Doug Silkstone. Head of Growth, Automation & Analytics, Senior Fullstack JS Developer
PERFORMANCE MARKETING AWARDS
MOST EFFECTIVE CROSS-CHANNEL CAMPAIGN
Doug Silkstone × NOW TV
PERFORMANCE MARKETING AWARDS
MOST CREATIVE PERFORMANCE CAMPAIGN
Doug Silkstone × TOPMAN
Senior Performance Marketing & Growth Engineering ⟶ Thirteen years of Performance Marketing, Technical Marketing, JavaScript Development and Entrepreneurship.
Intro
🎫 2022 ╼ Launched Getbenson.com - Stop discount extensions stealing your profit.
🎟 2021 ╼ Sold UK voucher publisher ― 32,000+ new customers. £1.3mil revenue for partners. 17x ROAS. Built from scratch. Fully automated.
Who am I? ⟶ Performance Marketing, Martech, JavaScript Development and Entrepreneurship. Digital B2C marketplaces, comparison sites, affiliates, eCommerce & startups.
I build, grow and sell fully automated B2C businesses to 100k ARR, help early-stage startups find over 150,000 new customers in 2021 and win partners over £1.3mil in sales to a 17x ROAS with automation.
Recruiter TL;DR
Available GMT / CET +- 3.
Current position: - B2C Startups Consultant. Pre-seed - Series A. Founder at getBenson.com.
Performance Marketing, Technical SEM & Analytics: 12 Years exp. managing £19mil+ performance channel budgets for B2C clients.
Javascript- React / Express / Node: Seven years of commercial full-stack JS development, building products with advanced automation and automatic scaling through performance and programmatic SEM.
Three successful exits - Built / Scaled / Sold £100k ARR lifestyle business from scratch.
Awards & Mentions
Most Effective Cross-Channel Campaign w/ NOW TV - Performance Marketing Awards
Performance Marketing & User Acquisition - £1mil + annual spend managed for B2C marketplaces against tight affiliate margins. Twelve years in Performance Marketing w/ Six-figure monthly Paid Media budgets across Search & Social. (FB, Snap, TikTok, G.). Google Ads API & Automation Expert.
Full Stack Javascript Development - Designing and building various internal tools, customer-facing sites and web apps, microservices, scrapers and plenty of marketing automation.
Technical Marketing & Analytics - I can handle all your Martech without stress and get stuck into coding happily. Typical stack: Tag Manager. G.Optimize. Data Studio. Tableau.
Team Management - Building and managing digital teams of 5-10 remotely. I want to build, scale and empower modern growth teams that embrace creative technology, design and automation.
Keywords: Head of Growth. Performance Marketing. JavaScript. React. Nextjs. Gatsby. Node. Express. Puppeteer. Hooks, Context. Headless CMS. JAMStack. Google Ads. Facebook Ads. Notion. CPA. LTV. Tag Manager. Google Analytics. Google Optimize. Optimizely. Segment. Jitsu. Microsoft Clarity. Hotjar. BigQuery. Heroku. GCP. GraphQL. Superbase.
My day-to-day consists of running customer interviews and UX research, building features for feedback, bug fixes, content writing and acting on a PLG marketing plan to get Benson in front of as many potential brands as possible before BFCM and Q4 rush.
As an independent consultant, I help early-stage clients and established contender brands to scale their user acquisition. Startup clients approach me to help them bootstrap a profitable user acquisition strategy from day one, with those chasing VC funds going on to raise a collective £10mil.
Key Client Services:
User Acquisition & Performance Marketing Strategy
Acquisition, Retention, and Reactivation using paid media & email automation for full-funnel user acquisition and revenue-driving campaigns. Heavy emphasis on building automation early to maximize search impression footprint and reduce overheads.
Digital Solutions Architecture - Solving problems using the latest coded, low-code and no-code solutions to build scrappy, fit-for-purpose products. E.g. Scraping sitemaps, augmenting with third-party APIs and generating PPC campaigns off the back of that.
Technical Marketing - Martech, Analytics & Forecasting setups. Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, Data Studio, Google Optimize, Hotjar etc.
Fool.com - Mass scale PPC Auditing Automation (developed algorithm for scoring campaign/keyword potential)
Capslock.ac - PM for website redesign and admissions funnel UX
Head Of Growth — Photologo.co
Photologo.co — Remote (September 2021 to December 2021)
During three months with Photologo, I was tasked with skilling up and strapping a rocketship on the side of an ageing productized service site, photologo.co, struggling with a downturn after a too-good-to-be-true pandemic boom.
