When we began working with Acquatio, a financial brand focused on wealth management M&A in Canada, they were faced with the challenge so many founder-led startups face in the early stages of growth: there just aren’t enough hours in the day.
With a lean team supporting the founder wearing many hats, Acquatio needed an experienced brand builder to help lead the charge in levelling up the current marketing effort, quickly, strategically and with impact. That’s the work we love to do, so we were fully up for the challenge and ready to jump right in!
Leveraging Fractional Marketing to Scale with Speed
Wheelhouse founder and client-side fractional marketing director, Kayley Brooks, stepped in as part of the Acquatio team to assess the current marketing, establish clear systems and build the game plan. We focused specifically on leveraging LinkedIn, digital advertising and thought-leadership content to curate a consistent, clear brand rooted in the teams specialized skills, depth of experience and unique offering for wealth management firms and practice owners across Canada.
Kayley worked with the team to create strategic, actionable processes focused on:
- Defining and optimizing the current brand, client segmentation and messaging
- Developing clear brand standards for design, messaging and positioning
- Establishing centralized, scalable systems for content creation, KPI reporting, partner marketing and strategy planning to support a well-informed optimization cycle
- Crafting an SEO-focused content plan, supported by an optimized SEM strategy targeting brand awareness and lead generation
- Testing and evaluating lead acquisition and qualification efforts.
All backed by measurable metrics and regular check-ins with the client.
Full-Scale Results With Measurable Impact
Within our initial 3-month term, we saw immediate, quick wins including:
- Internal process optimization opportunities
- Documented brand strategy and standards resources for the internal team
- Sales lead database update and migration
- Re-engagement of LinkedIn campaigns that saw a +522% engagement rate increase on organic content
- Relaunch of optimized Google Ads campaign that saw +244% CTR increase and +364% Conversion Rate increase
- Launch of new email marketing newsletter with a 64% average Open Rate and 36% Click Rate within the first 3 emails
From here, we renewed our term for an additional six months to further refine and then expand our efforts together, seeing additional wins that included
- Google Ads campaigns optimized for brand goals and budget efficiency, with ads earning up to a 37% CTR
- Several media appearances, including supporting a contributor partnership with The Globe and Mail’s Globe Advisor
- Introduction of video/webinar content series that saw the first event sell out 3 days before the live broadcast
- Website UX and content optimizations that created an 82% increase in Time on Site, a core engagement metric for the brand
During our nine months together, we helped Acquatio see quick wins, test for key learnings and solidify its brand marketing foundation, from which it continues to grow.
Acquatio founder, Joe Millott said this of our partnership:
“You’ve been instrumental in shaping our brand and content strategy, and the quality of output has been consistently strong. The collaboration has worked well.”
Now, Acquatio is Canada’s leading mergers and acquisitions firm focused solely on financial advisory practice and firm owners in Canada. As leaders in their niche, Acquatio has built a brand as unique as their name – one that leverages the highly specialized expertise and experience that makes them a trusted, go-to partner for industry leaders and clients.
In less than three years, Acquatio has become an increasingly prominent resource for wealth management professionals across Canada and, itself, a brand well-positioned for an M&A succession plan.
