Clémence Lepers

Freelance 

Marketer

GrowthMentor

Advising founders and marketers across content marketing, growth, and conversion optimization.

Mentor

Pacifica Surf Club

Built a surf clothing brand inspired by 90s vibes, childhood memories, and the obsession to craft clothes that last:

• Created 280 TikTok videos
• Sold out the first product drop
• Shut down the brand after 423 days, and explained why in a post that went viral (+3M views)

Founder

Sia Partners

• Advised Instagram on their SEO strategy
• Led a 4-person taskforce to build the content marketing playbook for Sia Partners’ digital marketing services

Supervising Senior Marketing Consultant

Runway Innovation Hub

First marketing hire at Runway, a startup offering innovation consulting and startup acceleration membership products. 

• Built the marketing function and team
• Shaped the SEO strategy and grew organic traffic by 6X
• Over-achieved qualified leads (ICP) by 400% 
• Rolled out experimentation programs

Sr. Manager, Growth Marketing

PPTPOP

Built a blog from scratch to learn digital marketing and make some extra money on the side:

• Grew it from zero to 30k+ monthly readers
• Monetized with ads, digital product & affiliate marketing
• Stacked up with consulting services

NHOOD

Spent 6+ years navigating across different marketing functions for a Fortune 500 retailer in China. 6 highlights:

• Built the whole GTM strategy a $175M investment mall
• Partnered w/ 9 teams & agencies (multi-million budget)
• 6M customers on Y1, over-achieved Y2 targets by 23%
• Shipped the company's innovation roadmap in China
• Ran the first open innovation challenge in 12 countries
• Accelerated the startup "Planet O" during one year

Senior Marketing Manager

Ausen International Design Center

Brought 21 Western luxury furniture brands to China.

Marketing Coordinator

​​See that revenue line here: 〰

I solve marketing problems to make it go up and to the right.

And when I'm not doing that, I enjoy life in the mountains, surf ruthless waves in the Pacific ocean, and make Neapolitan pizzas (in between other things).

Marketing Advisor

Advising startups on tackling growth challenges across conversion optimization and organic acquisition.

The job description: ability to work in a fast-paced environment.

The hiring process: 

7 interviews
2 assignments
1 personality test
3 reference checks
29 emails exchanged
4 month process

I LOVE marketing. 

Not only do you get to:

Conduct market research and analysis
Drive customer acquisition and retention
Build campaigns, funnels or growth loops
Create and capture demMAANNNNnND 
Run conversion optimization programs
Manage changing priorities with agility
Dark social your way to Internet fame
Hop on trends and abandon them
Give credit and take the blame

No.

On top of it all…

You ALSO get to work with people who never did any of these things — but always tell you how you should actually do them.

It’s impossible to get bored.

If I had to share one of the most important lessons I learnt as a first-time founder, this would be it:

Don’t ask for feedback on your idea or business. 

Ask for money.

When I started my clothing brand almost two years ago, I asked people for feedback. And guess what, it was overwhelmingly positive. Guess how many of those I talked to bought when I launched? Zero. 

The ones who bought didn’t talk — they acted.

Asking for feedback makes you feel good. Asking for money tells you the truth.

The best feedback is cash in your pocket.

Much needed reminder: 

Anyone claiming a marketing channel, framework, or method is dead either wants to polarize opinions in the pursuit of engagement, never made said channel, framework, or method work for them, or have a vested interest in using/evangelizing a different way of doing things.

Take binary advice, mine included, with a grain of salt.

I don't understand startups operating in "stealth mode".

Now, let's agree on one thing. Products for sensitive industries like defense, energy, or biotech shouldn't be built in public.

But in most cases, "stealth mode" is just a way to avoid demonstrating product-market fit and traction. 

And founders who lean towards secrecy tend to have a major blindspot:

A crucial lack of feedback on what they're doing.

Founders often ask how often they should send their newsletter. But I think it's the wrong question:

Most readers don’t care that you send an email out every Tuesday at 11:05 am. Or Saturday at 3pm. But they do care that your content is worth their click and time.

My inbox has 6,490 unread emails. The majority comes from brands and creators who want to stay “top of mind”. Regardless of if they had something worth sharing in the first place.

Now, setting the frequency at which you want to communicate with your audience isn’t bad per se. It’s a forcing function to stay disciplined with content creation. And regular with its distribution. But it shouldn’t be the starting point.

Consider the shipworthiness of your emails your north star — not their frequency.

No matter what line of work you’re in, the greatest muscle you can build is this one:

Resourcefulness.

Learn how to fix problems.

Become self-reliant and you’ll be unstoppable.

So many people worry and whine.

Be a warrior and win.

