Paradox Marketing

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO and general counsel of a hard money private lender in the real estate space.

What challenge were you trying to address with Paradox Marketing?

We hired Paradox Marketing to help us with various challenges.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Paradox Marketing helps us in various avenues, including content creation, web development, custom software development, online marketing, and PPC advertising. They initially took plenty of time to understand our business, and they’ve been a great partner ever since.

Regarding the web development portion of our project, they built our site on WordPress. The site is meant to drive traffic to our business and educate borrowers and investors in what we do. It has a large educational component for new investors, and it helps us collect data for contact management and lead prospecting.

As for custom software development, Paradox Marketing first helped us with Salesforce development, but they then helped us move to Ontraport, our core backbone at this point. They’ve developed a loan origination software for us that is combined with a custom secure borrower portal, which allows secure document uploads. It is a very complex and multilayered system that has required several hundred objects within Ontraport to allow one-to-one relationships and maintain its stability during the lending process.

On the other hand, we’ve worked very closely with Paradox Marketing on keyword research. They've also managed and optimized all of our Google Ads PPC campaigns, and they continuously help us with LinkedIn and Facebook optimization.

For content creation, Paradox Marketing provides us with SEO-optimized outlines, which we then use to create our content. Then, they help us ensure that the content is appropriate for our blog. Additionally, they’re currently helping us with backlink generation so that other blogs redirect visitors to our website.

What is the team composition?

I work directly with Joshua (Founder), who has brought in Aiden (Technology Project Manager) to help with some of our projects. We’ve also worked with Ian (Frontend Developer) and Aaron (Managing Partner), who helps us with a lot of our marketing efforts. In addition to them, we’ve worked with several other developers and PPC specialists, so Paradox Marketing has a very diverse team.

How did you come to work with Paradox Marketing?

Paradox Marketing was a referral from another company that was working with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $70,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around March 2020, and our engagement is ongoing.

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

Thanks to Paradox Marketing’s work, our web presence has been extensively solidified. We’re now coming up in search results much more towards the first results than before. Additionally, their custom software development has been a game-changer for our organization. Our Ontraport custom software is a very robust system, and we’re very proud of it.

How did Paradox Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

I can’t imagine Paradox Marketing doing a better job at project management. They always keep their team together so that nothing falls through the cracks, and they keep everything well-prioritized.

As we’re on a retainer with them, we sometimes have to check in and ensure that we’re still on track because we overuse their hours occasionally. However, those conversations have always been very candid, upfront, and handled in a professional manner.

We’ve found some bugs within our system, but most of them have come from Ontraport whenever they release a new feature that doesn’t go with our custom development without telling us. However, we’ve never experienced complete downtimes because Paradox Marketing’s response is almost immediate.

I have a direct line of communication with Joshua. Even though he is in Australia and we’re in the US, he works US hours, so his response is always within 10–20 minutes. I’m also able to hop on a Zoom meeting with him as soon as he can. While not everything gets fixed immediately, they treat every issue with high urgency.

Besides Zoom calls, we communicate via email. Additionally, they use Asana for project management, and they have their own internal board through Ontraport that they share with us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Paradox Marketing has an impressively high level of confidence. Additionally, I can’t imagine a company better at understanding than them. They have a great willingness to dig in and understand our business, allowing them to provide us with very custom content creation and software development with little iteration.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Initially, we were steered towards Salesforce by one of Paradox Marketing’s team members, but that program wasn’t a good fit for us. This issue was caused by a lack of understanding of our core business at the very beginning, as well as by their desire to use that platform, on which this person was more experienced. However, that issue has been resolved, and I’m very confident that nothing like that will happen again.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you’re considering working with Paradox Marketing, do it; you won’t find a better resource. Additionally, take the time to be engaged with their team and the process to get a better output.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Family Inceptions, a family formation consulting agency. Our headquarters is located in Atlanta, Georgia.

What challenge were you trying to address with Paradox Marketing?

