How Rankings.io Increased Marketing’s Efficiency and Revenue Impact

When Zach Ramey became Senior Vice President of Revenue at Rankings.io, he took over leadership of a team of established marketers. However, like many revenue leaders from sales backgrounds, Zach was overseeing Marketing for the first time. “One of my favorite sayings is, ‘let experts be experts,’” Zach explains, “and it makes it complicated when that's not your background.” 

To dive deeper into the marketing perspective on growth, Zach was recommended Shiv Narayanan’s book, Post-Acquisition Marketing, by his CEO. Based on the book’s frameworks, Zach was able to identify some of the key issues the marketing function was experiencing and areas where they could improve. He also knew that bringing in an additional layer of marketing expertise could help the company take their revenue generation to the next level.

Under Zach’s leadership, the team at Rankings.io worked with How To SaaS to get an external perspective that helped them optimize their marketing investments and accelerate their path to revenue growth. 

“It's night and day from what we were at four or five months ago,” Zach says. “And nobody's ever a 10. You can always improve, right? So we're looking forward to continuing down that path.”

Read on to learn how Rankings.io and How To SaaS collaborated on marketing strategy, the changes they implemented, the results Rankings.io have seen so far, and Zach’s advice on maximizing the impact of a How To SaaS engagement.

• Challenges
• The Engagement Process
• Key Changes Implemented
• Impact
• Lessons and Advice for Other Companies
• Looking Ahead

Challenges

The key challenges that Rankings.io needed to tackle included:

1. Lack of clear attribution tracking to measure marketing ROI

Sorting attribution was Zach’s top priority when he took over leadership of Marketing. The team was struggling to understand the impact of their programs on revenue, making it difficult to allocate resources effectively. 

2. Team members wearing multiple hats

The company’s existing organizational structure meant that many employees were stretched thin across multiple functions, limiting their efficiency and effectiveness.

3. Need to optimize key marketing functions

Despite having a strong SEO foundation, Rankings.io recognized that there was room for improvement to optimize their paid media investments, streamline content marketing and refine their overall marketing strategies. 

“Do I want to waste the next four to six months trying to fix something when I could have an expert tell me if I'm heading in the right direction?” Zach says. 

Bringing in an external expert for guidance offered Rankings.io’s leadership an opportunity to be proactive about these processes and accelerate their progress, rather than spending months on trial and error. They were able to start making meaningful changes within just a few weeks.

The Engagement Process

Rankings.io engaged How To SaaS to help:

• Improve marketing attribution processes
• Build a roadmap of activities to optimize paid media and content strategies
• Develop a more structured and effective marketing team
• Determine where to allocate budget to deliver on targets
• Scale demand generation predictably 

The team found the experience of working with How To SaaS to be highly collaborative. “They were very hands-on, very helpful, answering questions and willing to jump on anything and everything at all times,” Zach notes. 

Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, the engagement with Rankings.io was customized to fit the company’s unique needs. This included support throughout hiring processes—such as candidate feedback and help to craft job postings—and industry-specific deep dives into keyword and content strategies.

“They made it about us. It didn't feel like a cookie-cutter approach,” Zach says. “It was something that was made for Rankings in our moment and nobody else's.”

For Rankings.io, the focus was on getting expert guidance on how to take their already successful marketing function to the next level. “Sometimes you just miss things when you're in it,” Zach explains. “It's hard to see some of those loose screws that could easily be tightened.” The How To SaaS team guided Rankings.io on where they should make additional investments, the ROI they could expect from these changes, how they could impact the business long term and the reports they needed to track their progress. 

The Rankings.io team welcomed How To SaaS’s recommendations with open arms. “They know what's going to result not in just more money for our company, but that more money results in more promotional opportunities and more job joy,” Zach says about his team. “It allows us to be a great company overall and allows their growth to continue.”

Key Changes Implemented

1. Revamping Team Structure

One of the most impactful changes was shifting from a multi-hat approach to hiring specialists for key roles. This new structure allowed team members to focus on their areas of expertise, leading to better performance and more efficient operations. The most significant addition was a Director of Demand Generation, who was hired with How To SaaS’s support during the engagement, and took full ownership of paid media efforts.

2. Enhancing Attribution & Marketing Scorecards

With How To SaaS’s guidance, Rankings.io restructured its marketing attribution. They updated their marketing scorecard to move beyond vanity metrics and focus on deeper analytics to track where leads were coming from and how each channel was impacting revenue. 

3. Refining Paid Media & Content Strategy

How To SaaS conducted an in-depth analysis of Rankings.io’s industry landscape, identifying keyword opportunities, content gaps and areas for improvement. While Rankings.io was already performing well from an SEO standpoint, this analysis helped fine-tune content strategies and strengthen paid media efforts.

Impact

Rankings.io were eager to start making changes during the engagement process to accelerate the return on their investment. “We weren't just waiting on the report card at the end,” Zach notes.

The changes implemented with How To SaaS have already yielded measurable results:

• Faster, more strategic hiring: The Director of Demand Generation was hired mid-engagement, accelerating improvements in attribution tracking and paid media effectiveness.
• Clearer revenue insights: The revamped marketing scorecard now provides direct visibility into how marketing spend translates into revenue, and the updated attribution has increased alignment between marketing and revenue operations.
• Focused team structure: Specialized roles have led to better performance, increased job satisfaction and improved overall team productivity. “We have greater job joy because people are doing the roles that they want to be in,” Zach explains. 
• More efficient resource allocation: The team has been able to cut back spending in some areas and use that budget to drive high-impact programs and increase headcount instead. “We're already getting more out of the same, which is awesome,” Zach says.

While it’s still early, Rankings.io expects the changes implemented with How To SaaS to continue having a lasting impact. 

Zach expects that the changes will enable the marketing team to be better stewards of their budget, getting more from their money and profitably increasing their marketing spend. As a result of the focused organizational structure, “that's obviously a revenue impact from a financial standpoint, but that's a job joy impact on our culture side,” Zach explains. “That also results in more revenue because people who are happy doing their job are better at doing their job, which results in a better product, which then results in more money for the company.”

Lessons & Advice for Other Companies

Reflecting on the engagement, Zach emphasizes the importance of fully committing to the process. His advice for other companies considering a How To SaaS engagement is:

• Take it seriously: Treat the engagement as an opportunity for real transformation, not just an external audit.
• Be prepared to execute: How To SaaS will show you the way, but it's up to you to lead your team to accept the guidance, show up every day and do the implementation that How to SaaS recommends.
• Be open to change: Constructive criticism can be tough, but embracing external feedback allows for meaningful improvements.
• Act on recommendations quickly: Implement changes during the engagement, rather than waiting until the end, to accelerate results.

Looking Ahead

Rankings.io plans to continue ensuring that the momentum built during the initial engagement translates into sustained growth. The company is committed to continuous optimization, using data-driven insights and expert guidance to refine its marketing strategy over time.

By prioritizing expertise, structured growth and data-driven strategy, Rankings.io has set the stage for long-term success in an increasingly competitive digital marketing landscape.

Want to unlock revenue growth with marketing strategy?

If your company is facing challenges similar to those that Rankings.io overcame, How To SaaS can help. Our hands-on, customized approach helps PE investors, CEOs and marketing teams optimize marketing investments, refine attribution and drive scalable growth.

Book a call with our team to learn more.