VP Growth // Data Science
I have 10 years experience with $50m spent on PPC. At Ladder I've grown 200+ clients including Monzo Bank, Time Out and Booking.com. I optimized $10m a year on Google for Carphone Warehouse at Efficient Frontier (acquired by Adobe) and grew PPC from 1% of total revenue to 6% at ShopStyle. I was an early Facebook advertiser at Travelzoo (Groupon competitor) acquiring 1m subscribers, scaled acquisition at SumoMe (founded by Noah Kagan) by 30x, and even ran Facebook ads for Facebook (Workplace).
I founded and grew Ladder, a growth marketing agency to over 50 employees in three countries, helping companies like Monzo Bank, Time Out and Booking.com as well as 200 or so other startups. I was an early adopter of Growth Hacking techniques and learned to code when Optimizely came to Europe so I could roll out my own A/B tests without needing IT. I've also met Sean Ellis and other prominent Growth Hackers, and worked for Noah Kagan at SumoMe.
Having worked with over 200 startups in the past five years through Ladder, a growth marketing agency I founded, I've seen enough technology stacks and the issues with them to be able to help give some guidance in the majority of scenarios. Specifically I'm best at tag management and set up of tracking / analytics, and I've done enough CRM to know the commonalities of how they all work.
This is one of my favorite rarely tested channels. You can get really premium inventory particularly if you're targeting designers, developers or marketers. It is a little difficult to buy on vs the self-serve Google and Facebook platforms, but in particular the email sponsorship has worked well for me. When Crypto was a thing I spent a lot of money on BuySellAds as they had the Crypto package, in some cases achieving <0.5 cents cost per click and 5% CTR (unheard of in display ads!).
We tried out Quora ads early on and saw good success, in particular for clients like Booking.com on the B2B side. It is still a relatively early platform so has rarely been a big source of traffic for the 200 or so clients I've worked with at Ladder, but it does well enough to be worth testing.
I have used Twitter pretty regularly as an ads platform since starting my agency, Ladder. In some cases we have gotten it to be a better source of traffic with more volume than Facebook, though that is admittedly rare and depends on the type of client.
I started advertising on Adroll at SumoMe, and have experimented with it multiple times across the 200 clients we've worked with at Ladder, an agency I co-founded. I actually now have Criteo as a client, a direct competitor, and therefore have done a lot of competitive research into its strengths and weaknesses.
I have been running campaigns on Bing for a decade, and worked directly with them as one of the UK's largest advertisers for a while. I was an active spender during the shift to Yahoo account management and most of the 200 clients I've worked with at Ladder, the agency I co-founded, have experimented with Bing.
I have used Hotjar for a long time, and competed against them somewhat when I worked for SumoMe. I have worked with over 200 startups at Ladder, a growth agency I founded, and for most of them we installed and used Hotjar actively for insights in CRO.
I have a lot of Mixpanel experience, having worked directly with them as a partner agency in the implementation of several complex mobile app clients. One of the clients I built the setup for was a new French bank, post-GDPR, so I had to navigate through the many ways they store data and help their legal team interpret the risk vs benefit of several major analytics decisions.
I have basic SQL experience - enough to pull the data I need - then I usually export into another platform to analyze with Python or in a spreadsheet.
My experience with JavaScript is mainly in setting up tracking events on websites, custom coding for front-end A/B tests (implemented via Optimizely, VWO or Google Optimize) and setting up automations in Google Ads Scripts.
I'm a semi-competent Python developer with a focus on Data Science, and have built simple Django apps and workflow automations. I mostly use Python for advanced analysis though I also have entry level experience in machine learning applied to marketing.
I have used Intercom for both clients and my own company, having launched several SaaS tools and scaled them to over 1,000 users. I have built several end to end tracking installations with Intercom, and I'm familiar with how to connect it to other services, as well as set up complex behavioral email loops.
I was an early adopter of Google Optimize and even wrote a blog post that got retweeted by them (how I moved my agency from Optimizely to Google Optimize). I have set up complex experiments including working with developers, even for fortune 500 companies like Nestle.
I'm a Google Tag Manager power user, having used it on something like 200 clients through Ladder, the agency I co-founded. I even set up Google Tag Manager for a major fast food brand late one night when another agency couldn't find anyone who knew it! I know how to code basic JavaScript for custom setups, and am competent in working with developers for any advanced needs. I also have experience with other tag management solutions such as Segment, and before that Qubit and others.
