Victoria Dyke, Co-Founder of Ziggy, on the leadership conversation marketing keeps losing, the rebalancing act between brand and performance now AI is reshaping discovery, the bowtie demand model, and what it takes to scale a fully remote agency through a pregnancy and a young family.
"The next customer is going to be a bot."
Sixteen years across B2B marketing on both sides of the trading table, capped by five years scaling Ziggy from launch (during her first pregnancy) to a multi-million-revenue agency partnering with Stripe, Bloomreach, Canon and World Courier. Victoria Dyke on the inflexion between volume metrics and the ratios that leadership truly cares about, why the next customer is going to be a bot, how to scale culture in a fully remote agency, and what it takes to lead through a small-children-and-business stage of life.
Victoria Dyke spent her early career on the client side, rising from placement student at ProspectSoft to Head of Marketing there and then at CommuniGator. In 2017 she moved to Ledger Bennett as Programme Manager and quickly to Director of Client Success on the senior leadership team, owning the agency’s UK revenue line from new and existing business. In 2019, while pregnant with her first child, she co-founded Ziggy on a thesis that marketing’s next era would be defined by commercial accountability to the board. Ziggy was listed as a Rising Star agency in 2021 and has since collected awards from the UK Agency Awards, UK Paid Media Awards and Engage Awards.
In this conversation with host John Horsley, Victoria argues that the gap between what marketers measure and what leadership cares about lives in ratios, not volumes. She walks through the bowtie demand model (awareness, capture, post-sale expansion), explains why optimising performance and creating growth are not the same thing (using a US software case where winning customers churned inside twelve months), maps the rebalancing act between brand and performance now AI is reshaping discovery, and shares hard-won lessons on leading a fully remote agency through the founder-pregnancy-young-family stage of life. Her North Star for younger marketers: get obsessed with outcomes.
"A clear thesis. Obsessed about revenue. Aligned to the client's commercial goals from the off."
Ziggy launched into a moment where growth-at-all-costs was over and CMO tenures were short. Boards were scrutinising budgets and demanding commercial language from marketing. Victoria’s team leaned into enterprise from day one and built the agency on commercial rigour as a service category, becoming a genuine partner rather than a vendor on a retainer.
"Marketers report volume at each funnel stage. Leadership want ratios: opportunity-to-close-won, win rates, velocity."
The gap between what marketing measures and what the board cares about is the difference between volume and ratio. Once a marketer can answer the ratio questions on their pipeline, the conversation moves from defensive to predictive. Volume is the easy reporting. Ratios are where the board lives.
"Awareness to capture to post-sale. Retention, expansion, LTV. That whole arc is marketing's job now."
Ziggy’s demand framework runs awareness on one side (creating future demand), capture in the middle (intent to opportunity to pipeline to revenue), and post-sale expansion on the other (retention, LTV, segment expansion). Audience sizing and segment positioning look different when LTV is in the picture. Sometimes the segment that looks easy to win is the segment that churns.
"They were winning the segment. Pipeline looked great. The customers were churning inside twelve months."
Victoria’s US software case: the client’s campaign metrics were healthy. Pipeline, close-won, segment performance, all good. Look at unit economics and the customers were leaving inside twelve months. Optimising into a bad-fit segment is expensive volume, not profit growth. Real growth lives in the post-sale half of the bowtie.
"Build systems that replicate your judgement. Not just substitute it. And manage the nervous system."
Victoria co-founded Ziggy while pregnant with her first child, scaled it fully remote, and made the call (with her husband) to have him step back from work while she pushed forward. Her two big lessons: founders need supportive systems behind them as much as in front of them; and leadership lives in the nervous system, which is what you have to learn to manage genuinely, not performatively.
"Build systems that replicate my judgement. Not just substitute it."
Host Your journey.
Dyke Always in marketing, always B2B. Placement student, loved everything I was learning. Led client-side marketing in software houses, then shifted to agency to do that at global enterprise level.
Host What did you get right early at Ziggy?
Dyke A clear thesis. Obsessed about revenue, moving the needle on client outcomes and commercial value. Genuine accountability to client goals. We struck market timing too. Growth-at-all-costs was over. Boards scrutinising marketing budgets. CMO tenures short. Marketing needed a more commercial language. We leaned in.
Host The shift from awareness to commercial outcomes.
Dyke Absolutely. I was with a large enterprise brand the other day. Country teams have the same goals as sales. That stops the lead-quality debate and starts solving pipeline together. A new shift is coming on top. AI is making us a twofold problem: capture intent and create future demand. So we need commercial accountability AND space for awareness metrics again, integrated.
