In your own words, what does your company do?
Woww is a digital marketing agency that helps businesses start, grow and thrive online. Based in Cape Town, but working with over 450 clients worldwide, Woww provides a holistic series of digital marketing services including WordPress-focused web design, graphic design, e-commerce, SEO, PPC, and more to ultimately drive online success for businesses of all sizes.
📈 Monthly revenue: $80,000
📈 ~% Churn: Team 5% over 7 years, clients 13% over 7 years, average client lifetime of 4+ years.
📈 ~% Net profit: 22%
📈 Funding: Zero, completely bootstrapped.
📈 Initial cost/investment to start the company: Less than $1,000
📈 Number of team members: 28
📈 Number of founders: 1
📈 Started: 2016, March
How does the company make money?
💰 We have project-based fees for different services eg:
- Initial website design/rebuilds; $2,000 – $15,000
- Corporate identity design: $1,000- $3,000
- SEO audits: $2,500
- Content creation: $250- $1,000 per article
💰 We have ad-hoc style work by the hour for different service offerings that can be used for ad-hoc web design, on-page SEO, graphic design, web development, strategic consulting, etc:
- $40-100 p/h billed in minimum increments of 5 hours
💰 We have monthly retainer services for general retainers, SEO retainers, PPC campaigns, maintenance & hosting:
- Performance marketing (Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads) – $1000 p/m per channel
- SEO retainer: $1,000 -$5,000 p/m
- Website security monitoring & maintenance: $250 – $500 p/m
- Website hosting: $100 – $1,000 p/m
3 strategies that have worked to attract and retain customers?
✅ Our primary traffic-generating channel comes from organic search through highly optimized SEO landing pages and quality content creation. We rank #1 in South Africa for valuable terms like WordPress Web Design.
✅ Reputation and customer referrals: We build long-lasting relationships with our clients focusing on their growth and success, so we get raving reviews (5 Star spotless record on Google) and a continuous supply of quality referrals.
✅ Strategic partnerships. We’ve curated connections with strategic partners and agencies who either outsource or refer work. As we are based in South Africa, we can provide highly competitive rates for the quality of our services. We are a prime choice for international agencies wanting to outsource overflow work.
3 things that you’ve learned about hiring and retaining great talent?
From Garnett Thorne my managing partner and responsible for recruitment.
✅ It’s better to not hire someone than hire a candidate who does not fit the culture of the company. Over the long run, no matter how good they may be in what they do if they don’t live the culture and core values, the damage they do to the team and company culture far outweighs the benefits of their productivity.
✅ Throughout the interview process, we communicate the value of transparency and candidness. We do this because we believe that if both parties are honest, the major concerns are dealt with. If the hire is made, we know their key weaknesses or concerns that can be dealt with (early on), or If the person does not get the role, it is also to their and the company’s benefit because the concern/risk could not be managed and was easily avoided.
✅ Our core values play a key part in looking after our culture. Hiring candidates who have a strong alignment with our core values, protects the culture, which plays a crucial role in talent retention. It plays into how and why we do what we do, which is often more important in the long run than just what we do. So for example, a core value of ours is to “Pursue Happiness”, by constantly making this a focus of everyday work our team hones this value ultimately resulting in happy clients and a happy team, contributing to the long-term retention of the team members and clients.