Clients / Bullhorn
Case study · Bullhorn
Scaling Bullhorn’s international marketing to 164% of target
A Vista-backed US SaaS business needed EMEA and APAC to prove the company could scale globally. Precision, not volume, is what made international marketing commercially credible.
Julian Moore · Head of Marketing, EMEA & APAC · February 2015 to July 2016 · Regional lead
The situation
Bullhorn was strong in the US and unproven internationally. Under Vista Equity Partners' ownership, the international business had a specific job: demonstrate that growth outside North America could be efficient and repeatable, not a collection of expensive local experiments.
EMEA and APAC covered wildly different markets with one regional team. Expensive sales time was going into cold accounts, and the product was still positioned as an Applicant Tracking System just as the company moved towards higher-value Recruitment CRM deals.
The diagnosis
The regional plan could not be a smaller copy of the US plan. Deal sizes, market maturity and buying behaviour differed by tier and by country, so the diagnosis split the market three ways: SME, mid-market and enterprise, each with a different acquisition motion and a different cost to serve.
The second finding was that sales productivity was the real constraint. Marketing’s job was not more leads, it was warmer accounts: knowing which target organisations were in-market and making sure sales time landed there.
SME ran on volume and self-serve motions. Mid-market, the sweet spot, ran on ABM plus relationships. Enterprise ran on reputation, sponsorships and patience. One playbook across all three would have failed all three.
The work
What changed
Four workstreams across EMEA and APAC, built to be repeatable market to market.
Tiered go-to-market
Segmented the international motion by deal size: volume programmes for SME, account-based marketing and relationship-building for mid-market, and reputation-led activity including sponsorships for enterprise. Budget followed the economics of each tier.
ABM integrated with sales
Implemented Demandbase and integrated it with the CRM to de-anonymise target-account traffic and track intent. Marketing and sales worked the same named accounts, so SDR and rep time concentrated on organisations already showing interest rather than cold lists.
Category repositioning
Led the EMEA and APAC rollout of Bullhorn’s shift from Applicant Tracking System to Recruitment CRM, supporting the move towards higher-value enterprise opportunities. Repositioning a category regionally means re-educating a market, not changing a slide.
Regional team and localisation
Hired and managed 20+ people across marketing, inbound SDRs and the intern programme, and built a market-entry playbook: standardised the core motion, then localised language and execution through hubs in London and Sydney.
Operator detail
How it worked in practice
Intent data changed where sales time went
Demandbase wired into the CRM meant the team could see which named accounts were actually researching, and prospecting effort moved to accounts warmed by ABM activity rather than cold outreach. Sales bought into ABM because it made their week more productive, not because marketing asked nicely.
The mid-market sweet spot earned the investment
Mid-market deals were large enough to justify account-level attention and fast enough to show results inside PE timelines. That is where ABM plus relationship-building concentrated, while SME stayed efficient and enterprise stayed patient.
A playbook is only global if it localises
The market-entry playbook standardised the parts that travel, messaging architecture, campaign structure, measurement, and localised the parts that do not: language, events, partners and pace. London and Sydney hubs ran the same motion differently.
A young team, run on commercial numbers
The regional engine was deliberately built with a mix of experienced hires, inbound SDRs and an intern programme, all managed against marketing-originated revenue and SQL targets. The scoreboard kept a junior-heavy team commercially honest.
Outcomes
Results
| Metric | Start | Outcome | Timeframe |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marketing-originated revenue | target | 164% of target | during tenure |
| Annual SQL volume | baseline | 2x year on year | during tenure |
| Team | n/a | 20+ hired and managed | during tenure |
Marketing-originated revenue
target → 164% of target
during tenureAnnual SQL volume
baseline → 2x year on year
during tenureTeam
n/a → 20+ hired and managed
during tenure164% of the marketing-originated revenue target and the doubling of SQL volume are the international marketing function’s own results. Wider context: I helped scale and reposition the international business during Vista’s ownership as it prepared for a sale to Insight Partners; the subsequent transaction was estimated at c.11x Vista’s entry value. That transaction is a company outcome, after my tenure, that many people and years contributed to.
The record
- Highest-performing period for EMEA/APAC marketing-originated revenue against target at 164%
- SQL volume doubled year on year across the international business
- ATS to Recruitment CRM repositioning rolled out across EMEA and APAC
- Vista → Insight transaction later estimated at c.11x Vista’s entry value
What I took from it
International B2B rewards precision. Splitting the motion by deal size, and integrating marketing with sales at the account level, beat every volume play we could have run with the same budget.
I also took a lasting view on team design: a regional engine can run substantially on well-managed early-career talent if the scoreboard is commercial and the playbook is explicit. Several of that team went on to senior marketing careers.
About Julian Moore
Julian Moore is a growth CMO specialising in fintech and B2B SaaS. Across 20 years he has led growth in six fintech and SaaS leadership roles, from pre-seed startups through PE-backed scale-ups to listed businesses including Xero, with three company sales during his tenures (Contis to Solaris, Bullhorn’s Vista to Insight transaction, and Jillion pre-launch). He runs Marketing Momentum, a fractional CMO practice for fintech and SaaS founders.
More about Julian →Expanding internationally under PE timelines?
If a board needs international growth proven quickly and efficiently, the answer is a tiered motion, ABM wired into sales and a playbook that localises. I have built that from a standing start.