We hired them to manage our digital marketing efforts.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Paradox Marketing is working remotely and is spearheading our SEO and PPC strategies. On top of that, they suggest what content we should create in our blog. They upload all of our podcasts, and they help us maintain our website. If we need to make any changes to pages, they implement them for us. They’re also managing our social media strategies on Google, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

In addition, they’re managing our CRM marketing System. We were using Active Campaign, and they helped us move everything over to Ontraport. While they’re doing all of those digital marketing efforts, they create a monthly report on the status of all of our projects.

What is the team composition?

We’re working with 3–4 people from Paradox Marketing, including two main points of contact.

How did you come to work with Paradox Marketing?

My previous CRM developer recommended Paradox Marketing because he couldn’t work with us anymore.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve probably spent $40,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in August 2020, and we continue to collaborate.

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

Before working with Paradox Marketing, we weren’t even tracking metrics. However, with their support, we now have metrics to track. In fact, we’re ranking so much higher now because of their SEO efforts. Some of our keywords have ranked on Google’s first page.

They’ve helped us migrate to Ontraport as seamlessly as possible, and they’ve helped us successfully create a full-funnel for all of our target demographics.

How did Paradox Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

An hour ago, I sent them an email on changes I wanted them to make and they completed it as fast as possible. They’re attentive, quick, responsive, and timely. They also have incredible budgeting skills, and we communicate through Asana, Loom, Zoom, and email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their customer service skills are impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Sometimes, they have 1–2 teammates who are having a difficult time understanding what we want to do because English is not their first language. Other than the language barrier, I have no complaints about them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Check if Paradox Marketing is a good fit for your company.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of SMB Advisors. We are a consulting firm that leverages the internet and specializes in sales, marketing, and branding strategies.

What challenge were you trying to address with Paradox Marketing?

They’re filling a talent gap, which allows me to provide services. They provide human resources with expertise that my current full-time employees do not have.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The nature of my business is offering rented marketing departments for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs) owners, and Paradox Marketing allows me to offer all of these different skill sets. They’re essentially hired employees who assist with a wide range of offerings on our website. 

Paradox Marketing provides full stack web development and web design. They also do SEO research and strategy. This includes on-page website optimization, content optimization, and technical remediations for page speed and 404 errors. They handle the technical integration of sales and marketing software. This includes getting third-party email systems and real estate listing services to integrate with a CRM or CMS through software like Zapier.

I give them documentation and specs of my requests. We’ve been working together for so long that Joshua (CEO) is oftentimes my second set of eyes on client challenges. Paradox Marketing mainly does insular landing pages or testimonial pages. I don’t use them for creative vision in cases where clients want an entire branding project or logo redo; rather, the creative inspiration is already there, and they act as an extension for doing specific designs.

Based on the ultimate growth and expansion that our clients are looking for, we do a lot of projects migrating from Wix and Squarespace to WordPress. WordPress gives us the flexibility to create client portals, log-in areas, e-commerce, and integrations. We use marketing software like Ontraport and HubSpot. However, we’re somewhat technology-agnostic, and Paradox Marketing is flexible in terms of technology. WordPress would be their recommendation, but solving for any technology is a talent of theirs — we’ve never come across a technology that they couldn’t tackle.

If we have a recommendation that would be too much disruption for the organization, Paradox will tell us about it. Right now, we’re working with a client that has Keap (FKA Infusionsoft), which isn’t something that we typically recommend. However, being sensitive to the client, we wouldn’t recommend replacing it just because we don’t work with Keap.

What is the team composition?

Joshua is my quasi project manager in some cases. We have a relationship where he can almost white-label as an extension of myself and as project manager. Jennifer (Operations Manager) acts as a junior project manager. I assign one developer assigned per project and 1–2 people for SEO. I can have more than one project going with them at a time.

Joshua has specialized team members for content, design, and development. On an average project, there can be 4–8 people from his team whose roles include senior project manager, junior project manager, and project-specific specialists like SEO, content research, or web development.

How did you come to work with Paradox Marketing?

I met Joshua through a mutual friend at a HubSpot inbound marketing conference in Boston.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost so far is around $150,000–$200,000. The average cost per year is $40,000 or higher.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Paradox in January or February 2016, and I don’t see it ending.

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

Both Paradox Marketing and my team subscribe to the mantra that the answer is yes, and we will figure it out. The first client that Paradox Marketing worked with for me is still a client of mine. Our rate of retention is so high that cancellations surprise us.

