Overview
Scaling a headhunting startup from €2,000 to €30,000+ Monthly Ad Spend and 10x revenue growth in 12 Months.
A job-matching startup operating niche platforms across law, medicine, hospitality, and beyond needed to build its marketing function from zero.
The Mobilehead platforms functioned as “Tinder for jobs”, meaning that employers and candidates would “swipe” each other – A match usually resulted in a first interview, ultimately leading to a succesful hire. Mobilehead charges a flat fee on the yearly salary of the hired candidate.
With no marketing team, no channels, and two live platforms, the challenge was to generate significant traction and aim for profitabilit.
The startup had a team of 7-8 employees but no inhouse marketing. All previous growth came from the founders doing sales, limiting speed of growth to their own time.
Initial Situation
- No marketing team or acquisition channels in place
- Two live platforms with no performance marketing engine
- A small amount of users on the employer side and the applicant side
- Multiple 7-figure investor rounds secured, but no marketing ROI to demonstrate
Objectives
- Build performance marketing infrastructure from scratch
- Scale existing platforms to profitability across all active channels
- Launch new platforms and generate early traction in each niche market
- Build and onboard a specialist marketing team
Approach
The primary acquisition channels were SEA, SEO, LinkedIn, Xing, Affiliate, and Social Media, each selected for its ability to reach candidates and employers within specific professional verticals.
SEA was the main growth lever. Budget was scaled from €2,000 to over €30,000 per month across all platforms within 12 months, with spend increases tied strictly to performance thresholds. In parallel, career blogs were built for each platform to drive long-term organic visibility. LinkedIn and Xing were activated through both direct outreach and paid ads, with each channel scaled to standalone profitability. Influencer partnerships supported visibility across relevant professional communities.
The team grew from a single person to seven specialists over two years, covering SEA, content, UX, LinkedIn, and Xing. Every channel actively managed during this period was profitable.
Our role in this project: Markus Kuempel acted as Interim Chief Marketing Officer between 2017 and 2019
Results
- SEA budget scaled 15x within 12 months, from €2,000 to over €30,000/month
- Platform count grew from 2 to 6 over the engagement period
- Growth rates of over 1,000% recorded within the range of low 6- to low 7-figure annual revenues
- All active marketing channels were profitable throughout
- Platform expansion attracted new investor rounds
Key Learnings
Fast growth becomes easier if there is a business with a functioning product, initial traction, but no marketing.
Scaling a marketing team from zero to 7 people and growing renvenue by 10x is still a significant success.
- Build traction channels one by one and install team whenever a channel has proven to move the needle.
- Discard low ROI activities fast and move on to different appraoches
- Whatever activity is done to generate traction, never forget conversion optimization – It will have a huge impact on all marketing activities
The project was not showing typical results. Some projects just perform better and whenever this happens, it's all about speed and execution. Building a team quickly and expanding marketing activities in the fastest way was more important than doing everything perfect - simply because most activities showed big potential for early profitability.
