the industry average. We had shipped brand guidelines, a voice/tone guide, writer guidelines, four case studies, and a Notion asset library we’d keep using for the next four years.
Years 2–3: Earning the category-authority position
Once the foundation was in place, the compounding channels took over. We published 2–3 blogs a week, ran the newsletter twice a month, and added nine service pages (that number has grown since), industry pages, a partners page, warehouse locations, careers, and a warehouse-application flow.
An SEO consultant came on in mid-2024. A custom machinery landing page held steady direct, referral, and organic traffic. Location pages launched in early December 2024 ranked within two weeks (one became a top-3 growing page in Google Search Console).
Domain Rating doubled from Q1 2021 to Q2 2022, and we got a a 2.3x lift in referring domains 15 months. Monthly contact-form submissions shot up more than 10X before stabilizing between 7-10X the original submissions.
The best content bet of 2024 was an interview series. In the first month after launch, compared to the month prior we had more than doubled our direct traffic and organic social traffic, and were trending up on our contact form submissions, pageviews, and unique visitors.
Outreach hit rate was the quiet win; 75% of the interviewees I reached out to responded positively, and I was able to book almost a dozen interviews in just two email exchanges.
Year 4: Paid media as a discipline
2024–2025 was the year we ran paid digital the way I’d always wanted to — as a learning system, not a “throw money at ads” reflex. I meticulously tested each channel, monitored and refined the audience, tracked our budget, tested different creatives, and made a final call on each channel.
We tested;
- Google Search Ads
- LinkedIn Ads
- Meta Ads
- Reddit Ads
The quieter wins: partner program, sales enablement, and the team I handed off to
The part of this engagement I’m proudest of isn’t in any individual case study. It’s the partner marketing program.
By 2025 we had a two-track program: lead exchanges and paid referrals on one side, co-marketing on the other; guest posts, newsletter swaps, joint interviews, partner-page inclusion, webinars. A documented handover flow, UTM-based reporting back to partners, and a 2025 partnership pitch deck built by our then-partner manager. The partner list had dozens of active relationships at one point in time, so I installed a tracking system I had used with other clients.
I hired and trained the first Partner Marketing Manager, the first Distribution Marketing Manager, and the first Social Media Manager so the program would run without me. By 2025, it did. That’s the signal; when the engine runs without the person who built it, the function has actually been built.
On sales enablement: we built a 24-slide overview and value-prop deck, the partnership pitch deck, seven+ case studies, an ICP deck with three personas built from real customer interviews, a strategic pitch deck, an in-person event playbook for floor walkers, MailChimp audience builds, and an editorial calendar tight enough that a new writer could ship a post in week one.
AI visibility during an industry pipeline downturn
One of the 2025 bets I’m most proud of is less visible in the numbers and more visible in where the leads came from.
We ran AI grader audits on Gemini, OpenAI, and Perplexity. We tracked ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity referral traffic. We added FAQs, new service pages, and ensured our website was fast and usable for humans and crawlers. By peak, 17% of inbound leads self-declared as AI-sourced. Whereas most of the industry was in a visible pipeline slump, that was a huge win for us. AI search is a real acquisition channel for companies that started working it before it was obvious.
Even now when I run comparison audits for unrelated tasks and clients, I still see this client popping up as Claude thinks.
The PR proof: Awards earned during my tenure
Accolades are lagging indicators. Here are a few that this client earned while running my playbook:
- Financial Times Americas’ Fastest Growing Companies (3 years in a row)
- Inc. 5000 (2 years running)
- Inc. 5000 Regionals (Southeast) (3 years in a row)
- Deloitte Technology Fast 500 (2 years running)
- Amazon Recommended FBA Prep Service Provider (July 2025): One of a very small number of providers selected after a forensic evaluation across seven prep services, national coverage, capacity for 1B+ units/year, SLAs, security, and centralized customer operations
I didn’t close any of those evaluations. But I ran the marketing function that shaped the public narrative around the company as they happened.
2025, honestly
2025 was the first year the plan had to shrink. Budget contracted, and blog cadence dropped from 2–3/week to 1 before restoring to 2 by November. Even with the contraction:
- Monthly contact-form submissions averaged ~160/month
- The newsletter held at 4,845 subscribers at a 30%+ open rate
- LinkedIn followers hit 2,850, the #1 channel priority since 2023
- AI-sourced leads peaked at 17% of inbound
That’s a good place for a company to be. It’s also a signal that the work I do best–building and scaling from zero–isn’t the work this company needs next.
Why I’m moving on
This client has become what we set out to build. The brand is strong. The pipeline is resilient even as the industry softens. The marketing engine runs on defined playbooks. Someone will take this operation and optimize it into a well-run maintenance function, and they’ll do an excellent job.
But it won’t be me. I’m at my best when the category is unclear, the team is a blank slate, and the next 90 days will set the curve for the next three years. I’ve been in that mode at this client for almost five years. I’m ready to be in it again somewhere else.
What’s next
If you’re a founder or COO at a build-phase B2B eCommerce ops company and you’re looking for the person who’ll own your marketing function end-to-end — brand, content, paid, partner, SEO, AI visibility, the team — I’d love to talk. More case studies and experiments at rachelandreago.com/portfolio. The next playbook instance is waiting for the right company.
Rachel Andrea Go is a fractional CMO for build-phase B2B eCommerce ops companies. She ran marketing at this client from April 2021 through June 2026. Previous builds include Deliverr (acquired by Shopify) and Skubana (now Extensiv).