I refer to Joshua as my common-law partner — I tell him that this is the longest relationship I’ve ever been in.

How did Paradox Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re well-organized and detail-oriented when it comes to the intricacies and steps of what they do. Joshua has a strong commitment to documented, repeatable processes, whether those are inside Asana or just navigating our projects together. From a high level and all the way to the details of web development, everything is managed quite meticulously in their custom project management setup.

Joshua and I have Zoom calls anywhere from 1–5 times a week. We use Facebook Messenger, email, and other channels.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The first thing that comes to mind is flexibility. Knowing that I don’t need to find five other specialists because Paradox works with a variety of technologies translates into a certain comfort and confidence as a business owner. Their flexibility is what I find most valuable.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We always work on improving, namely the total knowledge share of what exactly Paradox marketing does. The things that they can do are extremely technical and intelligent. For a little while, Paradox undersold or under-conveyed just how smart and gifted they are and what exactly they did. I want the client to know just how sophisticated and special their work is, whether that’s a finished website or growing organic traffic.

Ultimately, they should better communicate the big picture and the micro-value of what they can do. It might be a case of humility or the fact that this is just common to them. This isn’t necessarily a negative, but I wanted to provide some context for it. For example, when they QA a website, they address 40–50 specs across mobile and desktop. Then, they simply confirm the QA is done, without saying that they looked at 52 use cases. That work would’ve taken the client nine hours.

After everything is completed, I get a small-to-midsize PowerPoint. As a parallel, if the problem in algebra class was four divided by two, you’d write down two, but the teacher would ask you to show your work. Similarly, I keep telling them to show the client just how much they cover. That now comes with every project that we do. 

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

For any project, the needs and goals need to be well-defined. Also, there needs to be awareness that there may be more than one way to tackle a problem. Having as many stakeholders as possible involved helps get everybody on the same page to minimize rework.

If the goals are too general, there can be misalignment regarding how long things will take or the different paths to the result. The availability to communicate regularly is another aspect. If the client can only talks to Paradox twice a month, they won’t have that level of intimacy and detail along the way. This isn’t mandatory, but I believe it’s how we get the best results.

Please describe your company and your position there.

CustomLogoCases sells custom phone, tablet and laptop cases, covers and sleeves, to business, government and education providers worldwide. It is a B2B business, counting some of the largest organizations in the world among its clients.

For what projects/services did your company hire Paradox Marketing, and what were your goals?

Being a global business with multiple sub-domains, focusing on the US, UK, Australia and Canada Primarily, with similar content in each region, the goal was to rank certain but different specific keywords that were most relevant in these regions. The company had established domain but was lacking a well executed strategy from previous SEO providers.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Joshua and the team at Paradox were selected based on the experience with one of their partners who had done work with CustomLogoCases in the past, and was extremely effective and also great value for money.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and campaigns.

Joshua and the team at Paradox did a large audit of everything digital, started but fixing technical issues, and then planning monthly deliverables as agreed on.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

I believe there were roughly around 5 people that we worked with on a regular basis, but with one main point of contact. It was reassuring to know that each person had a very specific defined role, and knew what they were doing and did it well.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Joshua and his team provided excellent value for money, and delivered results that we'd not had with a number of previous SEO providers. Finding a good SEO provider has been difficult and is not an easy task, but with Joshua the communication was great, we weren't 'sold' but just got a good feeling about product knowledge.

We got results of higher rankings consistently until we were ranking basically where we wanted to be.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

They used a task management platform, had one point of contact but with Joshua always able to be contacted. timelines were adhered to and everything was managed very well.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They nearly undersold themselves but overdelivered. It was hard to find a good SEO company, let alone an excellent one, and this was what I find Paradox Marketing to be.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Honestly, I am in the online space and am recommending Paradox to anyone in the online space who needs SEO work. They will tell you the truth and deliver.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Brand Director of a midsized surrogacy and egg donation agency in the southern United States.

For what projects/services did your company hire Paradox Marketing, and what were your goals?

Our business depends on three distinct audiences finding us online and converting. Our consideration phases are very long, so we need efficient funnels and actionable metrics. We hired Paradox Marketing to assist with our traffic, conversions, metric tracking, and PPC ads.