I was an early Facebook advertiser at Travelzoo (Groupon competitor) acquiring 1m subscribers, scaled acquisition at SumoMe (founded by Noah Kagan) by 30x, and even ran Facebook ads for Facebook (Workplace). As the co-founder of Ladder, a growth marketing agency, I have scaled campaigns up to $500k a month, and have worked with clients like Monzo Bank, Time Out and Booking.com.
I founded a growth marketing agency, Ladder, who became a partner agency of Unbounce, and have sent people from my team to their conference. We have used Unbounce for Fortune 500 clients all the way down to early stage startups, and have built several custom pages with unique setups.
I have run LinkedIn campaigns for years, including for some big names like Booking.com, which are one of the largest LinkedIn advertisers in Europe. I've worked directly with LinkedIn account reps and have experience with a variety of ad formats.
My first job was at Efficient Frontier (acquired by Adobe) where I optimized $10m a year on Google for Carphone Warehouse and others. I then joined Travelzoo where amongst other media and landing page optimization, I managed their $4m a year PPC budget. After that I grew PPC from 1% of total revenue to 6% at ShopStyle, then founded my own agency, Ladder, where I've worked with over 200 clients on PPC, including Monzo Bank, Time Out and Booking.com.
Ahrefs is my SEO tool of choice - I have run many manual checks over the years and their data is the most consistent. I also prefer the UI and it isn't bloated like other tools when it comes to features. I use it primarily for keyword research, but it is also very useful for linkbuilding strategies (which actually was what it was originally known for, before they upped their game on keywords).
I have used Segment many times for multiple clients in spaces like financial services (including launching a new bank in France) and also for my own in-house products. I mostly use it in scenarios where the client is on mobile, has offline events, or has advanced analytics needs, for example dumping raw data into Google BigQuery and/or Mode Analytics for advanced analysis via SQL and Python.
I'm a power user of Google Data Studio having transitioned our entire agency (50 employees) across to it from an internal system we built in-house. I have set up many custom reports and dashboards for clients, including connecting to BigQuery, or custom population of spreadsheets as sources for things like cohort analysis. I have built GDS reports for companies like Monzo Bank, Time Out and Booking.com.
I have worked with HubSpot as my own CRM in the growth marketing agency I founded, Ladder. We are getting something like 300 leads a month through inbound marketing and I'm familiar with the various workflows needed to integrate HubSpot with other services, including attributing marketing for the full funnel. I have also worked on HubSpot for clients, including a wedding company with over 50 venues.
I have worked with Mailchimp for years, both for my own newsletters and behavioral emails, and on behalf of clients at Ladder, the growth marketing agency I founded. This is the email platform I have the most experience with, though I have also worked with several others.
Growth marketing agency with 50 people in the US, UK and EU where we've helped grow over 200 clients such as Monzo Bank, Booking.com and Time Out across major digital channels.
2.1
Merit
Michael helped us understand where to focus. He is a cool and a smart guy. he shared with us a series of informations that are actually helping our company grow. I am going to schedule a second call :)
A true master of his craft. - Channels? Check - Company building? Check - The most challenging issue in the digital marketing space today (attribution + measurement)? Check - Market + enterprise dynamics like leverage + risk? Check Somebody please give me a button to buy this guy a coffee!
Super concrete example and new ideas to test out right now for my data analysis
Great session with Michael, lots of actionable takeaways in a short time!
Google Ads can seem daunting - the methodical approach to the call helped enormously
to look at PPC in a creative lense is right up my street. Ad copy is important
Micheal was an excellent mentor, explained everything in detail and provided many insights. His drive and determination to see other succeed is a key trait of his. I will certainly be booking another call in the future.
Fantastic call with Michael discussing 10X growth strategies. Highly recommend a call to help validate ideas
Mike was very helpful in discussing the set up of an attribution model. He provided insight from his past experiences, including industry-specific examples in travel. We discussed general setup and details of tracking.
So, I have had multiple calls on the platform, but this was the first one to last only 15 minutes. And it really works. Michael had understood our case, and provided answers to my thoughts and pains, stepping in my shoes! We discussed about Go To Market, Feedback Collection, Early Scaling and Early Adopters. If these are among your pain points, Michael is your guy! Book with no hesitance!
