Bob Stark

Head of Marketing

The Pure Gold Company

Leading a growing marketing department to scale the business

Marketing Director

Generalist World

The global launchpad for generalists; community, opportunity and resource all under the one roof.

Member

Helping a select number of businesses with their growth marketing and scaling ambitions whilst launching my new (and first) book.

Did you know that over half of all UK workers (and 70% of women) have never asked for a pay rise?

That's a shocking statistic and one that needs to change.

I wrote “Because I’m Worth it: How to Ask for a Pay Rise” to help all those who find this essential skill too daunting to face.

It is now available to buy on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BTMPBZ5B/

More info on the book itself here: https://www.howtoaskforapayrise.com/

Growth Consultant and Author

Portafina

Digitally transformed a £½Bn FUM adviser firm to data and ML-driven automation with new teams, products and partnerships. Instrumental in Portafina's rapid growth to becoming a leader in its field.
 
Over £600M funds under management and £13M turnover. We were awarded FT Future 100 UK status in 2018. Focusing on clients in the pensions advice-gap, using a hybrid “technology in the background” approach.

Commercial director with responsibility for Operations, Marketing and Systems (60% of our staff). I created the strategy for the business, the plan for realising that strategy, and led the senior management team to implement it.
 
Highlights include:
 
→ Designed and completed a slew of automation projects to enable the entire process to be hands-off for core clients
 
→ Led the transition from a startup decision-making structure to a delegated responsibility model, freeing up the CEO’s time and headspace
 
→ Designed our new pension switching product and process from scratch to take advantage of the huge advice-gap opportunity
 
→ Negotiated significant discounts to our Salesforce deal, saving an estimated £¼ million over a typical industry-standard deal
 
→ Secured a government innovation grant and KTP partnership to introduce ML/AI expertise at minimal cost to ourselves
 
→ Engineered our successful seamless transition to WFH when the pandemic struck, having reacted early to the risk it presented
 
→ Built an active partnership with Aegon that led to improvements to our call centre, introduced behavioural science techniques, and fast-tracked our API data automation projects

Commercial Director

Built a £250K/month leadgen operation that drove 12x profitable t/o growth. Drove process and communications improvements that grew conversion rates from 31% to 43% in under 12 months.
 
When I joined, the company was a year old and outsourced its marketing. I built a new data-driven marketing department from scratch and subsequently grew new-business onboarding from 60 clients per month to over 1,000 per month. 
 
Our growth budget was paid for from cashflow, so maintaining profitability was crucial. As was ensuring our processes could scale with our marketing, without slowing the timescale to realising revenue.
 
Originally a paper-reliant operation, I recruited an experienced CTO to create a systems team to build in-house development expertise and support. I understood that Cloud technology was the future, and that changing client expectations would make it necessary to build and leverage API links to key suppliers in the coming years.
 
Highlights include:
 
→ Writing creative DM copy that was never subsequently outperformed in 10 years of competitive split-testing alternatives from multiple agencies
 
→ Using insight from a single piece of Tableau-driven data analysis to refine our process, adding £½M p/a to the bottom line
 
→ Increased ROI through unbeatable deals with the largest data and print suppliers in the country, leveraging our 300K/month direct mail volumes
 
→ Pushed for, and subsequently led our rebrand to Portafina, having determined the need for a softer, friendlier public face to build future brand campaigns around
 
→ Helped the founding partners to launch and refine multiple other businesses

Self Employed

I wanted to take a refreshing break after 15 years at Knauf, but I couldn’t help myself, and supported several companies who approached me to consult on their marketing projects.

Marketing Consultant

Knauf Drywall

Used marketing and technology innovation to take a £100M t/o manufacturer upmarket in specifiers' eyes; crucial in order to win high-volume business without resorting to excessive discounting. Introduced new methods to analyse sales and product data, including early Tableau adoption.
 
I ensured that Knauf Drywall punched well above its weight with a brand presence, online and literature quality comparable to British Gypsum (at the time, one of the biggest brands in the entire construction industry)

Prior to this we were very much perceived as a foreign, cheap substitute by architects. I believed that changing this perspective among such specifiers would be key to building our profitability in the future. 

My innovations included digital point of sale stands, cutting-edge web technology in the Partition Selector (a tool that saved huge amounts of specifier time on major projects), and high-end visual printed literature showcasing our commodity product as an architectural dream-realiser. I won several national industry awards for my work.

I also recognised that we had an enormous amount of sales and process data that was seriously underused. My engineering mind wanted to get stuck into it, and this led to my becoming one of the UK’s first users of Tableau data analytics.

The upshot was a new approach to our sales team targeting, as we could now identify exactly how much additional profit could be realised from minor changes to the product mix being sold into merchants and through distributors.

Marketing Manager

Marketing Communications Manager

Business Technology Manager

Scaling a business takes pragmatism, enthusiasm and a clear vision for what the future should look like. Preferably informed by great data and supported by capable pro-active doers.

I come armed with the former, and have a knack for identifying and developing the latter. In fact, helping those around me to grow and flourish is one of the great joys of my role.

Nothing makes me prouder than when I see those I hired years ago now successfully running their own businesses or leading teams themselves.

Anyway, I must be doing something right, as you can see from my track record below.

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