Hurree.co AI b2b saas : From SMB to Mid-Market. The Pivot and the Growth Engine

Over 12 months, Hurree.co moved from broad, small business go-to-market activity to a validated, ICP-led growth system. Working with Claudia as fractional CMO, the team identified its highest-value customers, rebuilt its positioning around its strongest product capability, and put in place the infrastructure to sustain and scale that growth independently.

The Opportunity

Hurree is an analytics platform built to help teams connect their data and act on insights faster. When the engagement began, the business had strong product capability and a growing customer base, but its go-to-market approach lacked the confidence needed to unlock the next stage of growth.

Marketing spend was not clearly tied to pipeline outcomes, messaging tried to speak to every possible buyer, and there was no validated data on which customer segments converted most reliably or retained best.

The opportunity was clear: a product with genuine capability, a motivated team, and an untested hypothesis that a sharper ICP focus would unlock disproportionate pipeline efficiency. The challenge was identifying exactly who Hurree was already winning with, and why, and then systematically scaling that.

The Approach

Embedded as Fractional CMO for 12 months, working inside the business across seven workstreams: strategy, ICP research, brand, content, campaigns, analytics, and CRM.

Attended internal planning sessions, briefed the product and sales teams directly, and co-built the analytics infrastructure. Every recommendation came with an implementation plan.

The core methodology was structured experimentation.

Five ICP verticals were selected for testing: Finance, Marketing, Operations, Product/Data, and Real Estate. Each received a research brief, targeted content, a paid channel test, and a full conversion analysis. The results fed directly into the growth roadmap, producing a clear picture of which segments to double down on, which to deprioritise for now, and which required product development before they could be meaningfully activated.

The Audit:

Before any campaign activity began, a full diagnostic audit was conducted across Hurree's go-to-market function. This covered ICP clarity, brand and messaging alignment, channel attribution, CRM data quality, and the connection between marketing activity and pipeline outcomes. The audit identified three structural gaps that were constraining growth regardless of spend or effort.

Underperforming ICP	Fragmented Positioning	Attribution Blind Spots
The platform served multiple industries with no data on which segments converted best, retained longest, or aligned most closely with Hurree's product strengths.	Messaging tried to speak to every possible buyer. Without a defined ICP, no single value proposition could be prioritised or tested with confidence.	Marketing spend lacked a clear connection to pipeline outcomes. There was no shared definition of a qualified lead, and no funnel view across marketing and sales.

Growth Areas Identified

The engagement was structured around a disciplined experimentation framework: five ICP verticals were evaluated simultaneously across job-title density in the platform, paid channel conversion cost, content engagement rate, and product-use fit. Each vertical received a research brief, targeted content, a paid channel test, and a full conversion analysis. This approach allowed growth priorities to be ranked by evidence.

Start, Stop, Optimise

What We Started

Event-led growth. The Dublin Technology Show (DTS) activation generated over 500 contacts, 173 MQLs, and 43 SQLs in three days, producing more pipeline than the previous quarter's digital campaigns combined. Beyond the numbers, DTS validated a critical strategic insight: Hurree's audience responds powerfully to credibility-based, in-person activations. A tiered events model was subsequently built, scaling from national flagship events to local community presence through the Big Marketing Meetup in Belfast and Ireland.

Hosted roundtables. Intimate, product marketing-led dinners for 10 to 20 senior contacts delivered the highest demo-to-attendee rate of any channel in the engagement. The first Hurree roundtable, held in January 2026, generated multiple demos and built key media relationships at a fraction of the cost of paid acquisition. The model is low-cost relative to its pipeline yield and should run quarterly.

AI discoverability (GEO). As B2B buyers increasingly use AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews to shortlist software, appearing in those results is a pipeline channel, not just an SEO metric. We initiated a partnership with WordLift.io , a specialist AI Optimisation (AIO) Platform, to evolve Hurree's content strategy from traditional SEO to Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO).

WordLift's structured data layer optimises Hurree's whitepapers, Riva product pages, and ICP landing pages to be cited in AI-generated answers, building brand credibility at the precise moment of discovery.

Hurree is early to this channel, which represents a significant competitive advantage if the workstream is maintained and scaled alongside the content programme.

Thought leadership positioning. A strategic whitepaper, How AI-Powered Agents Are Taking Over Reporting, positioned Hurree at the inflection point of the AI reporting narrative and gave the brand a credible, future-facing footprint. Distributed via LinkedIn ads, organic posts, and nurture sequences, it generated 2,253 landing page sessions and a 6.64% email click-through rate, well above B2B benchmarks. It also positioned Hurree's CEO as a forward-thinking voice in the AI-powered analytics space.