Directed Marketing, Product & Tech through Q4 to deliver a record-breaking BFCM. with big wins around lead nurturing and existing customer reactivation.
Directed Paid Media agency through scaling out six-figure monthly spending internationally.
Identified and educated on a culture of testing that was causing stagnancy in the business.
Advised a tech team on SEO, analytics tracking and site performance to bring their site up to 'fit-for-purpose' standards including site optimization, CAPI integration and new R&Ds initiatives to streamline business.
Scoped out tech stack for a leaner, high performance, low overhead digital product where minimal team members could run a business to higher profits and fewer hands on deck.
Owner — Vouchernaut
Vouchernaut (Vouchernaut.com) — Remote (November 2016 to April 2022)
🍻
PE acquired Vouchernaut in November 2020, exiting fully in April 2022 😎
As a full stack developer and with a background in performance marketing & automation, Vouchernaut was a showcase of fully-automated business processes to build a revenue-driving side project.
Tons of automation and some smart use of Puppeteer allowed me to rapidly grow and scale the site with next to zero overheads and a team of just one instead of fifty.
Every aspect of site maintenance and growth was automated through various microservices - if the task was repetitive, it was scripted and perfected. Some examples of BPA include:
Finding affiliate programmes with suitable search volume,
Generating personalized pitch decks
Generating pages on programme acceptance
PPC campaign generation with dynamic ad copy (Dynamic date insertion, relevant site copy etc.)
Created industry-first 'Realtime' ad copy updated via API to win any auction with record CTRs - Simple premise; show the customer everything they need to know with up-to-the-minute accurate ad copy information, straight from a database feed — Estimated delivery times, content update timestamps, live discount content.
100% Bootstrapped.
UI Design — Figma
Project Management
Frontend Development — NextJS, React. Javascript
Backend & Automation — Node, Supabase.io
User Acquisition & Performance Marketing — Google Ads, Facebook, Klaviyo Email Automation.
Analytics & Forecasting — Google Analytics, Tag Manager, Jitsu (Open Source Segment.io Alternative), Data Studio.
Done ⟶ Perfect. Automation ⟶ everything - A look under the hood at how twenty hours of tedious work a week gets completed with 100% accuracy, 24/7. Business autopiloting.
GLAMI (Glami. CZ), Prague — (November 2018 - March 2019)
Head of Digital — Reach Robotics
Reach Robotics (MekaMon.com), Bristol – (June 2017 - June 2018)
As the first marketing hire, I created and implemented the digital Go-to-Market strategy alongside our launch in Apple stores across the UK / US.
Key Responsibilities:
Sourcing 2017 Global Launch Marketing Website
Paid Media / Performance Marketing for DTC High-ticket Consumer Electronics / AR Gaming hybrid.
Mobile User Acquisition / ASO / Analytics
Hiring and building a marketing team of five.
I was the call for eCommerce, website, (Wordpress / Shopify) analytics, user acquisition for B2C mobile app, and customer experience - hiring and leading a marketing team of five to promote unit sales and brand awareness technical recruitment and VC interest.
Reach Robotics' MekaMon successfully launched with Apple Stores across the US, UK and Europe in November 2017 - Officially launching in November 2017, MekaMon blends Japanese Sci-fi culture and advanced physical robotics technology to create the coolest consumer electronics experience to date.
User Acquisition & Performance Marketing — vouchercloud Groupon
Invitation Digital Ltd (vouchercloud.com) — acquired by Groupon, Bristol – (June 2015 - Nov 2016)
Responsible for new user acquisition and direct-response revenue PPC efforts across multiple countries. Delivering positive ROAS against tight margins in a competitive Affiliate space with spends over £2 million annually across Search, Display and Social.
Key Responsibilities:
Maintaining a strong ROI against a £multimillion paid search budget to ROI and YOY growth targets internationally.
Javascript Tool Development building apps to automate our entire teams day-to-day, including bid management development tools, competitor space audits and campaign creation/research.
Notable success includes winning the Most Creative Performance Marketing Campaign & Most Effective Cross Channel Campaign to push new customer acquisition with vouchercloud & NOW TV - 2016 Performance Marketing Awards.
Digital Marketing Manager — Beatlock Records
Beatlock Records, Bristol — (June 2012 - May 2015)
