Daniel Hoffmann was happy to sit down with our CEO, Relja Denic, and openly discussed his humble agency beginnings and how he scaled up his business with the help of his trusted sidekick - Skylead.
Can you tell us a little bit about your agency?
Daniel: “We are a digital marketing agency for German-speaking countries, and we offer guaranteed results. If a customer is working with us, we define the results and start by working for 6 to 8 months. If we don't achieve results, we give them money back.
Our target market is so saturated because every agency is saying, We can get you new customers, more leads, and so on. So I thought of creating the first agency that says, Okay, we can bring you results, and if we don't, you get your money back. This is my USP, along with the fact that we combine direct response marketing with copywriting, data science, and psychology.
As an agency, we do omnichannel marketing on every platform. I first look at what customers are selling and where their audience is, and then I customize the strategy. So for some people, YouTube ads are relevant; for some, it's LinkedIn outreach. That's why I use your tool - because I'm selling LinkedIn outreach as a service.
As for my background, I started 4 years ago as an affiliate marketer. I bought a lot of the courses from gurus and did make a return on that. Then I had a touchpoint with an e-commerce industry. I started with dropshipping, and it was quite successful. Then I thought: Okay, what else can I do as a side hustle? I knew there was a need in a market where people are not good at online advertising because there aren't many studying resources in that field here in Germany. So I invested in many masterclasses and courses like Alex Becker and all these people, and then I started an agency business. I started small, with local businesses like dentists and barber shops.”
What goals did you try to achieve but couldn’t before Skylead?
Daniel: “It was a new acquisition channel for me because I also had a big gap in time where I had no money, and this was a cost-effective method to get new customers. Also, I could expand my services to charge more per customer. Other people don’t offer the same kind of service for a lower price because, in our agency, it’s all automation. I create the workflows, and I can tell them, Okay, here we can automate email marketing and combine it with other channels.”
How did you find Skylead and what challenges did it resolve for you?
Daniel: “I was just searching for alternatives when I saw your competition on Google. I’m like this guy who knows how the copy works, but I’m the more logical person, so I was comparing who has the most value versus the best price, and this was clearly you. This is because some people were limiting messages, whereas you have unlimited, for example. And you have one fixed price, and with others, you need to buy credits. Then, others don’t have an email scraping tool, and you do. So the cool thing is I can scrape the email addresses and build a lookalike audience on Facebook or Google and find this high-quality audience, for example, or create a retargeting campaign. Also, if I have email addresses, I can remarket them with some special offers. So yeah, I had no money. Skylead was the best opportunity and later I thought I could just upsell more to my customers. I am now using Skylead to generate new clients for myself and for my clients. The problem is I want to get to bigger customers and on LinkedIn you have big companies you can reach out to.
On to the challenges that Skylead removed. First is automation, clearly, and the second is reaching out to the biggest companies with around 10.000 employees or so. Because, I started charging like $500 per month and had clients who are small local businesses. I worked really hard and after a while I said, Okay I am so good at this that I can charge more and cancel contracts with people who were paying a lower price or broke companies. I aim to reach people who have had 8 figures in the last couple of years. Everyone starts small but the progress is already good because without your service I couldn’t reach out to these people so…
Yeah, I can now offer services that other competitors can’t. Some can, but not at this price point. I think there is no cheaper competitor in my market who can also guarantee results, and I do this in combination with remarketing, email marketing, and stuff like that.”
What results did Skylead help you achieve?
Daniel: “I'm getting at least 5 additional customers for my clients per month on average. For myself, I charge 5x more than your seat price, and I just set up everything, from the LinkedIn account to the entire automation. I've already got 3 large enterprise clients in the last 6 months. I'm still testing the angles, the messages, and the sequences, but I couldn't reach out to these customers with other channels because these are big companies.
So one client is in the real estate market. The second one is in the SaaS market sending virtual room guides for the companies to onboard new people. And the third one is in the metaverse, selling NFTs in their own virtual world, and their goal is reaching out to investors on LinkedIn, for example. We’ve been working for 2 months already, and I really started using Skylead for them at the start of this year in January. I think they got like 3 or 5 customers on average, but I don’t know what revenue they generated. One client told me their customer value is around $20K, which is around $100K in revenue.
As for me, since I’ve started working with these clients and using Skylead, I earned approximately 30.000€, but that is for the period of 6 months.”
What features do you find most beneficial in Skylead?
Daniel: “I like Smart Sequences and the fact that you can combine everything in one funnel. For example, I first view a profile, then check if the email address exists. If it does, I can send an email, and if it does not exist, I can send a connection request or an InMail message. I like this because you can automate every step and create a never-ending sequence, so… Yeah, you can create your own template with if/else conditions; and if/else conditions are the most beneficial.”
What exceeded your expectations with Skylead, and do you have any words for our potential customers?
Daniel: “The price exceeded my expectations. I compared the ratio of added value to the price, and you are, like, the cheapest on the market with the greatest service. This is my opinion because I researched other people, and I don’t just look at the features; I also analyze the service and other things like customer lifetime value and the period of how long the company is on the market - those are the best values you need. So this is what I compared and why I use your service.
So, I chose Skylead because of the price, services, and functions, and also because your customer support is perfect, fast, and reliable. If I ask a question or have a problem, I get an immediate and rapid answer, and the problem also gets solved; I don’t know of any situation where it wasn’t solved. So they are fast and also very friendly. This is the most important thing because if I have a problem and I’m onboarding a client and setting up Skylead, I want a direct response, which I did get and is always really good.
The main reason I recommend Skylead for agency owners is to get your clients better results, give better service than your competition, and charge more per customer to higher your margins. This is my advice to agency owners. As a private customer, I can’t say this, but I can say that if you are low on a budget, try this channel first to get your money.”
