Overview
withQ (formerly Q Concierge) is a San Francisco-based AI startup founded in 2024 that embeds voice AI into hotel operations to capture missed revenue, answer every guest request, and eliminate labor gaps. Backed by Orrick, The House Fund, and Recursive Ventures.
From no website traffic and zero marketing channels to a rebranded AI company with PR coverage, paid campaigns, 34 blog posts, and a full-time marketing hire, in 6 months.
367K+ Total Paid Impressions | 5,874 Paid Website Visits | 34 SEO Blog Posts Published | 2 Top Industry Publications | 200+ Monthly Website Visits
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The Situation
When GrowthExpertz came on board in January 2026, withQ (then operating as Q Concierge) had something real: a working product, live deployments with major hotel brands, and roughly $10M in pipeline. What it didn’t have was a marketing function of any kind.
No strategy. No active channels. No social presence to speak of. The website lived at qconcierge.io and was designed to look like a luxury hotel property, not a B2B SaaS company trying to sell to hotel operators. And underneath all of that, the brand itself was working against the product: the “concierge” framing and “voice AI” positioning weren’t what buyers were looking for when they hit the site.
The Brand Problem The “Q Concierge” name and “voice AI platform” positioning set the wrong expectations. It pulled the wrong audience and framed the product in a way that didn’t match how hotel operators actually made purchasing decisions.
The Pipeline Problem $10M in pipeline that wasn’t closing. Without marketing infrastructure to build credibility, generate inbound, or give the sales team a content foundation to work from, growth was entirely dependent on founder-led outreach.
The Website Problem qconcierge.io was designed like a hotel website, not a SaaS conversion machine. No SEO structure, no clear CTA architecture, and messaging that confused visitors rather than qualifying them.
The Channel Problem Zero active marketing channels. No paid campaigns, no content engine, no PR presence, no social strategy. The company was effectively invisible everywhere hotel operators spend time online.
The Approach
GrowthExpertz brought on three digital marketing interns and built the entire marketing engine from scratch simultaneously, not sequentially. Each intern owned a distinct channel: website and SEO/GEO, outreach, and PR/social/paid. This parallel approach meant channels could be tested against the real audience within weeks, not quarters.
Three months in, the model had proven out. The three intern roles were consolidated into a single Marketing Manager position, with one of the original interns promoted to own the combined function on a month-to-month basis going forward.
What We Built: PR & Media Relations | Paid LinkedIn Ads | Google Search & Display | SEO/GEO Content | Email Outreach | Instagram & YouTube | X (Twitter) | Website Redesign | Brand Strategy | Marketing Hire & Training | Event Strategy
PR Track Targeted the two highest-authority publications in travel and hospitality. Landed coverage in both Skift and PhocusWire within the first three months, giving withQ its first real third-party credibility with the buyer audience that matters most.
Content & SEO/GEO Track Launched a consistent blog publishing cadence optimized for both traditional search and AI-driven discovery (GEO). Combined with technical SEO work on the site, this built a compounding organic asset that keeps pulling qualified traffic long after each post goes live.
Paid Acquisition Track Ran campaigns across LinkedIn, Google Search, and Google Display simultaneously. 9 total campaigns. The goal was to A/B test messaging against the target audience fast, gather real conversion data, and use it to sharpen positioning ahead of the rebrand.
Social Media Track Launched Instagram, YouTube, and X from zero. Scaled the existing LinkedIn presence through organic content plus paid distribution, putting withQ in front of hotel operators across every channel where they’re actually active.
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The Rebrand: Q Concierge Becomes withQ
Around the three-month mark, the quantitative and qualitative data converged on the same signal: there was a fundamental disconnect between the messaging on the website and what visitors expected when they arrived. The “concierge” framing and “voice AI” positioning were pulling the wrong audience and framing the product incorrectly.
The decision was made to rebrand entirely.
Before: Q Concierge | “#1 voice AI platform for hospitality” | qconcierge.io | luxury hotel aesthetic | wrong audience signal | low conversion rate
After: withQ | “The AI workforce for hotel operations” | withq.ai | SaaS-native design | operator-first messaging | CRO-optimized
What Changed: New brand name & URL | Full website redesign | Repositioned messaging | New visual identity | Ad creative refresh | Social rebrand | Conference & event presence | Relaunch paid campaigns
The Insight Hotel operators weren’t looking for a “concierge.” They were looking for a solution to a labor problem. Repositioning withQ as “the AI workforce for hotel operations” reframed the product around the pain they were already trying to solve, and immediately changed how visitors engaged with the site.
Results: PR
The team targeted PR in exactly the right places: the two publications hotel operators and hospitality investors actually read. Both placements happened within the first three months of the engagement, before the rebrand, establishing credibility with the target audience at the exact moment withQ was starting to build awareness.
Skift – March 3, 2026
PhocusWire – March 23, 2026
withQ’s first hosted event launches in June 2026, marking the shift from showing up at other people’s conferences to convening their own audience.
Results: Content & SEO/GEO
The content and SEO/GEO track produced 34 optimized blog posts over the six-month window, each one built to rank in both traditional search and AI-generated responses (GEO). Combined with on-site technical SEO work, this drove the site to 200+ monthly visits and gave withQ a compounding organic asset that keeps working after every post goes live.
34 SEO/GEO-Optimized Blog Posts Published 200+ Monthly Website Visits (from zero) 30.3K Total Google Search Impressions (6 months)
Google Search Console | 537 clicks, 30.3K impressions, avg. position 9.6 (6-month window)
Results: Paid Advertising
The team ran campaigns across LinkedIn, Google Search, and Google Display in parallel, testing messaging, creatives, and offers against the real audience. Across 9 campaigns total, the effort generated over 367,000 impressions and drove 5,874 visits to withq.ai.
367K+ Total Impressions Across All Paid Channels 5,874 Total Paid Website Visits 9 Campaigns Launched Across 3 Platforms
LinkedIn Ads: 3,114 visits | 153,371 impressions Google Ads: 2,760 visits | 214,000 impressions | $0.98 avg. CPC
The Outcome
Six months in, withQ went from having no marketing function to running PR, paid, SEO/GEO, outreach, social, content, and events end-to-end. The rebrand is live. The pipeline has credibility. And the marketing engine is owned by a dedicated Marketing Manager who came up through the intern cohort GrowthExpertz recruited, trained, and managed.
2 Top-tier hospitality publications 34 SEO blog posts live and compounding 367K+ Paid impressions generated 5,874 Paid website visits driven 200+ Monthly organic visits (from zero) 1 Full-time Marketing Manager hired & trained
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“I thought we didn’t need marketing before but I can attest that in just 6 months the team was able to legitimize our business, drive leads, get targeted PR, do outreach to thousands of prospects, test ads on many platforms, get us to show up on Google and AI, and relaunch the brand. Actually quite impressive.”
– Jonathan Lei, CEO & Co-Founder, withQ
Andrew Lee Miller is a veteran startup marketer, growth hacker, and founder of GrowthExpertz with more than 20 years of experience helping startups scale. Known online as “AndrewStartups,” he has helped drive multiple VC-backed startup exits, advised dozens of funded SaaS companies, and built growth systems for early-stage startups across industries. Since founding GrowthExpertz in 2016, Andrew has focused on lean, AI-powered startup marketing strategies spanning SEO, content, paid ads, PR, outbound, and growth experimentation. He’s also a global keynote speaker, published author, and startup growth coach who has lectured in more than 15 countries on startup marketing and growth hacking.
