Gvate

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of ESL Job in China, an ESL teacher recruiting service.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gvate?

The Chinese ESL market is booming, but we didn’t have enough native English speakers. We decided to come to the US to recruit teachers. We needed help with digital marketing.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Gvate set up our company’s Facebook page. They write a lot of our content and make what I write sound more professional. The team does our PPC and SEO on Google and Facebook.

What is the team composition?

They have four people. My main point of contact is Olu (Founder & CEO, Gvate).

How did you come to work with Gvate?

We searched online for a marketing company. I chose Gvate because they were very efficient and proactive.

How much have you invested with them?

My company spends $3,000 each month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2019, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

They’ve helped us boost our business. Just yesterday, we got nineteen applications. We’ve also gotten business through Facebook.

How did Gvate perform from a project management standpoint?

When we email them, they respond right away. They strive to ensure that we’re happy with the work. We follow a collaborative process, and they reduce any feelings of insecurity. When they tell me what I should do, I do it; for instance, they had me take more photos and videos of our current teachers. I provide them with a lot of resources.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re good.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I hope they can continue helping us find more candidates. There’s nothing I’d have them improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Collaborating with them is very important.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a math tutoring company for high school students.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gvate?

I needed to redesign my website. I also wanted to improve my digital marketing.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Gvate redesigned my entire website. They are doing advertising with Google Ads.

What is the team composition?

An assigned account manager handles all issues. I also communicate with Seun (Founder and CEO, Gvate).

How did you come to work with Gvate?

A tutor I hired told me that my website was not very attractive, and he recommended Gvate to help me with this problem.  

How much have you invested with them?

I pay them $1,000 per month. Their rate is $50 an hour.

What is the status of this engagement?

I began working with Gvate in February 2019, and the project is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

They’ve given me a space where I can engage with my clients. The website is more professional.

After one month of working with Gvate, I didn't see the results I expected. Seun told me that they needed more time to measure what words people were looking for; within three months, they’d know what these words are, and then they’d use them for advertisement. Now, in the third month of the project, more potential clients are calling me.

How did Gvate perform from a project management standpoint?

All communication goes through my account manager. At the end of each month, they send me a report detailing their work and different metrics, like the number of site visitors. They always fulfill their promises and meet deadlines. As of right now, I’m very satisfied.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Because of my small budget, I can only pay Gvate to work for twenty hours each month. However, when I look at the work they’ve done, it’s evident that they’ve done more than this allotted amount of time. They do work that isn’t in the contract.

The Gvate team is available whenever I need them, and they respond very quickly. I’ve liked their monthly reports.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think so, but our work together just began.

Any advice for potential customers?

Give them time. If you end the engagement after a month, as I considered doing, you won’t see results.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO of The Pride Empowerment Network. We are a consultancy and motivational speaking firm for the child welfare sector.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gvate?

I built the website, but I needed SEO services to drive traffic to my organization.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

There is an educational component and an application component. They are able to teach me what is important, but they also apply it for me. They provided website and marketing consulting for my business. That includes revisions to my website that make it more appealing to my target audience. And they made changes as to how and where I market my business. They have implemented social media plugins on my website, and I take social media more seriously as a marketing and branding tool.

What is the team composition?

They have an extensive team that affords me all resources for certain parts of the project. I could interact with a website designer, an AdWords specialist, a social media strategist, and the CEO on occasion.

How did you come to work with Gvate?

A friend of mine recommended Gvate to me after a successful project of theirs. It was important for me to make a personal connection with Gvate, as opposed to finding somebody through an online search.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2018 and have ongoing work.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Prior to working with them, I had difficulty securing clients and driving traffic to my website. I had one or two people reach my website over the course of 40 days—it was that bad. Since working with Gvate, I now have at least two or three people contacting me directly per week. In just four months, I’m able to convert the work they’re doing into positive marks on my bottom line.

How did Gvate perform from a project management standpoint?

We document our progress through emails, but we also connect through phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I have a pretty modest-sized business, but they are well-equipped to help me grow. They are service-oriented and personal. They made it comfortable to work with them. I felt like I was in the right place.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they have exceeded my expectations. I look forward to working with them further.

Any advice for potential customers?