Far and away the best mentoring session I've had so far. It didn't even take 30 mins to have my brain filled with actionable insight. I highly recommend Michael when you have more technical questions about tracking, like I did. 10/10
I had a great chat with Michael! He gave me some excellent general advice on building an effective growth team, which was exactly what I was looking for. He offered helpful examples as well as concrete mistakes to avoid.
This meeting was truly invaluable! Thanks Michael for listening and sharing your expertise with me for free. I have learned a lot from you today :)
Gave me a key insigths for improve my current situation
Michael was great. He gave me a lot of feedback on my idea and website. I immediately spent the next day implementing it.
Michael offered some great insight into structuring paid social campaigns. He was really friendly and professional - I'll definitely be hitting him up for more advice.
thank you for the guidance regarding my career path! Good talk as always
Michael was super insightful! He provided really valuable insight to our specific business and provided ideas that we had not thought of implementing before. I left knowing a lot more than I did when I came into the call. Highly recommend!
Had a great chat with Michael regarding app analytics and measurement! I loved his unconventional approach to certain metrics! Very much looking forward to our next call. :))
Michael was able to quickly impart his knowledge on the topic of content partnerships. He is quick to assess the problem and provide practical advice.
Michael was very knowledgeable and helpful. Thanks
Had a great session with Michael! He helped me out by providing some extremely valuable insights to the way I should move forward with the business. :)
Michael was a fire hydrant of useful information, thank you!
Looking forward to working with Michael!
Michael helps me to understand complex concepts in simple terms and suggest solutions for my concerns. He is very knowledgeable and friendly. I definitely recommend him!
Awesome chat with Michael about agency growth. Lots to think about & will be booking in with him again soon!
Mike might be the best mentor I've had the privaledge to talk with. Thanks a bunch
Getting Mike's fresh eyes to a growth challenge is extremely valuable. He got real examples to draw from his experience. Mike also has a lot of leverage on his personal network. After our call, he was able to connect me with the right person in the particular industry I needed to continue refining the ideas we generated. A lot of value from a 30min call, book his brain!
Michael was awesome and super friendly. Caught up over some small talk, and then he listened to everything I said before digesting it and dropping some nuggets of wisdom. Loved the chat Michael and will look forward to catching up again sometime soon!
Michael is, once again, the man with the plan! He gave me some great advice for boosting my facebook ad ctr and improving my overall conversion rate! Thanks Michael, highly recommended!
The sessions with Mike where the best so far! He was very fast to understand the different potentials of what we have created so far. Then he disected them with risks, advantages, marketing ideas. Highly recommended!!!
Michael was super helpful, offering transparent advice based on his experiences in growth. Thanks for your time!
Michael was very easy to talk to and provided some specific useful advice that we'll implement.
Michael was very patient and helpful with his advice. I really loved his mentoring style, where he took time to understand the problem and then suggested the best possible solution options for the same. I also learnt some new things about FB campaigns which I never knew. Highly recommend Michael as a mentor.
He did a good job. I learned a lot from him. He has some really good ideas and is always kind enough to share.
He did a good job as always. Very smart and detail-oriented. I learn a lot from him. He knows Facebook ads in and out. He is very good at marketing.
Michael mentored us on agency growth strategies surrounding content marketing, and generously shared the tools and tactics that worked for him in the past.
Michael has a great personality, it was a pleasure to have the call with him. He confirmed some of my previous hypothesis and gave me some great ideas. I highly advise talking with him more about strategies than tools, he can provide great insights, tips, and a fresh perspective.
Another value-add call.
You can tell that Michael knows what he's talking about, he provided me with some useful insights around my specific target audience and what marketing techniques work best for them. I left the call with a various new ideas and tools that I can use to improve my marketing traction.
The amount of value that Michael has added to my business development progress within 30 minutes is incredible. I left the session with enough guidance to be able to make more informed decisions at how to invest my marketing budget. Without this session, I would have definitely gone down the wrong path and would have had different expectations on results. Thank you for your time, Michael. I am sure we will speak again.
Michael is super knowledgeable and was able to provide me with a lot of insights and reflect in the way I was planning to collect the data and improve it towards our app strategy. Highly recommend for those who are defining data strategy and tools for a startup.
