Challenge
North Star Coffee Roasters is one of the UK’s most respected speciality coffee brands. A Leeds-based, B-Corp roastery with a reputation built on exceptional coffee and genuine impact. They have a bold vision: a more certain future for the coffee industry, free from the volatility of the commodity market and resilient to the impacts of climate change.
Having worked together three years earlier to set their marketing strategy, which the team had since implemented with real success, North Star came back for the next phase. With a strong and growing business, a talented in-house marketing team, and real ambition to scale, the challenge was not about fixing what was broken. It was about building the strategic clarity to grow with confidence. Understanding exactly what was working, where the biggest opportunities lay, and how to make the right investment decisions to achieve their goals.
Approach
Working as their Fractional CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) I conducted a structured marketing review across their three routes to market: direct-to-consumer, wholesale, and retail.
Data review and insight
We began with data insights. We analysed their data from ecommerce and website systems, Google Analytics, email marketing, financial accounts, CRM (customer relationship management), retail POS (point of sale) systems, social media analytics and customer research, alongside insights gathered directly from the senior leadership team.
The analysis of the data highlighted the team’s fantastic work since the first strategy session and how well the business was performing across every key measure of marketing performance, from customer loyalty through to conversion rates. It also gave us clear, evidence-based sight of where even more could be unlocked. Rather than working from instinct or assumption, we had a robust picture of what was driving growth and where the greatest untapped potential sat across each channel.
Growth mapping
With those insights in hand, we mapped growth opportunities across all three routes to market; ecommerce, wholesale, and retail, in a format the team could act on directly within their own marketing strategy.
This wasn’t about producing analysis for its own sake. The goal was to give the North Star team clear, prioritised opportunities with the evidence behind them, so they could move quickly and confidently.
Growth strategy and investment planning
We translated the analysis into a clear growth strategy: specific paths for scaling each channel, grounded in data, with an honest view of what investment each would require and how quickly the business could realistically move.
The leadership team had everything they needed to decide where to focus first, how to sequence their ambitions for the business, and how to align their marketing investment with the pace of growth they wanted to achieve whilst maintaining what was important to them – impact, influence and integrity.
Results
- A thorough, data-led view of what is working brilliantly across the business and where the next wave of growth can come from.
- A clear growth strategy across ecommerce, wholesale, and retail: opportunity-mapped, evidence-backed, and built to be implemented by a capable in-house team.
- A 5-year growth framework giving the leadership team the confidence to make decisions about where to focus, what to prioritise, and how quickly to scale.
- A senior marketing partnership providing a strategic layer that sits alongside a talented in-house team, helping North Star grow in a way that stays true to its mission and values.
