Suggestions
Johnathan Dane
Founder @KlientBoost 🎉 #1 Best Place To Work by Glassdoor 🏆 Marketing Lover ❤️ Stanford Guest Speaker 🎤 Former Pro Basketball Player 🏀 Get a marketing plan that’s better than your current one 👉🏻 klientboost.com
Johnathan Dane is an entrepreneur and the founder of KlientBoost, a hybrid PPC SEO agency that has grown from zero to eight figures in recent years.1 He is a first-generation immigrant entrepreneur and angel investor who focuses on digital marketing and business growth.3
Professional Background:
- CEO and Founder of KlientBoost, a digital marketing agency serving over 200 active clients in SaaS, eCommerce, and lead generation1
- Co-Founder of GrowthComet, a training platform for agencies, consultants, and freelancers1
- Growth Advisor at Our Own, a nonprofit organization45
- Guest Lecturer at Stanford University5
Early Life: His entrepreneurial journey began unexpectedly after a personal challenge. As a high school student, he was sent back to Denmark after a fight with his father and was subsequently pushed by his mother to become independent.1 This experience seems to have shaped his entrepreneurial spirit and drive.
Business Achievements:
- Grew KlientBoost from zero to a $20M Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) run rate3
- Specializes in pay-per-click, paid social, and landing page conversion rate optimization1
- Advocates for founders building their personal brand through social media2
Dane is known for his creative approach to digital marketing and his focus on helping clients achieve profitable outcomes.1
Highlights
KlientBoost has +317 published case studies. This kept our CAC under $1,000 even at $20M ARR. Here's how:
𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗬
If the goal of brand marketing efforts is to appeal to the emotional side of our future buyers and get into their narrow consideration set…
Social proof (case studies, testimonials, reviews) is designed to appeal to their logical side.
So, from day one of KB, we decided we’ll build a Rolodex of case studies with brands from every vertical, revenue size, buyer type, etc. We wanted every prospect to be able to see a success story we’ve created in partnership with a brand that’s similar to them.
Here are just a few of those case studies:
🏆 Segment: 195% of conversion goal reached, CPA 12% under goal & for the 1st time ever paid acquisition generated more SQLs than organic 🏆 Salesloft: 27% increase in conversions, 20% decrease in CPA, 15% increase in conversion rate 🏆 Airbnb: 7% decrease in cost per conversion, 25% decrease in cost per click, 22% increase in CTR 🏆 Podia: 24% increase in conversions, 37% decrease in CPA
𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗣𝗥𝗢𝗖𝗘𝗦𝗦
If a prospect looks at G2 reviews, they’ll see that our biggest competitor has 8, and KlientBoost has 356. If they look at Clutch, the competitor has 54 while we have 377.
Those two 4.8 ratings are suddenly not the same, right?
Here’s our process for getting all these 5-star reviews & case studies:
✅ We’ve optimized our processes to deliver client wins very early (63% ROI increase on average in the first 3 months) ✅ In that first quarter, if NPS is 9 or 10, and we’ve hit our goals, we ask for a review ✅ Once we have a review, we’re halfway done with the case study, so we ask the client for a permission to do the full case study (90% of the time we get it) ✅ Account manager pulls out the biggest wins and finalizes the case study with the client and we publish it ✅ After these early wins, we ask clients for more trust and the mandate to work on bigger things ✅ Then we produce bigger wins and repeat this whole process
Any business can benefit from this loop, so feel free to borrow it.
𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧’𝗦 𝗡𝗘𝗫𝗧
As our content advisor pointed out, KlientBoost serves some of the greatest brands like Gong, G2 and Ramp… But people have to dig through our profiles and website to learn this.
So now we’re working on properly highlighting all these case studies and client wins, especially here on LinkedIn. If you have some ideas, do let me know 🤘🏻
Before KlientBoost hit $20M ARR as a marketing agency with 100+ marketers, it was just a broke kid who'd just figured out a way to acquire clients:
BACKSTORY
My dad ran a mortgage brokerage. After high school, I got my license to help him. Things were great until he decided to take a 2 month vacation and left me to figure things out on my own.
Went into panic mode, but then realized money was getting tight and took action. I went on Craigslist and posted about my car washing services. Bought stuff on Alibaba and sold it too while delivering things on my knock off Vespa.
Today we call it hustling, but then, I just knew I needed the money.
MASTERING GOOGLE ADS
Later on, I took on a customer service job until one day my boss asked me to run Google Ads for him. I learned just enough to seriously suck at it.
Then learned some more and decided I was good enough to offer my Google Ads services through Craigslist.
The problem was, nobody would take me.
THE PLAN
So I came up with a plan:
- Find 3 clients to work with for FREE (Mortgage Company in Indiana, a CrossFit gym in Newport Beach, and the third client who accepts car donations)
- If I get them results, I’ll get 3 case studies (and I did)
- Show this to the 4th client and finally get paid
Very quickly, I got a message from a guy on Craigslist: ‘Hey, I spend $50,000 per month on ads, saw your post, I'd love to chat with you. Can you meet up?’
I was like, "nobody f****** spends $50,000 a month". Never seen that kind of budget. And obviously said YES.
We meet up at a Barnes & Noble and talk about my case studies and he's like, I want to hire you, how much do you charge an hour?
Nobody's ever asked me that. So I do some quick back-of-the-napkin math and shoot: "$30 an hour".
He writes me a check for 100 hours. $3,000! And I ran across the street to Chase Bank and deposited it into my account. I was like, I'm never going back, this is my life now.
That initial deal became a yearly contract, but more importantly, it created a snowball effect that got me where I’m at today, because…
My main POC at this company and I clicked and we ended up starting Disruptive Advertising, my first marketing agency, after which the KlientBoost was born.
TAKEAWAY
Today, KlientBoost has +317 case studies documenting massive wins we created for clients. That’s more than most agencies have clients.
This mentality of turning every single client into a case study and being able to show proof of our expertise has been one of the greatest tools in acquiring new clients and helped us keep our CAC ridiculously low.
And it all started with a broke kid practicing delayed gratification and getting creative when nobody wanted to hire him 🤘🏻
