Welcome Home Social Achieves $50,000 MRR by Diversifying Beyond Websites
Located in Austin, Texas
Digital marketing agency founded in 2021
Specializing in services for small businesses in the trades
The Challenge:
Sean Cantu, founder of web agency Welcome Home Social, noticed a shift in client demands in recent years. Small and medium businesses sought services beyond basic websites—reputation management, local listings management software, social marketing, and enhanced prospect insights became essential.
Cantu’s challenge—and opportunity—was to provide these solutions at scale while maintaining a lean operation and generating consistent monthly recurring revenue (MRR) with attractive margins.
Building a diversified web agency with growing MRR in partnership with Vendasta
$50K+
Monthly recurring
revenue
Close clients and access the tools, technology, marketing, and collateral to fast-track your success.
client retention
rate
50
New clients
since partnering
Package products from a marketplace of 250+ solutions and deliver with a team of experts to fulfill under your brand.
Background
Sean Cantu, a seasoned B2B professional with expertise in tech sales, recognized the demand for high-quality websites within the trades and home services sector. This insight led to the founding of Welcome Home Social, initially focused on white-label web design for businesses spanning HVAC, contracting, plumbing, and electrical services.
While the web design agency model was functional, Cantu quickly recognized the importance of establishing recurring revenue streams. This shift became pivotal in stabilizing his agency’s income, lessening reliance on sporadic website projects.
In the ever-changing marketing landscape, clients were increasingly seeking more than just websites—they desired services elevating their online presence and driving website traffic. His home services clients also wanted tools that could track leads and analyze website visitor engagement.
Confronted with the limitations of a small agency, Cantu couldn’t afford to develop in-house solutions, especially with clients increasingly expecting comprehensive services from one provider. Despite these challenges, he was determined to maintain a lean operational structure. He aimed to expand his team once the success of offering multiple products and ensuring client retention was firmly established.
Objectives
Cantu’s primary objectives in partnering with Vendasta were to:
- Diversify his business model: Expand beyond mere websites and transform into a comprehensive solution provider for SMBs.
- Transition to recurring revenue: Move away from irregular one-time project payments and establish a steady stream of MRR.
- Enhance client satisfaction and retention: Elevate client satisfaction levels and bolster retention rates through the delivery of holistic and ongoing services and showcasing return on investment.
The approach
Leverage Vendasta’s Marketplace of 250+ products to create digital packages
Vendasta’s Marketplace, housing over 250 digital solutions, is pivotal to Cantu’s strategy. It enables him to resell products at wholesale rates, ensuring a 50% gross margin upon markup.
Utilizing the Marketplace, Cantu expanded his services from basic websites to comprehensive packages, averaging $1,000 per client monthly with an impressive 50% gross margin. Remarkably, this growth happened without increasing staff.
Cantu typically introduces SMBs to Marketplace solutions in two phases.
Phase 1 – After website design, Cantu bundles crucial services like Reputation Management, Local SEO, Social Marketing and Organic SEO. This package empowers clients to list their websites across platforms, manage reviews, and engage with their audience on social media, significantly enhancing their online presence.
Phase 2- With rising website traffic, clients tend to seek additional tools for lead retargeting, opening avenues for upselling. Marketplace offerings expand to include Digital Ads, Constant Contact email marketing, Cantu also upsells solutions like Visual Visitor, enabling businesses to track website visitors and gather valuable data for marketing purposes.
Fulfillment tasks are predominantly managed by vendors or clients using Vendasta’s white-label client app (under the Welcome Home Social brand in this case). Several solutions feature AI capabilities such as automated review responses and content creation, letting clients efficiently manage those facets of their online strategy with a few clients.
However, for clients with limited time, Cantu offers paid services for review responses and social post creation, combining AI automation with human editing, and unlocking another source of recurring revenue.
Close more deals with the Snapshot Report and Vendasta’s brandable pitch decks
While seamlessly upselling to existing clients and realizing the immediate benefits of MRR, Cantu was eager to scale his diversified web agency and offer a comprehensive suite of digital solutions to local businesses.
To achieve this goal, Cantu utilized two key tools provided by Vendasta. The first was the sales intelligence tool, Snapshot Report, powered by Google. This tool served as a comprehensive report card, evaluating a prospect’s performance across various online channels such as social media, websites, advertising, and reviews. The Snapshot Report empowered sales teams with automated insights, enabling persuasive and well-informed sales conversations.
“We use it religiously. It’s essential to master the Snapshot Report, customize it, and utilize it. Whenever we create an account, generating the Snapshot Report is a fundamental step. It seamlessly aligns with our approach,” Cantu emphasized.
Additionally, Cantu leveraged Vendasta’s ongoing content resources, including assets like ‘Your million-dollar pitch deck for selling digital.’ These resources provided Cantu with ready-made presentation decks that he could quickly tailor, brand, and employ in sales conversations.
This approach saved valuable time, allowing him to focus on client interactions and guiding conversations around the modern customer journey and clients’ online needs. This approach ensured that the discussions felt more organic and client-focused, steering clear of a purely sales-oriented pitch.
Show value using automations and reporting functionality
Mastering the art of prospecting and upselling, Cantu recognized the critical importance of showcasing the value his agency added to clients, especially in a recurring revenue model where monthly payments are involved.
To address this need, Cantu implemented automated reporting tools like the Executive Report. This tool showed proof of performance, including lead generation, website visits, reviews generated, conversions from Google My Business, social media impressions and clicks, search rankings, and more.
By harnessing the power of the Executive Report and Business App, Cantu regularly scheduled meetings with clients. During these sessions, he walked them through the data, offering tangible evidence of the impact his agency had on their business.
These meetings not only provided clients with reassurance about the returns on their marketing investment but also presented a valuable opportunity to address concerns, gather feedback, and propose tailored recommendations aimed at elevating the client’s online presence to the next level.
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“Vendasta’s platform has been a game-changer for my business. The support I receive from the team and the variety of solutions in the Marketplace have allowed me to scale Welcome Home Social and provide exceptional services to my clients.”
Sean Cantu
owner AND FOUNDER, WELCOME HOME SOCIAL
Welcome Home Social best-selling products:
The conclusion
Sean’s partnership with Vendasta has proven to be an integral part of the success Welcome Home Social has experienced since its founding in 2021. By leveraging the integrated platform and its wide range of solutions, Sean has successfully increased his monthly recurring revenue to $50,000 and enhanced client satisfaction and retention.
With Vendasta’s continued support, Sean looks forward to further growing his business and expanding his service offerings to reach even more small businesses in the trades. He is confident that Vendasta’s platform will continue to provide him with the tools, resources, and support he needs to thrive in the ever-evolving digital marketing landscape.
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