Digital marketing agency Convince & Convert scales 1,000% using Teamwork

Convince & Convert is a top-tier, boutique digital marketing agency with clients as notable as Oracle, Hilton, Adidas, 3M, and the United Nations. For the past 10 years, the company has been helping businesses develop their brands, social media strategies, and content marketing strategies using leading-edge techniques. Their position as thought leaders in the marketing technology industry has also put them in demand for content-driven educational events around the world.

Founder Jay Baer is one of the most-retweeted digital marketing experts in the field. He chose Teamwork back in 2014 to support advanced planning for Convince & Convert’s entire project list, from individual campaigns to keynote presentations in landmark conferences.

Going backward

In the years before Jay discovered Teamwork, his team of two employees and several contractors had been collaborating using one of the leading project management platforms available: Basecamp. While it was a huge improvement over the scattered notes and Post-It reminders that they had been using, they were still running into significant limitations.

As the business expanded, they discovered that they needed software that allowed them to plan a project backward, starting with the date of their event and working backward to the present day. Basecamp allowed them to start at the present day and work toward a deadline in the future, but that didn’t help them set intermediate deadlines for multiple presentations.

With so many long-distance trips, Jay was also finding it difficult to maintain workflow momentum by scheduling important phone calls, webinars, and meetings, plus providing crucial feedback to his team. Even when he checked into Basecamp, it often took too long to review what had been accomplished and what tasks were at the top of the priority list.

Running like clockwork

After giving Basecamp feedback about Convince & Convert’s needs, they realized that the platform was not going to change, so they started looking around for other software. A Google search pointed Jay toward Teamwork, and after a demo, the entire team was brought on board.

Since working backward from project deadlines was their greatest need, they used the task list template feature to standardize their checklists and timelines so they could instantly create a project as soon as they accepted a speaking engagement.

Every to-do is listed and scheduled from sending Jay’s biography, creating publicity materials, and sending the host their requirements for audio-visual equipment.

For client work, Convince & Convert uses task list templates to schedule blog posts, podcasts, emails, and other details for each project or campaign.

All files and comments are stored with each task so comments and documents are easy to find for in-house team members or contractors working across the globe.

Unprecedented growth

Almost four years later, Jay’s team has thoroughly integrated the platform’s tools into their workflows and the two are nearly inseparable. The efficiencies they’ve discovered have given Convince & Convert more time to focus on their task list instead of worrying about how they are going to get everything done each week.

Having such complete organizational and project management tools has allowed the company to reach unprecedented levels of growth and success. Since adopting Teamwork, Convince & Convert has grown 1,000% and was named to the Inc. 5000 list in 2015.

During that phase of nearly unbridled growth, Teamwork was not only able to help Jay’s team stay in command, but it allowed them to scale quickly using automated, replicable practices. Today, each team member has their own favorite features and uses them to increase collaboration.