If your website copy reads like your IT guy wrote it, consider the following 3 questions to improve it:

1. Is your headline something ONLY you can write?
2. Would a real person actually say this about you?
3. Does your hero section specifically state the problem you solve, the solution you bring, and/or the promise you make?

1 highlights your distinctiveness. 

2 ensures you write like your customers talk (instead of using some fancy lingo nobody would ever say out loud). 

And finally, 3 guarantees you’re nailing the most important piece of your messaging: clarity.

If you ask me, one the biggest product marketing mistakes startups make is this:

Presenting their product as “all-in-one”.

At the surface level, it feels convenient and safe to say that your product does many things. But the truth is, it’s often a battle of ego. Many founders think their product is too good to do only one (or two) things.

The problem?

Customers often prefer specialized solutions that excel in specific tasks or capabilities. Rather than jack-of-all trades that do everything in a decent way. 

Instead, consider focusing on a narrowed purpose — aka the specific things you do and DON'T do. It will better equip your product to deliver a stellar performance and user experience.

I think every single B2B product landing page needs to answer these 5 questions:

1. What problem do you solve?
2. How does your product specifically solve it? 
3. Why should the prospect trust you?
4. What action should he be taking now?
5. What will happen after he takes that action?

Most of the pages I browse miss the mark on 3/5, if not 4/5. 

Any other question I should add to the list?

I think a great way to bring clarity in communicating what you do on your website is to answer this question:

What are you a great [tool/service/solution] for?

The idea is to highlight what customers use you for. 

For instance, getting more inbound LinkedIn leads. Increasing e-commerce conversions. Unlocking large influencer partnerships.

Whatever it is, the goal is for you to communicate what you're for, specifically and concisely. So you can help your reader get a clear picture of what you help them achieve.

When it comes to evaluating the claims companies plaster on their website, here's a rule I like using:

Would any given company say the exact opposite? 

For instance:  

Easy to use → Hard to use 
Frictionless → Clunky 
Award-winning → Unrecognized  
We value diversity → We value sameness
Industry-leading → Industry-lagging

If the answer is no, the claim is meaningless.

Everybody’s urging you to pick: be a generalist or a specialist. But I don’t think you have to chose:

You can be both if you want to.

See, generalists focus on breadth of knowledge. They’re less competitive because there’s a lot of them. But they tend to adapt better to environmental changes.

In contrast, specialists focus on depth of knowledge. They’re more competitive because there’s less of them. But on the flip side, they can struggle to adapt to environmental changes.

Some folks want to be great at one thing. And some others want to be good at many things.

But the truth is, you can chose both paths. Start broad, explore your curiosities, and then go deep on specific areas you’re interested in. 

You don’t have to choose. But whatever path you pick, what matters the most is that you still make time to learn new things.

If I had to help young marketers pick their next company, this is the framework I’d give them:

Assess them by reviewing 4 factors.

1. Strong product. It solves an actual problem, for a specific ICP, and has some level of differentiation embedded.

2. Solid business. Understand why the company exists beyond making money, and the resources they have access to bring that vision to reality. Look at key numbers to assess how healthy the business is. Things like revenue growth, net income, margins, and free cash flow.

3. Well-articulated role. Understand how it fits into the bigger picture. Get crystal-clear on the scope, expectations, and how success actually gets measured.

4. Team & culture. Talk with as many employees as you can. Look at their expertise level, values, and how they get to collaborate together. 

Any other point you'd add to the list?

Here's ONE underrated way to optimize landing pages (that most founders and marketers aren't using):

Anticipate — and answer — the visitor's questions.

Why? Because questions mean:

- Lack of clarity
- Poor understanding
- What ifs and whys

And logically lead to:

- Confusion
- Skepticism
- Less motivation to act

Effective landing pages don't just break down the problem solved, for whom, and how it's being solved. They predict people's most burning questions.

So next time you're working on a page?

Review customer interviews, feedback polls, sales or demo call transcripts, and any other relevant qualitative data you can get your hands on. Identify frictions and uncertainties.

And then address the most common ones right inside your landing page.

B2B marketers rave about A/B testing day in, day out. 

But the truth is, most websites aren’t cut for it. They simply don't have enough sample size to ensure statistical power and determine if observed changes are actually significant... or due to chance. 

In that case, it's more effective to focus on characteristics and observations, rather than measurable quantities.

You can do that by using qualitative tools and techniques. Heat, click, and scroll maps. Website session recordings. Sales call transcripts. User testing. Feedback polls and surveys.

Sure, that's not as sexy or rigorous as running tests, but it's still optimization. And if you're in the business of making money, that's what you should care about.

Taplio

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