Having a clear and concise strategy at the beginning allows for time efficiency.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

B&A Uniforms is a wholesale uniform distributor. We provide uniforms for various industries such as hospitality, retirement homes, restaurants, and medical centers. We provide sales quotes over the phone and through our e-commerce site, which we recently released. I’m product manager and I'm in charge of the e-commerce site.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gvate?

We had a static webpage and our goal was to build an e-commerce site. During a transition when our company was bought, our Google ranking fell. We needed help to clean up the site and get ranked back on the appropriate pages for our keywords. We also wanted to grow the traffic to the site.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The beginning of our collaboration involved cleaning up the site. There were some pages on our old site that weren’t on the new site and Google ranked us down because of errors. They helped us clean up and do some redirects. They continue to help us find any errors, because of the nature of the e-commerce site as products come and go.

We then added some content to rank higher on some new words. They built out landing pages and basic pages for different industries or products we wanted to focus on. They’ve also written content for other sites and redirect the links back to us, which is something I didn’t think of doing.

The e-commerce platform we’re using isn’t very user friendly. They helped us with some challenges with it, such as eliminating some required fields on the registration page to reduce the barriers to entry. Finally, they worked on some Google AdWords campaigns for us.

How did you come to work with Gvate?

I talked to a few different companies. I liked everything Gvate were doing with their data. They were able to tell us exactly what we needed from day one.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in July 2017 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We weren’t ranking on any of our keywords and now we’re ranking first in the double digits. The number of new users has been very good. Within two weeks of the Google AdWords campaign, our traffic grew well and our owners was pleased. We used to average two or three new user registrations a week and now we average more than 20 a week.

How did Gvate perform from a project management standpoint?

At the very beginning, I didn’t have much visibility into what was going on. We had a meeting to address that and they did so swiftly. We have a bi-weekly call, along with monthly reports. They have a strong system that I’m able to access and see exactly what’s going on. I’m now very happy with their project management.

We’re probably one of their smaller clients, but still if I have any questions, their owner wants to get involved and share his expertise and feedback.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m most impressed with their dashboard and analytics. We’re able to see what’s going on and back it up with data.

Are there any areas they could improve?

In the beginning, I wasn’t that impressed with the initial writing for the landing pages. They ended up hiring a writer to work review all the work before sending it off to me. Since then, the quality has greatly improved.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of SocialCzars.com. We’re a digital agency that does a lot of digital reputation work, online reputation work for celebrities, high network individuals, Fortune 500 CEOs, etc. We also do social media marketing campaigns, pay-per-click, SEM. We work with about 15-20 consultants at any one time. Right now we’re somewhere around 20. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gvate?

We are working with Gvate on a couple of SEO-related projects involving celebrities and major companies. They are big clients with online reputation challenges such as adverse Google search results, litigation, difficult articles, and trolls that have been causing problems for some of these clients. We reached out to Gvate and said, “We have a game plan for these clients, but would you guys mind picking up some of the SEO stuff as part of a larger reputation campaign?” They’ve been good, and they know what they’re doing.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve worked with a couple of different SEO firms before. Sometimes they were SEO specialists who did specific genres. The way that SEO works is sort of uniform across all industries. Some people do certain industries better than others because they know those industries cold and they know how to get placement and hit the ground running. They know, “These are the sites where we could get high domain authority and strong inbound link campaigns quickly.” The actors we’re working on with Gvate are largely financial clients, celebrities, and professional sports athletes. 

A typical campaign with Gvate would go like this: First, we’d get SEO baselines on a client for specific keywords and phrases that we’re trying to improve our ranking for or keywords and phrases that might bring up adverse content that we want to push down in the search rankings. There are a couple of ways to do that. First, we get the X-rays, so to speak, of where we are and what we’re up against. Then we work with Gvate on a game plan to fix the issue, which could involve securing inbound links from sites with high domain authority, creating a bunch of social media sites and blog posts and syndicating those sites with high domain authority, link-building campaigns and directories. There’s a lot of busy work involved once you get going. With Gvate, we ask, “Do we have the right content out there for this particular client that’s well-tagged and structured for SEO?” In many cases we do. If we don’t or if there are improvements to be made, we get their suggestions or discuss how better-structured content might index better.

