Overview
GatherUp is a customer-reviews, reputation-management, and local-SEO SaaS (it also operates Grade.us), owned by the vertical-software holding company Alpine Software Group through Traject. When GatherUp brought in Winston Francois, it had no dedicated in-house growth-marketing function. The objective was to build one: a repeatable demand-generation motion that produced qualified demos and trials, backed by an organic content base, that GatherUp could eventually own itself.
The mandate:
- Stand up a repeatable demand-generation motion for qualified demos and trials
- Grow organic visibility with the review, reputation, and local-SEO audience
- Build a durable growth function the internal team could take over
The challenge
- No standing in-house growth-marketing function: the paid and content engines had to be built from the ground up.
- Broken attribution made paid-search ROI hard to prove; GatherUp's own tracking was, in the CEO's words, “ailing our ability to determine ROI for ad spend” and was mid-rebuild.
- A year of internal transformation and staffing change, which meant the program had to stay lean and well documented.
- A single retainer had to deliver both near-term paid pipeline and a compounding organic content base at the same time.
The approach
1. Rebuild paid search around qualified pipeline
- Restructured Google Ads across Search, Performance Max, and Dynamic Search Ads, with DSA guardrails and refined negative keywords to keep spend on-intent.
- Weighted conversion goals so the account optimized toward the leads that mattered (Free trial 10, Demo 100, qualified lead 1000).
- Tuned Performance Max to prioritize customer-match lists of existing high-value customers rather than broad website audiences.
- Shifted messaging and landing pages toward the agency buyer, and ran weekly bid, budget, and creative optimizations on lean weekly spend of roughly $4.2K to $7.2K.
2. Run an always-on SEO content engine
- Shipped roughly two SEO posts per week on review, reputation, and local-marketing topics (online review statistics, Glassdoor and Healthgrades reputation, TripAdvisor reviews, SMS vs email review requests, and more).
- Ran monthly creative briefs, editing, and on-page optimization against target search terms.
- Built HubSpot organic reporting for clearer visibility into content performance, alongside SEMrush site audits.
3. Report weekly, plan forward, and hand off clean
- Delivered weekly performance summaries covering spend, lead stages, and cost per qualified lead.
- Built a $317K FY25 paid-media roadmap so the internal team could pick up with a plan, not a blank page.
- Produced a Summary of Completed Work and transferred every campaign, document, folder, and asset, completing the paid-search handoff to GatherUp's new internal hire on December 30, 2024.
The results
| Metric | Change | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per qualified lead (paid) | ↓ 36% | $935 → $595: more qualified demos and trials per dollar |
| Qualified demos and trials / week | 16 → 30 | Steady top-of-funnel volume feeding sales |
| Weekly paid spend | $4.2K – $7.2K | Lean, efficient budget kept ROI in focus |
| SEO content cadence | ~2 / week | Compounding organic base on core review and reputation topics |
| FY25 paid-media plan | $317K | A ready-to-run plan handed to the in-house team |
| Engagement | 14 months | In-housed at close: function matured to where GatherUp could run it |
Winston Francois operated two growth engines on a roughly $15K to $17K monthly retainer. In the final scale-and-optimize stretch (November to December 2024), cost per qualified lead fell from $935 to $595 per qualified demo or trial, a 36% improvement, while paid spend held to a lean $4.2K to $7.2K per week and content shipped at about two SEO posts per week.
When GatherUp chose to bring growth in-house after its year of transformation, the win was not just efficiency: it was that the function had matured into something the internal team could own, complete with a $317K FY25 roadmap and a fully documented handoff.
“Thank you and to all the fine folks at Winston Francois for helping us in this pivotal year. We appreciate all the hard work you've put in and will do our best to honor it and apply the best practices you've given us.”Mel AttiaMarketing Lead, GatherUp
What we learned
- When a client plans to in-house, build for transferability from day one: document the system and hand off a running engine, not a black box.
- Weighting conversion goals (trial vs demo vs qualified lead) focuses paid spend on the outcomes that actually move the business.
- Attribution gaps cap what paid can prove, so a clear lead-stage measure becomes the honest working metric until tracking is rebuilt.
- A two-engine model — paid for near-term pipeline and content for compounding organic — gives a SaaS a durable base its internal team can keep running.