How a brand people already know becomes the one they pick.
Known → Understood → Trusted → Chosen Most established brands get stuck after the first step.
Built for: Established brands with a familiar name and flat growth Sectors: Financial services, consumer brands, real estate, retail The fix: Six stages, mapped over the first 90 days
“We paid so much on ads, but they don’t convert.”
A client, to the Ace team
It’s a fair complaint, and the ads are rarely the whole problem.
Take a bank that’s been around for fifteen years. Its name is on billboards across Lagos and most adults have heard of it. Yet when a 28-year-old founder opens her first business account, she picks a fintech app she found on Instagram last month.
The bank’s ads did their job: she knows the name. Nothing she saw after the ad gave her a reason to choose it.
What people hear about you depends on who they last spoke to.
Back to the bank. Its sales team pitches stability and its website talks about innovation. The CEO speaks about financial inclusion on panels, while the ads promise something else again. All of it is true, but none of it adds up to one clear reason to pick this bank over the app.
Startups tend to have too little to say. Large companies have the opposite problem: too many teams saying different things. You’ll find the same pattern at insurers, consumer brands and property developers.
You paid for fifteen years of billboards. A fintech with a tenth of your budget is collecting the return.
If three of these sound familiar, this is about you.
- Ad spend keeps going up while conversions stay flat.
- Ask sales, marketing and your CEO what the company does, and you’ll get different answers.
- Smaller competitors are louder online than you are.
- Nobody can say which campaigns actually brought in revenue.
- Your website lists your products but never says why a buyer should care.
- Customers buy once and you don’t hear from them again.
How we’d fix it, in the order we’d do it
Each stage fixes a point where people drop off between seeing your ad and becoming a customer. The order matters, because every stage depends on the one before it.
Position → Communicate → Attract → Trust → Convert → Retain
01 Position: Agree on why someone should pick you.
Where people drop off: They know your name but can’t say what you’re best at. What we do: We talk to your customers, study your competitors and listen to how your own teams describe you. Then we agree with your leadership on who you’re for and what you do better than anyone else in your category. What you get: A one-page positioning your leadership has signed off. How we measure it: Whether customers can tell us why they chose you, without prompting.
02 Communicate: Get every team saying the same thing.
Where people drop off: Sales, marketing, leadership and customer service each tell their own version of the story. What we do: We turn the positioning into a message guide and take it to every team, from the website and sales decks to what your CEO says on stage and what your call centre says on the phone. What you get: A messaging guide, with a version for each team. How we measure it: How consistent your message is across channels, checked before we start and again after.
03 Attract: Show up where buyers are already looking.
Where people drop off: You appear when people search your name, but not when they search for the problem you solve. What we do: We line up SEO, content, social and PR so you appear in search results, AI answers, trade press and the feeds your buyers actually read. What you get: A discoverability plan and a content calendar based on what people really search for. How we measure it: Search visibility beyond your brand name, your share of the conversation against competitors, and press coverage.
04 Trust: Give buyers proof before they talk to sales.
Where people drop off: They recognise you, but they’ve never seen proof that you’re the best choice. What we do: We get your leaders quoted and published, turn happy customers into stories and pitch you to the press, so buyers have seen your expertise before they ever call. What you get: A plan for putting your executives in front of the right audiences, and a bank of stories, data and coverage your sales team can use. How we measure it: Mentions in credible media, engagement with your leaders’ content, and how often buyers shortlist you.
05 Convert: Give every ad somewhere to send people.
Where people drop off: Ads get attention, then send people nowhere in particular. What we do: Every ad leads to one clear next step: a landing page, a booking or an offer. We track each step, so you can see which ads bring in customers and which ones just spend budget. What you get: Landing pages, conversion journeys and reporting that ties each lead back to where it came from. How we measure it: Qualified leads, cost per qualified lead, and conversion rate by channel.
06 Retain: Keep customers after the first sale.
Where people drop off: You stop talking to customers the moment they pay. What we do: We set up onboarding, follow-up and referral messages on email and WhatsApp, so customers keep hearing from you for the right reasons. What you get: A customer lifecycle map, plus email and WhatsApp sequences ready to switch on. How we measure it: Repeat purchases, retention and referrals.
What the first 90 days look like
Days 1–30: Find out what’s broken
- Audit of your brand and messaging
- Interviews with your team and customers
- Competitor and search research
- Positioning agreed with leadership
Days 31–60: Fix the foundations
- Message guide rolled out to every team
- Fixes to the website and content
- Executive visibility plan
- Landing pages and tracking built
Days 61–90: Go live and measure
- Campaign live across search, social and PR
- Customer follow-up sequences switched on
- First report, measured against where you started
We run all six stages ourselves.
Large companies often hire a PR agency, a digital agency, a content shop and a media buyer. Each one reports its own numbers, and nobody owns what happens between the ad and the sale.
We handle strategy, PR, content and digital under one roof. The person writing your ads works from the same page as the person pitching your biggest client.
Brands we’ve worked with: Optimus Bank · Palms Mall · Cray Finance · BLOC MFB · Zayith · Tramango · Boustani
Paying for ads that don’t convert?
Book a 30-minute brand diagnostic. Send us a short brief and we’ll show you where people are dropping off and what to fix first.
[Book a brand diagnostic] [Download the use case (PDF)]
Prefer to talk? Call (+234) 816 057 9453
The bank in this example is illustrative, not a specific client. The quote is real; we’ve kept the client anonymous.