Rapid Boost Marketing
Ali Salman left his job at a large Canadian furniture retailer in December 2012 and founded Rapid Boost Marketing. The agency focuses on one niche: professional service providers such as lawyers, dentists, accountants, construction firms, and architects. These businesses depend on local customers, and Ali's team helps them generate leads through search and social channels.
Rapid Boost started part time in early 2013 and went full time that year, with about $130K to $140K in first-year revenue. The offering centered on local SEO, with content and social media added on top, and some marketing automation for emails and landing pages. Ali said about 90 percent of the work focused on search engine and social channels. Packages were built around a monthly retainer, and every package included a paid media budget of about 30 percent of the fee, which went toward retargeting and ads.
Early growth came from inbound leads. Ali said the company grew through inbound links, and monthly revenue stayed around $80K to $90K in the slow months of January through March. To grow on demand and control growth, the team hired three outbound salespeople. Ali said the last three to six months before the interview were the best in the company's history. Average client retention was about 18 to 20 months, and monthly retainers rose over time as the agency moved toward higher-paying clients.
The agency reached $800K in total revenue in 2015 and was on track for more than $2 million by the end of 2016. It was working with about 72 customers, signing four to ten new ones a month. Ali also described a cost mistake: in the first year, he took most of the money as salary, which created a tax problem he said he would not repeat. Staffing costs were kept below 50 percent of revenue, with a 12-person team in Edmonton, a 4-person team in Calgary, and the production team in the Philippines and India.
As of the interview in late 2016, Rapid Boost reported over $2 million in annual sales and was targeting $25 million by 2020. The team had generated more than 120,000 ideal client inquiries for service firms in the previous 12 months. Ali's pay was a salary of about $72,000 per year, with dividends planned.
- •Focusing on one niche of local professional service firms made the offering easy to sell and easy to measure, since clients could judge results against the value of a single case.
- •Pricing retainers against client lifetime value (a $2,000 to $3,000 monthly fee over 18 to 20 months) made the spend easy to justify and supported recurring revenue.
- •Building the service around SEO and local search, which compound over time, produced steady inbound demand that became more valuable as the client base grew.
- •Adding outbound sales after inbound growth stalled let the agency control its pipeline instead of depending on organic inflow alone.
- •Keeping most production staff offshore while keeping sales in North America allowed headcount costs to stay under 50 percent of revenue.
- 1.Pick one vertical of local service businesses with high-value customers, such as law firms or dental practices, and learn their lead economics well.
- 2.Offer a monthly retainer tied to a clear lead-generation outcome, with a budget for paid media included so the client sees the full cost up front.
- 3.Start with local SEO and inbound content to build a steady base of leads before adding outbound prospecting.
- 4.Once inbound stops scaling on its own, hire outbound salespeople and use a prospecting tool such as Ninja Outreach for email and research.
- 5.Keep delivery costs under control by staffing production teams in lower-cost regions while keeping client-facing roles local.
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