Building a Scalable Marketing System for an AI Audiobook Company
Spoken: The AI Audiobook Company™ · Help Storytellers. Tell Stories.
Built a full-funnel growth engine connecting marketing attribution, lifecycle email, and investor-ready reporting, which turned a promising platform into a scalable system.
THE CHALLENGE
Like many early-stage companies, Spoken was struggling with clarity and structure.
Their marketing efforts were producing traffic, but not always translating into meaningful business outcomes. Multiple audiences—including authors, listeners, and publishing professionals—created messaging overlap.
The marketing funnel lacked definition, and attribution across channels wasn’t strong enough to confidently report ROI.
At the same time, Spoken was preparing for investor conversations. That meant marketing needed to demonstrate:
Where growth was coming from
What actions led to revenue
How the system could scale
THE APPROACH
Spoken needed a connected growth engine.
At a strategic level, this meant repositioning Spoken from an “AI audiobook tool” to something more compelling and more accurate: a platform that creates income opportunities for producers and authors, while redefining how audio content is created and distributed.
From there, I built a full-funnel marketing framework designed to move users through a clear journey:
Hear → Imagine → Create → Earn → Subscribe → Scale
This became the foundation for every decision moving forward.
Spoken is an emerging leader in the AI audiobook space, helping authors create multi-voice, studio-quality audiobooks faster and more affordably than traditional production methods. As demand for audio content continues to rise, Spoken is positioned at the intersection of AI, publishing, and the creator economy.
When I signed on with the Spoken team in January 2026, the company had early traction but needed a more structured approach to marketing. Awareness was growing, but conversion pathways were unclear. There was no unified system connecting marketing efforts to product usage and revenue.
We quickly focused on building a scalable marketing system that could support growth, improve conversion rates, and provide clear, investor-ready performance insights.
What We Improved
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We defined a clean lifecycle model:
Interested → Activated → Paid → Certified
Each stage was tied to a specific behavior inside the product.
From there, I designed and implemented a behavior-driven email marketing system using Zoho Campaigns and Zoho CRM. Instead of sending the same message to everyone, emails were triggered based on user actions, such as watching a video, creating an account, or viewing pricing.
This allowed marketing to respond to intent rather than assumptions, and nurtured subscribers with relevant messages rather than blanket statements.
At the same time, I built the underlying infrastructure:
CRM field structure to track lifecycle stages and key actions
Tagging architecture to trigger automation and segmentation
Workflow logic to move users forward and suppress irrelevant messaging
The result was a system where users no longer received generic emails. They received the next message they actually needed.
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Email became a central driver of both engagement and conversion.
We established a consistent weekly cadence:
Monday: product-focused video from the founder
Wednesday: relationship-driven message from the team
Friday: conversion-focused call to action
Alongside this cadence, I developed a series of automated workflows tied directly to user behavior. For example, when a user created their first audio sample, they received a follow-up email focused on monetization. When they viewed pricing, they received a breakdown of how their first project could generate revenue.
This approach significantly improved the relevance of each touchpoint and aligned messaging with the user’s current stage in the journey.
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A key priority of this engagement was making marketing measurable in a way that would stand up in investor conversations.
I designed a Looker Studio dashboard that included clear definitions for:
Activation rate (based on sample creation)
Conversion rate from activated users to paid users
Certification rate for advanced users
Revenue per user
By aligning marketing activity with product behavior and revenue outcomes, the team gained a much clearer picture of what was working and where improvements were needed.
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One of the most visible initiatives during this period was a contest that the Spoken team ideated before I ever came on the scene: the Author Nation “Your Story” contest.
I supported both the strategy and analysis for this campaign, with a focus on driving not just awareness, but meaningful engagement inside the Spoken platform.
The campaign successfully generated high-quality traffic and strong user interaction, including account creation and content submissions. It also provided valuable insight into where users were dropping off in the funnel, particularly at the point of account creation and monetization.
These insights informed the next phase of optimization.
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In addition to funnel and conversion work, I helped refine Spoken’s content strategy, starting with YouTube.
The channel was serving multiple audiences, which created a bit of confusion and limited watch time growth. I recommended restructuring content into clearly defined playlists based on user intent, allowing visitors to quickly find what was relevant to them.
I also introduced a strategy to connect YouTube content with the Spoken website through embedded video libraries. This approach supports:
Increased YouTube watch hours
Improved SEO performance
Better user engagement across both platforms
Results & Impact
This engagement established a strong foundation for scalable growth.
Spoken demonstrated positive marketing ROI, with revenue exceeding marketing spend during key periods. The company also saw significant growth in user acquisition, including thousands of new accounts attributed to paid channels.
The team identified a clear relationship between user activation and conversion to paid users.
Instead of guessing what might work, Spoken now has a system that shows what actually does.
OUTCOME
Spoken now operates with a marketing system that is:
Structured and repeatable
Tied directly to product usage
Measurable at every stage of the funnel
This has allowed the team to move from experimentation to execution, and from isolated campaigns to a cohesive growth strategy.
Looking for a Marketing System Like This?
I help small businesses and growing companies build marketing systems that are clear, measurable, and designed to scale.
That can look like short-term engagements where I knock out a lot of your marketing priorities in a day or week, or a longer-term retainer (that’s how I worked with Spoken!).