Strategies for driving bottom up growth at a break neck pace
The Ask:
After establishing a $4B evaluation and securing their first of two $400M raises, to say Circle had aggressive growth goals coming straight after hearing “you’re hired” would be quite the understatement. Circle represents a "niche within a niche" - supporting B2B enterprises with an initial focus on crypto payments, payouts and lending. In addition to an entirely new stakeholder group, the prospect of an IPO has been on the horizon as well. Our goal? To demonstrate the brand's viability with next-level growth in Circle Account sign ups...and we had to do it fast.
The Answer:
While the organization valued a full-funnel approach, we began our efforts laser-focused on improving their bottom-of-the-funnel GTM strategy. Over the first six months, this focus quickly paid dividends, driving down cost per account while supporting record levels of investment. Setting the table for global scale in 2022, as Yield and other product offerings came to fruition, we broadened programming to capture the larger opportunity at hand.
200%
Increase in Qualified Account Leads
20%
Improvement in CTR
40%
Decrease in CPL
The Impact:
A testament to the success of our partnership is that USDC has seen a 270% market cap increase.
Aligning Priorities
Yes, account signups were critical, but with an emerging market and a wide array of targets representing varying levels of “crypto buy-in”, getting our hands around our target audience was a must, and the clock was ticking.
Additionally, explosive Circle employee growth with new team members being onboarded across Brand, Marketing, Product Development, and Executive Leadership meant that our onboarding was also theirs, so stakeholder alignment became priority No. 1.
Mission, targeting, product positioning, reporting needs, past performance analysis, and a trillion other data points—we digested all things Circle in earnest.
Our team was literally dreaming of stablecoins.
Dual purpose - While we were tasked with fueling Circle Account signups, we also had to invest energy towards educating our various audiences on USDC as a stablecoin. The market had different degrees of knowledge and comfort.
Speed and agility - Performance marketing channels had to go live within four weeks of onboarding.
Audience prioritization - B2B vs. B2C audience targeting in crypto creates its own set of challenges in this newer marketing landscape with competing offerings and noise.
Navigating regulatory - Circle looks to us to provide them with guidelines by platform and by country, and these guidelines change weekly.
Capture real-time ops - With an emerging category and significant volatility, programming had to be established to deliver proactive pivots as opportunities presented themselves.
We looked to answer the most important question we had:
Why should our targets care? To get there, we immersed ourselves in understanding the following:
- The inherent competitive advantages of USDC
- The form and function of Circle APIs that allow us to target FIAT and crypto native audiences alike
- The utility of a Circle Account as the first step to frictionless exchange across traditional & blockchain rails
Knowing the platform inside and out - We prioritized use cases and industries to develop a conceptual strategy and messaging that was rooted in confidence, taking the guesswork out of the equation.
Charting the customer journey - Digging in on target demographics, firmographics, “point of view statements,” motivations, and pain points, we aligned on ICPs and mapped where messaging would drive greatest impact.
Don’t forget the devs - They’re a unique audience, and we made sure our extensive institutional experience was leveraged to ensure these “fickle” builders were engaged.
After our first six months, these foundational efforts were paying dividends. Bottom-of-the-funnel channels were hitting annual growth targets, and we were bringing optimizations for improving spend efficiency. Along with these gains we also collaborated across teams to ensure CRM data capture and reporting dashboards were in place to tell a clear picture of impact to Executive Leadership.
With bottom-of-the-funnel humming and account signups hitting our goal, it was time to turn our attention to new products and attack full-funnel at global scale.
Hello Yield. Leveraging our base of active hand raisers, we introduced the new product to executives looking for new investment opportunities across corporate treasury and institutional trading.