What We Stopped

Broad-reach SMB targeting. Data consistently showed that companies with fewer than 50 employees produced shallow pain, low conversion rates, and poor retention signals. Budget and attention were redirected toward the 50 to 200 employee mid-market cohort, where product complexity, collaboration requirements, and deal value aligned most reliably with Hurree's capability. This was the central pivot of the engagement.

Feature-led messaging. Hurree's previous positioning led with platform features. Analytics platform was technically accurate but failed to communicate business impact. This was replaced entirely with outcome-led messaging centred on Riva, Hurree's AI Reporting Agent, which emerged from ICP research as the single most compelling reason target buyers engaged with the proposition.

Fragmented digital spend. Google Ads were rebuilt from broad keyword targeting to intent-driven clusters aligned to Finance and Marketing ICP search behaviour. Negative keyword pruning and ICP-aligned landing pages replaced the previous catch-all approach, reducing wasted spend and improving conversion quality.

What We Optimised

Riva's market position. Repositioned from a minor product footnote to Hurree's flagship capability. Homepage copy was rewritten to lead with Riva use cases. LinkedIn content strategy was rebuilt around Riva as the content hero, with demo clips, use-case stories, and ROI posts replacing generic platform content. The brand shift: from analytics platform to AI-powered reporting agent for Finance and Marketing teams, a proposition that speaks directly to ICP pain points and maps to Hurree's strongest product capability.

Google Ads performance. Cost per click fell 62.5%. Conversion rate doubled from approximately 8.5% to 17%. Contact volume grew by 110%. These improvements were achieved through ICP-aligned restructuring.

CRM and pipeline quality. Of total HubSpot contacts, 62% were verified as active business email addresses and 2.2% were identified as marketing-qualified business contacts across core ICP verticals. A shared MQL standard was established across marketing and sales: business email, ICP vertical match, and engagement signal. This replaced a volume-based approach with a quality-first pipeline definition.

Sales alignment. An expert Fractional CRO was brought in to ensure the pipeline being built by marketing could be converted effectively by the sales team. Together, we redefined the scoring and qualification criteria aligning marketing and sales on the ICP. The sales team was equipped with ICP one-pagers, a Riva demo script, and an objection handling guide.

Validating Product-Market Fit

The ICP experimentation produced a clear and actionable signal.

1. Marketing ICP demonstrated the strongest validation across cost, conversion, and engagement metrics, and should anchor the 2026 growth campaigns with a dedicated acquisition sprint.

2. Finance ICP delivered exceptional cost efficiency at a cost per marketing qualified lead of 15% against a sector benchmark confirming strong audience interest, but requires additional product development around forecasting and modelling capabilities before it can be fully activated at scale.

3. Other verticals returned partial or inconclusive signals. This is valuable information: it tells the team precisely which segments depend on product roadmap decisions rather than go-to-market execution. Sequencing those ICPs is now a product conversation, not a marketing one.

This is how product-market fit gets validated in practice: not through guesswork, but through structured experiments that produce answers worth acting on.

The Numbers

43.9% MQL Rate (Q1: 3.4%)

+1,191% MQL Rate Growth Q1 to Q2

360% Above LinkedIn CTR Benchmark

500+ Contacts from DTS Event

173 MQLs from DTS Event

43 SQLs Identified at DTS

15% Finance CMQL vs Benchmark

-62.5% Google Ads CPC Reduction

17% Google Ads Conversion Rate (Doubled)

What Has Been Built

The fractional CMO model is designed to build capability, not dependency. By the end of the engagement, the growth function was not reliant on continued external involvement to operate. The team had ownership of the ICP framework, the campaign playbooks, the measurement approach, and the partner relationships established during the year.

Strategic deliverables left in place include :

• five ICP vertical research briefs with validated targeting parameters,

• two strategic whitepapers covering the SaaS is Dead narrative and the Finance ICP,

• a full Riva brand and website copy overhaul,

• a LinkedIn and Google Ads playbook for Finance and Marketing ICPs,

• an analytics reporting framework covering funnel, channels, and customer lifecycle,

• an active AIO/WordLift workstream now owned by the growth marketing team.

The team's own assessment is clear: the ICP strategy, events model, and content programme are embedded in the team's operating rhythm. The best indicator of a successful fractional CMO engagement is that the team can articulate, own, and continue the strategy independently. That is the position Hurree is now in.

The Next Growth Window

Hurree is well-positioned to accelerate toward product-market fit. The Marketing ICP is validated and ready for a dedicated acquisition sprint. The foundations are in place. The next 12 months are about compounding what has been proven.

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