IWG

Background & Challenge

IWG, the global leader in flexible workspace solutions, partnered with Croud to accelerate profitable global growth by capturing unmet demand for its flexible office solutions across multiple markets. Operating across 110 markets, IWG’s growth strategy relies on scaling customer acquisition efficiently while responding to varying demand signals across regions.

To support this ambition, marketing investment needed to flex in line with real demand, enabling the business to scale activity where it would deliver genuine commercial return while maintaining cost efficiency.

However, a performance audit conducted by Croud revealed that growth was being artificially constrained. High-performing paid search campaigns were operating within fixed budget ceilings, preventing IWG from capturing proven, high-intent demand even when conversion signals were strong.

This created a tension between cost control and growth. While campaigns were delivering strong efficiency, budget limits meant valuable demand was left uncaptured.

The challenge was therefore to unlock incremental growth without sacrificing efficiency, and to do so consistently across a complex global footprint spanning more than 100 markets.

Intelligence

To unlock profitable growth at global scale, Croud combined global performance expertise, data analysis and platform intelligence to identify what was constraining demand capture across IWG’s markets.

The analysis revealed that performance itself was not the constraint. Campaigns were already delivering strong efficiency and high conversion intent. Instead, the real barrier to growth was the use of static budget management, which prevented campaigns from responding dynamically to real-time demand signals.

In practice, this meant that even when campaigns were delivering profitable conversions, investment could not scale beyond pre-set limits.

To address this, Croud recommended a strategic shift from fixed budget management towards a demand-led growth model, allowing media investment to flex dynamically in line with conversion probability and efficiency thresholds.

Working closely with IWG, Croud implemented this model by removing artificial budget caps from high-performing paid search campaigns and enabling AI-powered bidding and optimisation to scale investment intelligently when demand was both real and profitable.

The approach was then rolled out consistently across 110 markets, ensuring that media investment followed demand signals rather than static budget constraints.

Return

The results demonstrated that removing artificial budget constraints and aligning investment with real-time demand signals could unlock significant growth while improving efficiency.

• The demand-led model enabled campaigns to capture previously constrained high-intent demand, driving a 55% increase in enquiries while simultaneously reducing cost per enquiry by 15%.
• Driving 53% revenue growth by aligning global media investment with real-time demand.
• Importantly, this performance was achieved at global scale, with positive growth delivered across 80% of IWG’s markets worldwide.

By shifting from static budget controls to intelligence-led investment, Croud helped IWG unlock profitable demand-led growth across its global network.

Next Best Move

The success of this demand-led model has created a strong foundation for continued growth and innovation.

With intelligent bidding and demand signals now embedded into campaign management, the next phase will focus on expanding the use of automation and AI-driven optimisation to identify new growth opportunities across markets.

Future work will explore how predictive signals and advanced automation can anticipate demand shifts earlier, allowing IWG to scale investment even more efficiently while maintaining profitability.

By continuing to apply intelligence to global investment decisions, IWG is well positioned to sustain profitable growth while strengthening its leadership in the flexible workspace category.