Michael was generous with real no-BS advice, and advised me to be bold in approaching a partnership. He gave me the "just go for it" that I was waiting to hear, and I'm following through with it. I found his perspective to be real. Thanks so much Michael.
He did a good job. Very knowledgeable. We weren't going in the right direction at all, and he helped us go in the right direction. He is very smart and a great communicator. Strong interpersonal skills. Very experienced. He knows his stuff in and out. I will work with him again.
We didn't have a ton of time to cover the business problem background and get insights but Michael was able to provide a couple of great nuggets that gave me some quality directions forward.
Michael was great! He helped guide me on creating our company's UTM structure. He advised developing small, achievable stages to ensure I don't overwhelm the team when starting to implement UTMs, but also balancing a future-proof structure for when we are ready to grow our UTM strategy.
Michael was so helpful and quickly figured out our situation. Best advices received on this platform so far! Can't wait to figure an other call in few weeks. Thank you again!
You know how everyone says: Don't be the smartest person in the room? You can be sure, when you're in a "virtual room" with Michael, you won't be. Michael knows A LOT about many things in growth & marketing, not only theoretically but from his own experience (not only has he worked with Noah Kagan, he also built a super successful digital agency). He's in my Top 5% of marketers in the world, and I love turning to him for advice. Book a call, you won't regret it.
Well versed in PPC and gave excellent tips regarding ads and analytics. Very friendly and has a deep passion for what he does!
I loved chatting with Michael. He has a unique way of looking at the big picture. I’m looking forward to trying the strategies he recommended for my failing Facebook campaign. I can’t wait to talk to him again because he is such a great guy all around. Highly recommend!
Great session as usual. Smart guy.
He did a good job. Great communicator. Great ideas. Knows his stuff. I recommend Michael 100%.
The session with Michael was great. I was looking for advice about consultancy and he shared great tips in a very structured way. Thanks Mike!
What a legend - Mr. Taylor has a wealth of knowledge of all things growth as well as super smart/lean approaches to growing things agency side. On top of that he's a great bloke. Don't miss out on the op to have a chat.
My chat with Michael was great! It was a pleasure to connect and discuss growth – he has great knowledge and insights into the topic.
Fantastic call with Michael. He gave so many useful insights, ideas and advice from his experience. Thank you so much!
Mike really knows his growth, both as a practitioner and as an agency owner. Super helpful on answering questions around differences in productised services vs agency model, new traffic channels and more. We ran out of time and booked a follow up so always a good sign one mentor to another!
Wow. I had a chat with Michael on content strategy for our agency and he was extremely friendly and open. Really opened the book on how they did it at Ladder and gave me some awesome ideas on 1. how to approach content marketing and 2. some very specific ideas for implementation that I had not yet thought about which should be absolutely killer. I can't wait to implement!
Michael, is first class, knowledgeable in his field and provides actionable advice.
Mike was fantastic, to the point and extremely helpful! I will definitely reach out to him again in the future.
Michael broke down my Facebook Ads campaign beautifully. Will book again!
Most meaningful conversation I had on how to scale my business. Having Michael done it before it literally felt like talking to myself some years down the line. What I valued the most is that all the advices were very tangible.
Michael helped me to look at our PPC performance from a different angle which I wasn't paying much attention to before. Now I've got lots of optimization ideas to implement. Thanks Michael!
What a brilliant session! Michael was not only amazingly friendly, patient and great to talk to – he also gave me a ton of helpful advice from his vast experience running his agency and advising startups. Can't recommend him highly enough if you're considering starting an agency or want advice for any early stage product.
Michael gave me some good advice on how to test my idea, helped to specify it and make more clear. Now I see how to test various ideas fast and cheap, it will help me in the future
Another great session with Michael talking about PPC and conversions. Loads of really useful information and a very friendly, relaxed tone. I would highly recommend.
Michael, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to chat with me. Fantastic session, full of knowledge and just generally all round lovely guy. Will be back!
If you are running or working at an agency - Mike is a great person to talk with. His advice is accurate and actionable. He brings so much knowledge not just on moving upmarket but actually how to transition from being a 1 person show/consultant to a full-fledged agency. Great guy overall - very empathetic.
Had a great first time session with Michael who is very knowledgeable in his area of expertise and provided us with valuable advise.
