Data-Driven Marketing Case Study: How a Fractional CMO Transformed a £3M UK SME
Data Driven Marketing - Case Study: Outsourced to an Agency, UK based, Overseas execution team.
Data-driven marketing isn’t about vanity metrics — it’s about using evidence, analytics, and accountability to drive measurable growth.
In this real-world case study, a £3 million UK technology SME replaced its traditional agency with a Fractional CMO and a data-driven strategy that delivered an 8× increase in traffic, restored pipeline confidence, and cut wasted ad spend.
Using tools like SERanking, Google Analytics, Search Console, and Lighthouse, the Fractional CMO rebuilt marketing performance from the ground up — proving why data-driven marketing delivers real ROI for SMEs.
Data Driven Marketing – UK Based Technology Company
SME Turnover £3m plus.
Growth Industry, Spent 7% on marketing.
Agency appointed in January 2025.
September 2025 MD calls and asks for a Marketing Health Check.
The Case Study takes you through the first 30 days discovery and fix list.
Fractional CMO Analysis Step 1
– Data Driven Marketing
Tool used SERanking
Analysis methodology:
• Upload domain to SERanking.
• Research 4 Competitors identified 1300+ keywords.
• Search volume 26,500+ searches a month – healthy.
• SME Case study company was ranking for 47 keywords.
• Average position 67th ie Page 7.
• Search volume from SEO 2 visitors a month.
• 843 Keywords of the 1300 had search volume.
• Domain Authority was within 5 points of all the competitors, so no issue there.
• Website had 56 pages.
Data Driven Marketing – Health Check Step 2
Tool Used: Google Search Console
Analysis Methodology
Review site map – discovered pages 2
Why?
The site had not been indexed since January 22nd.
Google therefore assumed the site still had 2 pages.
Indexed October 7th the Detail report showed 13 pages with Slow speed rendering.
Google Requires:
- Mobile version of sites to load in 3 seconds.
- Desktop versions in 1 second.
Data Driven Marketing – Fractional CMO Analysis Step 3
Tool used Google Analytics
Analysis methodology:
• Review Channel Performances
• Review Page Performances
• This revealed very high bounce rates (people leaving)
• A problem as there is no point having a site if the traffic doesn’t read the site!
• 703 users staying on the site 5 seconds.
• Most of the traffic coming from Email activity.
• 48 sessions from Pay Per Click of which 2 converted.
• Conversion goals set “form fill” & “brochure download”
Data Driven Marketing – Health Check Step 4
Tool Used: Google Lighthouse
Analysis Methodology
Run the Home Page and 3 Key product page speed tests.
Discovery – the best page of 4 loaded in 7.8 secs.
The worst in 20.5 Seconds.
This was caused by multiple people having site admin access and the following slowed the site down – New fonts, pop ups, old image formats, pages being built from scratch in HTML code, were all slowing the site.
Full Page Speed Fixed here
Summary of Fixes
• Timescales 2 weeks
• Remove multiple HTML coder access
• Loaded all pages onto standard high performance templates
• Re-Indexed site
Recommendations
After explaining the findings to the MD he wanted recommendations, which were simple:
1. Remove site access from the agency – gain quality control
2. Appoint a professional webmaster £2k a month
3. Make them accountable for minimum performance standards.
4. Put In standard Measurement Benchmarks across all 4 tools:
– SERanking – for content ranking management & audits.
– Google Analytics – for Channel & Page Performance.
– Google Console – Technical Web Page management, push
ranking.
– Google Lighthouse – Web page performance.
5. Implement standard templates for 8 page types, no building HTML from scratch every time.
6. Pause PPC campaigns, till web page speed fixed – stop wasting money!
Impact
8X increase in SEO web Traffic – after the faster website was indexed, Google immediately recognised – 56 pages.
Every Keyword group jumped in rankings – see image.
