Sam Shrager, CMO of crypto payments provider BCB Group, shares her playbook for taking a company from startup to global scale-up. Drawing on her background in advertising and early-stage crypto, she discusses the power of strategic events, the importance of sales alignment, and why a CMO’s most critical role is to be an “Integrator.”
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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- The CMO is the “Integrator” Who Protects Focus A modern CMO’s most critical function is to align all departments—from sales to compliance—while protecting the core strategy by learning to say “no” to distractions.
- Master Strategic Events for High-Value Engagement Move beyond traditional floor stands and use tactical spaces like meeting rooms. This forces a pre-planned, meeting-driven approach that ensures high-value interactions.
- Networking is the Most Valuable Marketing Skill In a specialised and “collegiate” industry like crypto, building a strong personal and professional network is the key to creating powerful partnerships and generating quality leads.
Can you tell us a little bit about your role at BCB Group at the moment?
I’ve been the CMO here for nearly six years, and I’ve been on an incredible startup-to-scale-up journey with the company. When I started, there were just eight of us in a tiny office; now we’re 170 people with offices in London, Paris, South Africa, and soon, Dubai.
At the moment, we are replanning our strategy for the final quarter. The first half of the year was incredibly busy, mainly centred around events, which work very well for us. We’re now taking some time over the summer to regroup, analyse what worked, review the ROI, and plan how we can do even better moving forward.
How did you get into marketing and end up at BCB Group?
My background is quite varied. I started in advertising, working in outdoor, press, and radio—I was even involved in the launch of the Metro newspaper. I then moved into remittance apps and social content for emerging markets.
Around 2016, the chairman of that business was opening a blockchain investment bank and invited me to get involved. I worked on marketing strategies for the main brand and its portfolio companies. As it turned out, one of those portfolio companies was BCB Group. I was loaned out to them, and I just fell in love with the team’s passion and dynamism. I knew I wanted to get on board, and I’ve been here for the wild ride ever since.
What is your main marketing focus at the moment?
Our main focus is setting ourselves up for the next stage of growth. We’ve made some impressive senior hires and are positioning ourselves for global expansion, which includes opening our Dubai office and pursuing a banking license there.
A key part of this is evolving into a more “grown-up” brand. This year, we’ve launched a new visual identity and a new website. The goal is to ensure we have a consistent “regulation-first” message across all our platforms, while also ensuring our brand and positioning reflect the next stage of our exciting journey.
What is the biggest challenge you see for the next 6 to 12 months?
For me personally, the biggest challenge is ensuring that we keep focused on the company’s North Star. As a marketer, you are constantly being pulled in different directions by various people’s priorities. We are very cross-functional and work with the product team, commercial teams, the CEO’s office—everyone. So, it’s about taking a step back, staying calm, and sticking to our agreed-upon strategy and content pillars.
A huge part of this, and something I’ve gotten better at, is saying no. I’m a bit of a people-pleaser, so it’s often a “no for now,” but it’s crucial to protect our goals and capacity.
What is your current marketing team’s relationship with sales?
I’ve always been a real advocate for aligning sales and marketing as closely as possible, because it just doesn’t work otherwise. I would say our relationship has never been better than it is right now.
We work very closely with the sales team, with weekly calls to understand their objectives, their pain points, and what clients are asking them at the coalface. This allows us to provide them with the right sales enablement and answer key questions. They now trust and value what we do, and we have a great mutual understanding. Other departments in the business also now understand that we are the marketing experts, but that we listen to their ideas and work together well.
Can you share a recent initiative that highlights your successful relationship with sales?
The events we’ve run this year are a testament to how good the relationship is. We work with the sales team on detailed briefings to align on key themes and opportunities. We’ve also involved them more in content creation at the events themselves, like doing on-the-ground interviews.
A great example was at Money 20/20 in Amsterdam. Instead of a traditional stand on the floor, we opted for a meeting room on a balcony. While this gave us a great brand presence alongside the big banks, it forced us to be more tactical. We had to proactively book meetings, schedule interviews, and organise a branded happy hour. This approach completely de-risked the problem of having a quiet stand and gave us full control over our engagement.
How are you calculating ROI for events or justifying the spend?
We’ve gotten much better at this by tidying up our CRM. We can now understand the value of leads coming in from an event and even work out a cost per acquired customer. We can literally put a figure on the monthly recurring revenue or transaction fees generated from each event.
However, it’s also important to remember that not all ROI is immediately measurable. Some conversations started at an event might turn into a partnership two years later. There is also immense value in our brand presence, speaking slots, press coverage, and the anecdotal feedback we get, like someone at Paris Blockchain Week telling me, “BCB, you were just everywhere.”
What advice would you give to someone who wanted to get into marketing now?
I would be inclined to push the value and importance of networking. In a “collegiate” industry like crypto and blockchain, getting to know people is vital. People move around, but you stay in contact, and you never know where that will lead in terms of partnership marketing or sales leads.
My advice is to get yourself out to events, drill down on LinkedIn, listen to what influencers are saying, and absorb the themes and conversations. It’s also important not to be too proud to get ideas from others; our industry feels like a real ecosystem where everyone is there to support the whole.
What do you think is the biggest opportunity that marketers have now?
The boring and obvious answer is AI. I’m not wedded to it, but it has some amazing uses. We use it primarily as a “starter for ten” on ideas. It’s like a little helper that sits in the corner when you’re a bit stuck. Our team will use different AI tools—ChatGPT, Gemini—and then come together. We probably wouldn’t use the direct output, but it’s great for brainstorming and can take us in a new creative direction.
If you can describe the role of a CMO in one word, what would it be and why?
Integrator.
The role is about aligning so much across the company. You’re aligning the brand, the customer journey, the messaging, product, sales, and in my case, compliance and legal. Marketing sits in the middle, with everyone feeding into it and us feeding back out. It’s the function that integrates everything else in the company and brings it all together.
What do you think the future of marketing looks like?
I think the future will continue to be about something that’s very close to my heart: content. There’s a surplus of content everywhere, but the whole game is getting the right content to the right people at the right time. If it’s pitched correctly and answers people’s questions at the right moment in their journey, that is what the focus has got to be.
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