An Inside Look at Web Profits’ Growth Team Structure

Web Profits’ USP is that we focus on all parts of the marketing funnel – from securing leads for our clients, to converting them – and later down the line, turning those customers into brand advocates. We also have an multi channel approach to maximize the opportunities for each client’s situation

This isn’t the first time I’ve been in charge of in-house marketing departments. During my career, I’ve taken on a number of similar roles, and while in them, have developed a tried-and-tested approach to delighting customers that I apply to my other SaaS businesses, including Narrow and Mailshake.

It’s also the approach we use within the Web Profits growth team. Stick with me and I’ll show you exactly what this is.

Fluid Online Marketing

“Fluid online marketing” is a multi-channel approach to online marketing that addresses the fact that each client we work with is different and will face unique challenges.

Instead of following a one-size-fits-all approach (something I see at many other agencies), fluid online marketing leverages the very best growth opportunities for each client’s situation.

This is a key methodology at Web Profits that is central to pretty much everything we do.

The Funnel

Another element of our approach that helps Web Profits stand out from the competition is how we assist our clients at every stage of the sales funnel.

It’s not uncommon for agencies to focus on a single stage of the sales funnel – most commonly awareness (or the lead capturing stage). Those that do offer more, often sell each service separately.

That’s not how we like to work.

We want to help our clients through every stage of the sales funnel. This means:

  • Capturing leads (awareness)
  • Educating leads (consideration)
  • Converting leads (conversion)
  • Driving return customers (loyalty)
  • Getting return customers to talk about you (advocacy)

While a campaign that focuses on a single element of this funnel can no doubt be effective, our collective experience at Web Profits has shown us that the best results happen when strategies to address each stage of the funnel are executed simultaneously.

We don’t just get our clients traffic. We also optimize for conversion rates and leverage existing customers for growth by implementing programs that help generate reviews, word of mouth growth, and referrals. This is advocacy, and we believe an effective program for creating, leveraging, and keeping advocates can play a huge part in helping a company to grow and thrive.

Here are some of the reasons why.

84% of Millennials don’t trust traditional advertising – they trust the opinions of their peers much more.

74% of consumers identify word-of-mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decision – they’re more likely to buy what their friends, family, or trusted online influencers are recommending.

88% of people trust online reviews written by other consumers as much as they trust recommendations from personal contacts – the impact of advocacy stretches way beyond your advocates’ immediate connections.

How We Structure Our Team

Our approach means we have to structure our team a little differently than most agencies do.

Our CRO department consists of PPC, design, email marketing, and copywriting. This allows two teams that are crucial to conversions – design and copywriting – to work closely with our PPC and email marketing staff. This steers their focus to conversions – the most important part of why we’re driving traffic in the first place.

Next up is our content marketing department. This includes SEO, content creation, and outreach. Our experience has shown that content marketing is the most reliable way to gain online rankings and increase a website’s organic visibility.

Our social media department is divided into two parts – paid social media (things like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter ads), and creative social media (things like brand building and community management).

Last up is our post customer acquisition department. Within this we have two teams. One is responsible for onboarding. This is the process involved in getting new customers acquainted with our products and services. The other team deals with advocacy – getting those new customers to start talking about our clients and generating referrals.

Overseeing all of this is the Fluid Lead.

This is the acting VP of marketing for all our clients. They are responsible for allocating clients’ budgets accordingly and assembling a team of marketers that are best-placed to help them hit their goals.

How We Work

One final strategy that I believe is unique to Web Profits and is pivotal to how we work is something we call the “90-day sprint.”

What this means is that we plan our work in 90-day slots. During this time we leverage a mix of long-term and quick-win growth strategies. This means that after the 90 days we’ll already be seeing results for our clients, and we’ll have the building blocks in place to keep the company growing in the future.

Clients love this approach, not only because it gets results, but because it asks for minimal contractual commitment. While many agencies are asking clients to sign up for 6 or even 12 months, we know we’ll start seeing results within 2 to 3 months. By that point, most clients are excited to see what else we’ve got up our sleeves, which means there’s no need to contractually oblige them to stick around for longer – they’re going to anyway.

That pretty much sums up how things work behind the scenes of the Web Profits’ growth team but I’m happy to answer questions if there’s anything else you’d like to know. Just leave a comment below.

Image: Pixabay

Entrepreneur & Digital Marketing Strategist

I build and grow SaaS companies.

“When it comes to marketing, Sujan is the best. I’ve never met someone with such creative tactics and deep domain knowledge not just in one channel, but in every flavor of marketing. From content, to scrappy guerrilla tactics, to PR, Sujan always blows my mind with what he comes up with.”

RYAN FARLEY Co-Founder of Lawn Starter

Comment (7) - Cancel Reply

Nurman 92 months ago

I have just started a social media agency in Malaysia to help restaurant owners and small shops to promote their businesses and products. Do you have any social media tips and strategies on achieving this?

Thank you very much for taking your time to share your valuable knowledge.

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hazel kumar 92 months ago

I have recently switched over to Agile form of working. As you mentioned in the later part that you have a “90 day sprint”. I personally have never tried that, my teams work under a 15 day sprint cycle. Will try this method of 90 days sprint with one of the team and see how it goes.
If possible could you please share a little bit more about the results.

Regards
Hazel

Reply
Sujan Patel 92 months ago

Hazel,

Let me know how you like the 90 day sprint. I’ll share more about the 90 days sprint process in another article as it’s a bit lengthy of an answer.

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Avinash D'Souza 92 months ago

Sujan,

That’s a great bit of insight into how you’ve managed to deploy a growth hacker tempo and mindset to a strategic function like marketing!

We do sprints too within marketing at Pitch Deck and its really helped us dial into what’s working and what’s not.

Would love to see how the 90-day sprint is structured by you guys…

Reply
Sujan Patel 92 months ago

Thanks Avinash. I can’t take all the credit for this process. My co-founders are amazing at building teams and processes. Together we took my growth mentality and created a structure around it.

I’m creating a full write up our 90 day growth sprints. Stay tuned 🙂

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Ankur 92 months ago

Hi Sujan,
Really nice and highly informative post.

Reply
Michael Berliner 91 months ago

This is good stuff, in particular I like how it is customer-centric in the sense that it is aligned to how the target audience groups itself or is acquired rather than coming from a brand first approach and structuring the team based on skills or groupings that the company prioritizes.

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