How I built the growth operating system behind a travel-tech scale-up's expansion across four European markets
- Client
- Locker in the City
- Role
- Fractional CMO
- Markets
- Spain, Portugal, Italy and France
Locker in the City was expanding its network of automated luggage-locker stores across four European markets. The challenge was not simply generating more demand. Leadership needed to decide where the next euro should go across locations with different levels of demand, maturity and economic potential.
As Fractional CMO, I designed a location-level growth operating system connecting budgeting, first-party and offline data, campaign decisions and leadership reporting. It created a more scalable foundation for allocating investment, improving online-to-offline acquisition and managing European growth.
This is a public summary of the engagement. A fuller case study with additional context and detail is available on request. Get in touch to request it. Published with client approval.
The expansion challenge
Locker in the City was expanding its network of automated luggage-locker stores across Spain, Portugal, Italy and France. Each location had a different demand profile, level of maturity and economic potential, while marketing activity, customer behaviour, costs and revenue crossed online and offline environments.
A conventional campaign-by-campaign view could not tell leadership where additional investment would create the greatest portfolio-level impact. Without shared decision infrastructure, high-potential locations could remain underfunded, weaker locations could absorb too much investment and expansion would become slower and less predictable.
The growth operating system I built
I reframed the assignment from managing campaigns to building the system leadership needed to allocate investment and learn across locations.
- Designed a new budgeting and measurement system that assessed locations individually while combining their data to support faster, better-informed investment decisions.
- Distributed costs and revenue by location and reflected them in a consolidated leadership dashboard.
- Connected first-party and offline transaction signals with digital marketing decisions, creating a stronger link between media activity and in-store outcomes.
- Introduced new campaign formats and previously unexplored media networks to support the company's online-to-offline growth model.
- Built purpose-specific GPTs and AI agents to reduce repetitive research and optimisation work.
- Location economics
- Budget-allocation rules
- First-party and offline signals
- Campaign optimisation
- Leadership reporting
The business impact
- The new campaign architecture generated €0.5M in attributed revenue over 10 months, with paid advertising accounting for 30% of total revenue.
- The use of first-party and offline signals contributed to a 70%+ increase in in-store transactions and €250k in additional revenue.
- The budgeting system gave leadership a consolidated view of location economics and supported faster investment decisions.
- AI and automation reduced manual research and optimisation work by 40%, with an estimated annual efficiency value of €40k–€50k.
What this demonstrates for leaders expanding into Europe
Multi-market growth is not solved by increasing media investment alone. It requires a decision system connecting local economics, customer signals, investment rules and leadership reporting.
The value of the Fractional CMO role was not simply in launching campaigns. It was in building the operating infrastructure through which campaigns, locations and investment decisions could work as one European growth system. More on how I work with leadership teams.
Common questions
How should a company allocate growth investment across European locations?
Equal budgets rarely reflect equal opportunities. Locker in the City used a location-level system that considered maturity, demand and economics while combining the resulting data into shared allocation and optimisation decisions.
How can offline transactions improve digital marketing decisions?
By connecting first-party and in-store signals to campaign and budgeting decisions, the company gained a clearer view of how digital activity influenced physical transactions. This supported faster optimisation around actual business outcomes rather than online indicators alone.
What should leadership measure during a multi-market expansion?
Leadership needs visibility into location economics, investment allocation, customer outcomes and the relationship between marketing activity and revenue. The dashboard built for Locker in the City brought these elements into one decision system.
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Planning a European expansion?
I help leadership teams build the growth operating system needed to scale across markets — before additional spend or headcount creates additional complexity.