I find your marketing formula, engineer it with your team and stay until it works.
Maybe you’re two years away from a full-time CMO. Maybe yours has just left. Or you have one who needs someone to build with.
Your marketing needs to deliver results. It isn’t built for that yet.
I build it alongside you and your team, or I lead it for a while. Then I hand it over.
The person accountable for revenue.
A state, not a size: marketing that has to be built, fixed or scaled.
Already there, or we hire them together. I lead and build with a team, not instead of one.
Your team can build. What it builds doesn’t add up to a strategy.
the number that matters The number the team builds for
A media group’s incubator: several ventures, each with its own team. I built the central marketing team they all worked with.
Random acts of marketing. Busy every week, and the number doesn’t move.
the number that matters New customers from marketing, per month
Three years, and not one new customer from marketing. Then a lead-gen system and a sales hire who runs it.
One channel brings in nearly every customer. Nothing else you’ve tried has worked.
the number that matters Marketing cost as a share of revenue
Meta was the only channel. We moved the money to search, where people were already looking, and marketing cost fell from 100% to 50% of revenue in six months.
Customers don’t get what you sell until someone explains it.
the number that matters Customers who buy without a sales call
B2B software that only sold through sales calls. We built self-service alongside sales, and daily new revenue almost doubled.
Your CMO has just left, or you’re about to hire one and don’t know what for.
the number that matters The number the next CMO will be measured on
Interim CMO for a launch across Europe. Then I handed over to the full-time CMO.
Where you are, where good is and the one move that closes most of the gap.
After more than thirty companies, I know what good looks like. So I can put a number on how far off you are.
One format: a monthly retainer. Three shapes, five steps. The problem decides the shape.
Every month, the retainer spells out what you get: results and the work behind them.
No minimum term, one month’s notice, longer if you want it. I stay as long as I add value, not a day longer.
The small version. Your team builds and runs it, and I’m your sounding board.
I build it alongside you and your team, month by month, and we share the responsibility.
I lead marketing, help you find the person who’ll take over and work alongside them for the first stretch before I hand over.
Find
The number and where it’s stuck. Within weeks.
runs it: me
Build
The system around it, with your team.
runs it: me, with your team
Scale
A growth lead on it, hired with you.
runs it: me → growth lead
Optimise
Whatever the numbers point to next.
runs it: growth lead
Hand over
It ends when you say: we’ve got it from here.
runs it: you and your team
not every engagement needs all five.
“Works” means the system runs and your team runs it.
What you keep is the method. Your team knows the next move.
Same method. Very different companies.
What was stuck, what we changed and what the numbers did next.
A shelf you design yourself, at a high price, bought after months of thinking it over. Every visitor was sent to the configurator, sales were hard to trace, and management didn’t dare to spend. We got the numbers in place first and judged campaigns by early signals, since the purchase came long after the click. Every three months, one campaign closed the leads we had gathered. Then the move that opened every channel: our most popular designs as ready-made products, in shopping feeds and search, across Europe.
At studiVZ I looked after big advertisers: Apple, Universal Music, Die Zeit and brands4friends. brands4friends liked the work enough to hire me as their first marketer. I made brand a growth lever: one voice, our own themes like the Fashion Angels, community on several platforms, every parcel insert, and our big partnerships with studiVZ and wer-kennt-wen. I started marketing to existing customers, brought in an outside data agency to analyse our customer data, pushed for BI and hired the first BI analyst. When eBay bought the company in 2010, it had 3.5 million members in Germany.
I joined before the tipping point, when campus captains still brought students in. Then photo tagging: an email told you that you’d been tagged in a photo, and to see it you had to join. For weeks, 100,000 people a day tried, and sign-up broke under them. Three of us kept it running with automation, then went on to run community campaigns and some of the first social media campaigns in Germany. Along the way we helped launch schülerVZ. That’s where I learned scale and system building.
B2B software that only sold through sales calls. We built self-service alongside sales. Daily new revenue almost doubled.
A brand that only advertised on Meta. We moved the money to search, where people were already looking. Marketing cost fell from 100% to 50% of revenue in six months.
An online furniture shop where everything was broken. We fixed the basics. Revenue grew more than 50% in the first year.
Overstock retail on a 3 to 6% margin. Marketing had to cost less than 1% of revenue, stock had to sell within 30 days, and the team was small. We automated early.
It starts with an audit, on me. The retainer begins when we put the plan into action.
I look at your market, your product, the people it’s for and your numbers. What comes back is the big picture and an action plan, and the action plan is my proposal. What I need: access to the numbers and a conversation with you and your team.
Twenty years ago I left university to join a German social network that was giving Facebook a run for its money. Since then I’ve worked with more than thirty start-ups and scale-ups.
lenhof works is one person, by design. No agency behind it. When an engagement needs more hands, I hire them with you.
These days I also coach founders and freelancers who are working out what comes next. revolutioncoaching.de