LiveAgent is a software-as-a-service that optimizes consumer-business interactions. David Cacik is the Head of Growth and helped the company increase its monthly recurring revenue from $20,000 to $250,000 by using PPCs, content marketing, and SEO. Competitors include venture-backed companies.
It began as a spin-off but now accounts for 75% of the company’s monthly recurring revenue (MRR). PPCs, content marketing, and SEO were among the strategies that helped the company increase its monthly revenue to over $250,000 per month.
What is your background and where are your current interests?
Ahoy! I am the Head of Growth for LiveAgent. My name is David Cacik. In high school, I started my first enterprise, followed by another in college. I subsequently accepted an enticing position at LiveAgent after failing the first and selling the second. I was the first growth expert to join the company and helped it increase its monthly recurring revenue from $20,000 to $250,000.
LiveAgent enables enhanced consumer-business interactions. We are a privately financed SaaS company with headquarters in Bratislava, Slovakia (Central Europe). Our competitors include venture-backed companies like Zendesk and Freshdesk, which makes my position immensely challenging and alluring.
What is your background and how did this concept develop?
Two of my high school classmates and I founded a game hosting company when I was 15 years old. As children, we sold other children virtual server space for games like Counter-Strike and World of Warcraft. We failed and abandoned the project after deciding to attend separate universities.
During the course of my studies, I launched a new eCommerce venture, an online pharmacy with automated delivery of commonly used items such as toothbrushes, razors, and toilet paper. Despite reaching the final round of the Student Entrepreneur Awards, I chose to sell the business and move on.
In 2013, I became the tenth employee and solitary marketer at LiveAgent. I was 21 years old and had no notion what I was getting myself into, but I experimented a lot and helped the company increase its monthly recurring revenue from $20,000 to $250,000 over the course of four years.
How did you develop LiveAgent?
LiveAgent was established as a spin-off initiative. Post Affiliate Pro, a platform for managing affiliates, was our first product, and its popularity was growing rapidly. We were looking for a new customer service solution when we realized that none of the existing tools were adequate. This is when LiveAgent development began. It took three years for it to evolve into the multichannel help desk software it is today, but our developers continue to release daily enhancements.
Initially, we had no plans to market LiveAgent; we intended to use it only internally. Several of our consumers, primarily B2B, have inquired about the support tool we employ. This is the manner in which the first license was sold.
Today, LiveAgent represents 75% of the company’s monthly recurring revenue, surpassing Post Affiliate Pro in revenue and customer count.
PHP and Java serve as the primary programming languages for both PAP and LiveAgent, while MySQL, Kibana, Elastic, and Grafana are used for performance monitoring.
Our servers operate in multiple locations (EU, US, Asia) with multiple service providers, commencing with Linode, where the majority of our accounts operate on fast SSD nodes, and AWS, where the largest files are kept. To ensure optimal efficacy and dependability, we have recently begun constructing our own “in-house” server facility in the EU. There will soon be a migration of our European Union clients.
How did you expand your business using marketing strategies?
Initial traction was achieved by upselling to previous customers. However, it was not sufficient. To generate a positive ROI, we required an increase in customers and expansion.
We began experimenting with PPC, content marketing, enhancing the registration experience, SEO outbound sales, and a variety of other strategies. Initially, we had little success, but we grew consistently over time.
We have tested Google AdWords, Bing Ads, Facebook, Twitter, and a variety of other minor PPC networks. Due to the fact that our average customer value was lower than those of the majority of our competitors and that they were essentially squandering investors’ money with PPCs, it was especially challenging to compete in the Pay Per Click market. We were required to identify long-tail keywords and competitor keywords that performed adequately (while adhering to Google’s regulations). Generic terms such as “customer service software” were exceedingly expensive, and we spent a great deal of money to compete with the market leaders. I would not recommend this strategy to other businesses. We ultimately identified the effective keywords, and we continue to place bids on them.
They recommended, “Be content,” Thus, we published blog posts that were informative, well-formatted, and supported by infographics and images. None of the blog posts garnered significant interest. Only two or three publications rank highly for relevant keywords. Content creation is challenging, and we have yet to find a solution.
Incorporating LiveAgent into software directories and enhancing our presence there was, on the other hand, a particularly effective growth strategy. Since we’ve been customer-centric from the beginning, we’ve maintained a solid customer base. After listing LiveAgent on websites such as G2Crowd, Capterra, GetApp, and FinancesOnline, we encouraged our audience to leave a positive or negative review on one of these sites. We also incentivized their participation by providing $20 Amazon gift cards to each individual who shared their story. We received hundreds of positive reviews, which assisted us in achieving a high ranking in comparisons and a significant increase in traffic.
What were the most difficult challenges you faced, and how did you surmount them?
As soon as we began aggressively promoting LiveAgent, we realized that Zendesk and Freshdesk were the market leaders. We had difficulty positioning ourselves and determining our unique selling proposition. Also, as a bootstrapped company, we had to compete with companies with more than $300 million in funding, making customer acquisition challenging.
Another challenge was locating the appropriate personnel. It has always been difficult for us to find qualified sales representatives and developers.
Recent issues with our colocation provider caused outages and necessitated a complete reorganization of our infrastructure. LiveAgent is used by tens of thousands of companies, including fintech and telco companies where every second counts, to support their end customers. We had to make substantial investments and move promptly because the repercussions could have been disastrous.
New competitors without a plausible business model are proliferating and offering complementary plans. This raises the bar for functionality, user interface, and consumer experience.
A straightforward game wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining, wouldn’t it, if it were always changing?
For further information
You can check LiveAgent or my Twitter profile
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