Hands-on experience & immersion. Before joining farsiight as Co-founder, Ben Somerville spent the best part of 5 years leading the sales and marketing teams at a high growth marketplace company (FLX:ASX) in Australia. Turns out one of the best decisions he made during this time was bringing in his brother Josh (farsiight’s Founder) to scale up their paid advertising. Between them, they have distilled the learnings from scaling paid ads for that marketplace into a replicable campaign structure formula which they have used to help scale marketplace like Service.com.au, Truckit.net, Bare Cremations, PropertyNow and many others. A partnership with farsiight gives you access to this IP and the economies of scale benefits associated with driving digital campaigns for other leading marketplace companies. Last but not least, we fully immerse ourselves in the industry. From attending the leading conferences, continually sharpening our skillset using ConversionXL, to keeping up to date with industry news and trends, our team lives and breathes marketplace/platform businesses.

There are two key factors that dictate what will be the best marketing channels for your Marketplace company to use. First and foremost is the level of awareness for the problem you solve and the solution you offer within your market. Why does this matter? Let’s use the following example to illustrate. Example: Vacation Rentals There is a very high level of awareness for both the problem, solution and even the products (AirBnb, Stayz, Booking.com) within this vertical. What does that mean? There are vast volumes of high-intent search traffic that can be capitalised on the leading search engines (Google, Microsoft & Yahoo). If your Marketplace fits in a similar category, then it’s highly likely that search engine marketing (SEM) will be the driving force behind your paid customer acquisition. The second factor that plays a decisive role in what marketing channels you should use for your Marketplace company are your metrics. We cannot put enough emphasis on how important this is. Knowing your customer LTV (Lifetime Value) and target CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) is critical when analysing what marketing channels to use for your Marketplace. This guides what you can afford to pay to acquire a customer in the respective channels. If you know your metrics and are wanting some advice on what marketing channels you should use for your Marketplace company, book a call and we will provide you with a free comprehensive analysis.

No. LTV (Lifetime Value) is a critical metric when it comes to launching paid acquisition for SaaS. If you do not know what your LTV is, then you are likely guessing what your CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) needs to be. And if you are guessing your CAC and using that to guide your paid acquisition strategy, that is a recipe for disaster and wasted capital. Dropbox famously made this costly mistake in their early years spending big on Google Ads only to realise they were paying between $233 – $388 to acquire a customer who’s lifetime value was only $99. Ouch.

Yes. As a result of partnering with many venture-backed Marketplace companies, we are well versed in building out custom reports and dashboards that present the metrics that matter most. Coupled with comprehensive commentary, we will arm you with everything you need to report back on our marketing initiatives at your next board or investor meeting.