Host The next customer is going to be a bot.
Dyke Yes. The brands that look set to be successful are ahead of the game. 79 per cent of B2B buyers arrive well-researched. Buyer behaviour is changing. You have to exist in that space, which means stopping the isolation of brand and performance and rebalancing them. Capture intent. Create future demand.
Host The creative shift in B2B.
Dyke More fun. More creative licence. More disruption. More on-demand and in-the-moment versus big polished launches. B2B brands are developing personality. The clients who have nailed compounding performance results are now stacking big quarterly creative-PR-led moments on top.
Host The gap between marketer metrics and leadership care.
Dyke Marketers report volume at funnel stages. Leadership care about ratios. Opportunity-to-close-won, win rates, velocity. When marketing starts talking ratios on pipeline and how marketing affects them, the conversation gets really interesting and the growth gets more predictable.
Host A demand chain programme.
Dyke A full bowtie. Awareness to create future demand. Capture for intent, opportunity, pipeline, revenue. And post-sale: expansion plays, retention, LTV. Audience sizing and segment positioning look different when LTV is in. Different opportunities surface.
Host Optimising performance versus genuine growth.
Dyke A US software client. Closing one in a segment, pipeline looking great. Dig in: the customers were churning inside twelve months. Not real growth. Not profit growth. Shift the lens to business unit economics and your strategy moves. You might be scaling the wrong segment.
Host Data as the connective tissue.
Dyke Without data you have opinions. With it you have decisions. One of our key clients runs multiple products, multiple markets, multiple channels. Granular data lets us prioritise budget and take action when things underperform. There's a post-click attribution era coming, with influence, intent signals and AI discovery becoming another layer.
Host Striking the brand-and-demand balance.
Dyke Demand is experimentation, testing, data, compounding efficiency. Once you have that floor and understand your budget ceiling, you add layers. Big moments. Things that keep your brand alive and findable when buyers are researching.
Host The hardest founder lesson.
Dyke My job fundamentally changed. It became building systems that replicate my judgement, not substitute it. Scaling an agency is mostly boring and unglamorous. Strong processes. Clear principles. A team that understands not just what but why. We are fully remote, so we work intentionally on culture. We call them Top Gun moments where people play and have fun. Be a leader. Not a counsellor.
Host Born in COVID, fully remote.
Dyke Trust is the biggest factor. The over-productivity problem is real when home and work blur. We offer flexibility and trust. People work to live. Lives are real. That gives passion and hard work back.
Host Focused on results, not just managing growth.
Dyke Client outcomes are our North Star, ingrained in the culture. We are a genuine partner. Best in enterprise and high-growth brands. Shared responsibility, incentives and risks with those clients. Where we have gone wrong is taking on smaller clients who need something different, who do not have the data for us to be valuable.
Host Starting a business while pregnant.
Dyke Pregnancy gave me clarity. Big life moments force you to confront what matters and be honest about your tools. Parents get fast at prioritising with incomplete information and staying calm when nothing is going to plan. Transferable skills. Confidence is one thing. Calculated risk is another. Build yourself a runway. It is not a blind leap of faith.
Host The reality of building a business.
Dyke Relentlessly ordinary with some fear mixed in. Lots of small decisions and trade-offs every day. One decision defines the next growth stage. The next is signing off expenses. What nobody tells you is how much of this lives in your nervous system. Manage it genuinely, not performatively. That is what makes founders exceptional.
Host Bold decisions you have made.
Dyke The people ones feel heaviest. A bad call can impact your team. Personally the boldest was the call my husband and I made for him to step back from work while I pushed forward with a young family. A change in how we operated as a unit. Founders need that supportive system behind them as much as in front.
Host Future of B2B.
Dyke The third era of B2B. B2C and B2B merging. Brands that win will balance performance and brand. Evergreen performance compounding plus deliberate bigger moments. SEO, GEO, creative strategy are huge right now.
Host A brand doing great B2B right now.
Dyke Bloomreach. Forward-thinking CMO. Investing in commercial sustainability, brand build-out, and AI with an integrated approach.
Host A metric people obsess over too much.
Dyke Opportunity volume. What matters is pipeline quality and velocity.
Host One skill every marketer should develop.
Dyke Commercial literacy. How businesses make money, what their unit economics look like, what the constraints are. Speak that language so you are not vulnerable.
Host Advice to younger marketers.
Dyke Get obsessed with outcomes. The marketers who thrive in the next decade are the ones who care deeply about the changes that result from their work, not what they produced to get there. Believe in your ambition. Lean into outcomes.
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