They have also guided us through setting up our marketing customer relationship management system.

How did you select Paradox Marketing and what were the deciding factors?

Referred by a Member of Our Professional Network Deciding factors were ability to coordinate across a broad range of technologies and focus areas.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and campaigns.

Paradox Marketing has taken a steady, through, and ambitious approach to increasing our web traffic. Kicking off with competitive intelligence, keyword research, rank assessment then providing our team with possible topics and outlines, taking our feedback and prioritization, then optimizing the content we create from their outlines.

They then tackled backlinks, internal links, site navigation and Google Ads.

How many people from the Paradox Marketing team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We have worked most directly with Joshua, the Owner. Occasionally, we will connect with a Project Manger or other Staffers for specific, small tasks.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We have more than doubled our website traffic since beginning our work with Paradox Marketing. Our conversions are now steady, our visitors are more focused and we are enjoying the ability to make decisive marketing decisions, based on the analytics Paradox has set us up to collect.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Paradox Marketing uses Asana, email, and other communication and project management tools, as appropriate. They were uniquely responsive and timely as well as extremely flexible and accommodating.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I am most impressed with their results. Secondly, the vigor with which the Owner aims to understand and solve our unique business challenges, as well as the imagination and scope of the solutions offered.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

We are pleased that Paradox Marketing will soon have Project Mangers on the east coast of the USA. We are looking forward to that.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I own an explainer video company that work with multiple client across the world.

For what projects/services did your company hire Paradox Marketing, and what were your goals?

We want to get more leads coming organically from our website, and my main goal is to get more clients from it so we'll profit on the long run.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

I've worked with 3 other SEO agencies before from an online community with various result. I've met Joshua few years before I hired him, and ended up hiring him after the last agency that we hired were no longer suitable for our needs.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and campaigns.

Our engagement began with a discovery call and an audit from Paradox' team. After they provided a report with all the necessary steps, we discussed how we can tackle each action points, and because I also have my in-house marketing team, Paradox need to work together with my team, instead of just providing a solution without any of our consent. As we already hired them on a retainer basis for more than 2 years, we are constantly in contact with Joshua and his team to get his insight and action plans every month.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Joshua assigned several people, including a project manager, web developer, copywriter and SEO expert to work with my team. I think we have been working with more than 10 people from their team alternately, depending on what's the action plan for that month.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Our traffic was up 3x since we started. Our Domain Rating is up about 20 points. As this is a retainer, I'm still expecting growth.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

We mainly use Asana, as well as many other tools provided by Paradox. Our company also use Asana on top of our project management system, so that's not an issue. We have monthly call over zoom, and we can always ask them for help anytime we've bumped into a situation.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I never met other SEO agencies that I've hired in person, but I have the chance to meet Joshua in person as well as his partner. This improve the quality of our work relationship.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

None that I can think of.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the SEO Specialist at Centeno-Schultz Clinic

For what projects/services did your company hire Paradox Marketing, and what were your goals?

Our goal is to scale the production of our site structure and content.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

The nested hub strategy utilizes custom post types in conjunction with dynamic content that displays based on taxonomy. It was a brilliant solution to our problem.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and campaigns.

This project mandates a lot of meetings, work sessions, weekly calls, outline creation, web development (that was worth A LOT more than we paid), and strategy calls. All other information is confidential.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Over 10.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

This is an ongoing project. Positive changes in organic traffic, bounce rate, and time on site.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

numerous weekly calls (if needed), reports, and Asana communication

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Joshua is brilliant. The team is fast and highly proficient.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Too much "can do" attitude.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We provide relocations and storage to people moving house, I am the owner of the business

For what projects/services did your company hire Paradox Marketing, and what were your goals?

Sea and website management

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Previous employee started Paradox

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and campaigns.

Optimized, built and managed website. worked to kpis for organic traffic and conversion rate.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

always had one primary account manager which managed a team of writers, developers and designers

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

too many to list

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Collaborative sprints, email used for communication, shared project management program. ongoing timelines since 2016

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their depth of knowledge has been impressive. and ability of high-level analysis

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

it was frustrating when they stopped offering social media services