The second thing is getting inbound links from credible sites, which Gvate is good at. They work quickly, and their reporting is transparent. At any hour of the day, I can log onto the dashboard and see, “Oh, OK. Here’s where we were last week, here’s where we were yesterday, here’s where we are today.” That’s important because SEO as a general rule is a little foggy. It’s hard to paint a picture of exactly what ranks where and why. There are companies that exist just to answer that question, and they all do it a little bit differently. It’s enormously valuable to work with people who speak the same language so that we can hit the ground running. It saves us a lot of time. 

How did you come to work with Gvate?

One good way to figure out if SEO people know what they’re doing is to Google “SEO experts in New York City,” for example. Gvate comes up first or second, so right away you know that they have some understanding of how to rock specific keyword phrases. I ran their link through an application that is like an X-ray for SEO because I wanted to see how they built links on that specific keyword and phrase. I know a bit about SEO, and once I looked at that map, I was like, “Oh, OK. Yeah.” They had a couple of things there that I wouldn't have done, but I could see they were strong and I wanted to call them. Sean really knows what he’s talking about, and he’s really good at SEO. We had a quick, productive conversation, and overall, I've been impressed. 

How much have you invested with Gvate?

I’ve invested between $10,000 and $50,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

I think we contracted with Gvate in late April 2017 and got rolling in May. We’re about two to three months in on four, six-month projects with Gvate. They’re ahead of where I thought they would be, which is rare. These were not easy projects, and Gvate has done a nice job.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

I've worked with them for three months, so I can't say that we've taken a project from A to Z with them yet. With a lot of vendors or folks that claim they're experts, oftentimes you'll find our quickly that they don't know what they're talking about. In contrast, Gvate's reporting is clear, and their communication is excellent. 

Already, Gvate has significantly improved the page one Google search results for several of our clients. I've seen movement on SEO particularly in some pretty difficult situations in two months or less, which is a really impressive time frame in which to see things moving on SEO. All things are not created equally. If your next door neighbor has a blog and writes something terrible about you that shows up first on Google, that's easy to get rid of. If the New York Times or Wall Street Journal writes something about you, and you're able to push down that type of content within 60 days, that's impressive, and Gvate has done that for us. 

In general, from day one with Gvate, we knew they were able to play at a high level. There's no wasted time. They haven't come to us with a bad idea yet, and they've come to us with a few creative and insightful thoughts about content structure and syndication that were enormously helpful, and have led to strong results. 

How did Gvate perform from a project management standpoint?

Gvate is terrific from a project management standpoint. Sean and his assistant get back to you, they answer phone calls, they’re never hard to find, they’re always reachable, and they’re working. They’re good at working with clients who are under pressure and on a deadline. We communicate via email and phone (more email than phone). I like working with people who I can have quick, one-sentence emails with, and they get it and work quickly. I applaud that. 

What did you find most impressive about Gvate?

They listen. They’re smart. They go beyond the standard order of work to get the job done, and they work quickly. There’s little friction in working with them.

They are also just really good. You work with a lot of different vendors and genres and areas. For me, and a lot of people, time is perishable. People who are truly experts, who shoot straight, and who don't waste time, they’re like gold. The team at Gvate would fall in that category. They’ve been really good, and so far I'm really happy with them. It’s a hard business, and there are a lot of moving parts. I appreciate their candor and honesty.

The key for me is that I need all of the information with a client. I never want to be in front of a client unprepared. Bad news is much more important than good news because if there’s bad news, you want to figure out a game plan to fix things. Sometimes you want the vendors to suppress bad news, but then you get run over. When there’s a threat, I need to know about it quickly so we can change the game plan. Gvate is very good about that, and that is unusual in our industry. 

Are there any areas Gvate could improve?

I’d give them 5 out of 5 stars so far. They’ve been really good. Check back in a couple of months, but right now I'm really happy. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the Northeast Region Sales Director of Prestige Capital. We are a finance company providing accounts receivable financing to companies who need immediate liquidity.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gvate?

We needed some animation videos created for our website. These videos would help our customers understand the services we provide.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We communicated back and forth about what the look should be and collaborated on the script and layout of the visuals. They gave us suggestions on what visuals would be appealing. Because we knew our business best, we wrote the script and they edited it. We came up with a great video that they did for us and it’s posted on YouTube. We liked their work so much that we created a second video about another product we have.

