ROI Works

ROI Works started around 2001 as a pay-per-click agency. Over roughly 10 to 15 years it moved from SEO to pay-per-click to conversion optimization, and eventually to a model built around optimizing entire divisions and companies for profit. Its approach is experimental: it uses paid acquisition, A/B testing, user testing, and analytics to run many quick experiments, and sometimes builds a growth department from scratch or fills interim growth roles before helping a company hire in-house.

The agency kept its structure small and deliberately profitable. George Ravutski described a flat retainer model, usually between $20k and $50k a month, that is scoped to whatever the company needs most, such as paid acquisition, organic acquisition, CRO, analytics, or front-end development. Early on the firm used minimum-based contracts, but it found that engagements were ending up long-term anyway. It moved to a three-month getting-to-know-you engagement followed by month-to-month billing. The team stayed at 10 to 12 people, and the company shifted toward taking fewer clients, five to eight at a time, and going deeper with each one.

The key early relationship was with Soothe, an on-demand massage company. George became friends with its founder, Merlin Kaufman, while advising him informally before Soothe launched. ROI Works provided heavily discounted AdWords, Facebook advertising, and CRO work during Soothe's Los Angeles beta, charging only a fraction of its minimum because the team believed in the startup. When Soothe raised its Series A, Merlin asked George to join as a contract CMO. ROI Works kept its paid acquisition role, and George built the growth department. Soothe later went on to a $35 million Series B, which George said followed directly from 11 straight months of double-digit growth, mostly 20 to 30 percent month over month.

What worked was a combination of disciplined paid acquisition, remarketing through Google Analytics and Google remarketing lists, a repeatable playbook for launching in new cities, and regional, national, and local PR, including a Mother's Day partnership on The Ellen show. The agency's long client tenure, averaging three years, suggests its clients saw lasting value. George also said the firm keeps enough cash reserves that it could lose half or two-thirds of its clients and still fund six months of runway without layoffs. The article does not describe a major failure at ROI Works itself.

As of the interview, ROI Works was doing roughly $2 million a year from retainers, with 12 employees and a profit margin the founder described as at least 25 percent. George said he was transitioning out of his Soothe CMO role and that he takes a leave from ROI Works every three or four years to co-found or join startups, one of which, Splendid Labs, was sold to Ipsy.