It was amazing to talk to Michael. The session went by in a blink of a second as it was so interesting to gain insights into Michael's super solid Growth Process and thinking. Looking forward to speaking another time :)
It was truly interesting conversation with Michael. He gave me few things to think about and to test in my Facebook Ads campaign. I will definitely will try to meet him again ❤️
Michael gave loads of advice on how to improve our lead generation. We learned our conversions from PPC were lower that what is typical in the industry - he literally walked through our main landing pages and suggested improvements to increase conversion.
Given the fast-moving world nowadays, we spent our 30 minutes talking about how my company can take advantage of the current trend. Michael shared from his own experience and gave me some insights to reflect/think about, which was great. I love how friendly and easy to talk to he is! Definitely going to set up another one later on to talk about more technical things!
The session with Michael was incredibly good. You notice right away that this is his area of expertise and that he has years of experience. His input on my challenge was very valuable and gave me a lot of thought starters and actionable next steps. Will definitely book again!
This session was really helpful. I needed to get more knowledge on tracking tools and more specifically on how to track new activity from affiliates. I liked Michael's approach as it was a good mix between taking a step back looking at my need and giving context on each of the tool I could use, and more precise guidance on how to implement the recommended solution in Mixpanel. Thank you!
Amazing call with Michael, we talked about Facebook Ads, how Michael ran campaigns in the past for a similar company and got a few tips and tricks that I'm surely going to use. Really helpful!
I just had my first session with Michael and it was great. He is friendly, very helpful and in 30 minutes I picked up a lot of information that will help my PPC strategy. Would highly recommend.
Highly recommend Mike for anything PPC related. He helped me with both Google Ads strategy, as well as with campaign reporting and suggested some tools that will make this process less arduous.
I came prepared with a few very specific questions about Facebook Ads that have been on my mind the past few weeks but couldn't find satisfying results for on blogs etc. Here's my takeaway from this call. Yes, we do tend to get in our own way sometimes by overcomplicating things. But there are other times that things are legit complicated, and need to be treated as such! Being able to know the difference between those two scenarios becomes SO much easier by being able to talk to people as experienced as Michael. Ok - time to get to work!
AWESOME :) ! Michael helped us a lot ! He listened to our pitch and then he pitched our company to us hahaha. Lots of useful tips.
I thoroughly enjoyed my session with Mike. He is vastly knowledgeable in outbound email campaigns and shared with me loads of good tips, articles, and step-by-step methodology of how to approach my next outbound campaign. I could not recommend him more. I will most definitely have another session with Mike.
Mike knows a lot about tools and has an infinite database of relevant resources that will save you time. I needed to refresh my SQL and GIT knowledge for a specific project. Mike shared with me great resources and directed my studies to make it happen faster. Exactly what I needed. I'll be consulting with Mike for Python-related questions!
We had a great session about Mobile Apps strategies. Starting from PPC tactics to retention, ASO and tools recommendations. I'll definitely follow-up after a week or two, to analyze the learnings together.
What I didn't realize before talking with Michael is that i was talking with a potential user on what we are building and as such, he gave us really valuable advice and directions on where we could point our efforts to. A great guy, would definitely recommend.
Michael was great. He gave solid advice and even was so kind to send some recap notes my way (with suggested readings). I definitely recommend scheduling time with Michael if he is available.
Michael was extremely helpful in providing a system in place for running tests and scaling in a startup. He has other great skills that I will definitely be reaching out for in the near future. But if you're looking for some guidance on how to stay organized in a lean marketing team, this is your guy.
We discussed paid ads attribution models, and Michael had some excellent ideas to help me get a clearer picture of lead quality beyond the initial sign up. He also offered useful insights on 'alternative' paid media platforms such as BuySellAds and Quora :-) Thanks!
I came to Michael with our SaaS metrics to find potential bottlenecks and was very happy with the feedback I got. He highlighted some important problems and gave me couple ideas for a new direction.
Amazing session with Michael - very knowledgeable and great recommendations for our SEA strategy.
My call with Michael was fantastic. He's knowledgable, completely understood the needs and complexity of the challenge I faced and provided super useful feedback for how to improve. Moreover, it was just a great conversation with someone who clearly can see both in very specific detail (as required in conversion rate optimization/growth marketing), but also sees things on a higher strategic level. Big recommend for Michael :)