From one web page to about 120 leads a day.
When the CEO asked me to build the marketing department, there was one page for Mexico, a US site just starting and two saleswomen. This is how the budget grew and how I decided where each dollar went.
$1K → $10K a month- Company
- Unimat de México
- When
- 2013–2022
- My role
- Marketing Manager
- Starting budget
- About $1K a month
- A year later
- About $10K a month
- Result
- About 120 new leads a day, peaks near 400
A department that didn’t exist yet
In 2013, Unimat’s CEO, who was also the owner, asked me to set up the marketing department. There was one web page for Mexico, a US site just getting started and two saleswomen. The budget was about $1,000 a month, and almost all of it went to the agency that ran the website.
Take the website in-house, then negotiate
The first move was taking the website into my own hands: it could be a static site, and I knew how to code it. With that I negotiated with the CEO: if he wanted a marketing department, he had to invest in it. He approved about $2,500 a month, and I put all of it into Google Ads.
It worked so well that the next year he approved four times as much: about $10,000 a month.
Every dollar had a job
Half went to web campaigns, spread across the sites we kept creating. The other half went to sales materials and professional photo shoots with the product in real settings.
By the first trade show, the budget was around $25,000 a month. It covered an outsourced online store, new packaging and labels, and a stand we reused year after year with small changes. I almost always ended the year with money left over, which let me move funds when a trade show abroad came up, like NEWH in San Francisco in August, two months before Expo CIHAC in Mexico City.
Measure, and cut fast
We measured visits, time on site, leads and how many became customers, with Google Analytics and the sales CRM. Not everything worked: at first I split ads between Google, Yahoo and a business directory, and only Google delivered. I cut the rest quickly.
The biggest challenge was convincing the CEO. I learned to sell him ideas with small tests: I asked for part of the budget, delivered results, and that released the rest.
About 120 new leads a day
Over time, our sites came to bring in an average of about 120 new leads a day, with peaks close to 400, for some 20 salespeople.
What it left me
In marketing there’s no perfect recipe. The market surprises you, and what matters is measuring, correcting course fast and knowing what job every dollar does.
Real photos and illustrative images from the case video.
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