Because he’s so easy to work with, Seun asked if we would be interested in them helping with SEO [search engine optimization] work. They are now doing this for us as well as marketing to increase our Google visibility. They are also helping us on other platforms.

How did you come to work with Gvate?

I’m a member of WeWork. I posted a job there and a number of companies replied to the ad. After looking at their websites, I liked Gvate’s website best because of their style and the look of the videos they produced. I reached out to Seun and he immediately responded. We set up a face-to-face meeting so that I could explain what we needed. He gave us a budget that was much less expensive than what the other firms had given us.

How much have you invested with Gvate?

We have spent $7,000–$8,000 for the videos and SEO work.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them six months ago, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We have gotten very positive responses from people who have been on our site and seen the videos. That includes our potential clients as well as our referral partners. Since they see the video before they call us, they understand better what we do and how our product works. It’s been a win-win for us. Gvate helped us simplify our product and improve client engagement.

For us, the metrics are not about how many clients we get from the work. It’s about the ease of use of what we do and how that concept is explained to people. People find what we do a complicated process, but it’s really not and the animation video shows them that. To us, that’s very important. A lot of our leads take a long time to come onboard and close. We’ve just started SEO recently, so I don’t have any numbers to give you.

How did Gvate perform from a project management standpoint?

We’ve been pleased with the responsiveness and professionalism of their team. They remind us when we forget what we need to do next. We communicate through email and phone.

What did you find most impressive about Gvate?

Their communication skills are excellent and they understand our company. We move very fast so we need people who understand what we’re saying. We’ve dealt with companies that just didn’t get it and that’s been very frustrating for us. It’s very important for us to have a team who is very responsive and constantly on top of things.

Are there any areas Gvate could improve?

No. We’re very happy with them or we wouldn’t keep using them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a clothing company. We've been in the market for around two years.

What is your position?

I am the owner.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Gvate?

I needed help with my company's branding.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

Gvate have worked on many campaigns for my clothing line, including work with a cancer foundation. They've also worked on my company's website. The page is still under construction, but it's coming along nicely. It also included logo design.

How did you come to work with Gvate?

I've known their owner [Seun Ajanwachuku] since college. He has been a good friend to me through the years. He became interested in my company and wanted to become a partner. Since that time, we've worked on the clothing line, and he has provided many ways in which to make my products known.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The total cost of the project is less than $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I am satisfied. My firm has gone from a concept to a reality. Gvate has brought eyes to my clothes and hat lines online and helped build initial sales. Gvate has helped move my company forward with online sales growth and great suggestions.

How did Gvate perform from a project management standpoint?

They are friendly and organized. They always incorporate new business ideas into the project and understand the fashion industry in New York City.

What distinguishes Gvate from other providers?

Gvate is a hard-working and young company, and they have grown much in the past three years. They have a nice owner and staff, and their team is always motivated and willing to satisfy the client. I was very impressed when I met three or four of their employees in person.

Is there anything Gvate could have improved or done differently?

No. They always pushed the project schedule forward. There were no major issues with the project. They push all of their clients to deliver on time to move project schedules to completion.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We're an online used car auction platform.

What is your position?

I am one of the cofounders in the New York City area.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Gvate?

We needed a quick and inexpensive landing page for our concept to help get our concept out to the community.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

They've created a landing page for us with a creative, animated 60-second promo video about our business. It acted as an overview of our company. This was our way of introducing our concept to the local community.

How did you come to work with Gvate?

I found them on a quick Internet search of the top area SEO [search engine optimization] agencies.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It wasn't a big investment of time or money. It was less than $10,000. They were able to deliver the web page and promotional video quickly.

What is the status of this engagement?

The work is completed, the site is live, and we are happy with the results.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I was very happy with Gvate's work. They delivered on time and on budget. Our promotional program was successful. They are strong with project management and client communication.

How did Gvate perform from a project management standpoint?

They were mainly on time and very easy to work with. I would recommend Gvate to others for small projects that are quick and easy.

What distinguishes Gvate from other providers?

They have competitive pricing and are quick to deliver nice websites. The New York area is very expensive with many amateurs. It was great to find them.

Is there anything Gvate could have improved or done differently?

No. There was nothing major to improve.