In this interview, Eric Siu of Single Grain talks with Sujan Patel, co‑founder of Web Profits, about the growth framework that drove Sujan’s success in 2018 and the plans for 2019. Sujan reveals that despite spending roughly $300K on content creation, paid ads, SEO, video, and outbound tactics, only a tiny fraction of that effort actually generated the bulk of traffic. The key driver was updating existing high‑intent content from 2016‑17, which accounted for about 75% of an extra million visitors across his eight companies. He explains the "seed and grow" approach: create foundational pieces (e.g., targeting specific SaaS keywords for Mailshake), continuously iterate, and later compile them into a larger ebook or "10x" piece of content. Sujan emphasizes the long latency of content marketing—18‑24 months before measurable ROI—and the need to focus on Ideal Customer Profiles (ICP) rather than sheer search volume, crafting content that resonates emotionally with sales‑related roles. The conversation ends with a call for viewers to share their 2019 growth plans.
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Hey, so fun fact, Sujan Patel over here actually wrote a book called The Growth Playbook or something like that. I'll let him explain what it is, but it actually got a ton of downloads and he actually did really well in terms of growing that Growth Playbook. So in this video, we're actually going to talk about Sujan Patel's growth framework for 2019. My name is Eric Siu of the agency Single Grain and co-founder of ClickFlow, and Sujan Patel here is the co-founder of Web Profits. So Sujan, what do you got?
So hey everyone, very, very excited to talk to you about this because this is where I get to reflect on everything I've done well, poorly, and it's been released and what's actually worked. So I own 8 companies, one of which is Web Profits, the agency, and then 7 SaaS companies. So I look back at the year and I'm like, what did we do as an organization? Like, how have— what marketing has worked? What hasn't worked? And so in 2018, we spent probably around $300,000 give or take $10K or so on content, creating content, the marketing of content, meaning like, so let's call it advertising, Outbrain, Facebook ads. We spent some on like software, you know, just to maintain and do the marketing that we want to do, email marketing, marketing automation, chatbots, what have you.
Right.
We've done lots and lots of link building. So let's call that all SEO. We've done some paid advertising. Whether it's through Facebook ads, Google AdWords. We've done lots and lots of outbound. I still call that marketing even though it might be more sales generated. We did a lot, a lot of video. And then we've driven around a little over a million visitors to Web Profits and our core properties. And I'm not talking about like random visitors to blog posts or whatnot. I'm saying actual high intent. But there's actually only a couple things of that that actually worked. Can you guess what do you think? What do you think of everything I said?
Let's see.
Video, written content, Facebook ads.
Written content definitely works. And then I kind of tie SEO with that as well.
Yeah, so I would say nothing we did in 2018 contributed to those million visitors that came in.
Nothing?
Nothing. It was all the things that we did in 2016 and '17.
Ah, yeah, okay.
So it was refreshing and you guys have mentioned this on your Marketing School Podcast many times. It was mostly updating old content. That drove most of the visitors.
Yep.
And it was actually two pieces of content. When I look at over across eight companies, eight different websites, two pieces of content that drove about seventy-five percent of those the extra million visitors in traffic.
That's huge. Actually, I was looking at new blankets and new pillows, and I was looking at the Wirecutter the other day. What I found in all those articles, like best pillow, da da da. They just kept updating over and over and over, which is why they rank for millions and millions of keywords. So I'm not surprised that that's worked out well for Sujin. Is there anything else?
Yeah, so it was actually laying the foundation for next year. So when I figured this out, it was probably around summertime, I was like, wow, nothing I'm doing is working. And you would think as a marketer that's like a horrible sign.
Yeah.
It wasn't that, that nothing I was doing was working, it's actually the other way around. Things I'm doing take a lot longer than I anticipated to work.
Yep.
We talked about this in a previous video, 18 to 24 months to see content marketing work. Content marketing was working, it just took a whole lot longer than I anticipated. When I first started doing content marketing, it was a lot less time, 6 months. So what I'm really focusing on, and I'm going to continue to double down on, is the foundational work. I'll give you an example. At Mailshake, one of our SaaS companies targeting salespeople, it's an outbound sales tool. We're laying down, and we spent from July, and we're going to continue this, all the foundational work, all the high-intent keywords that salespeople would search for. we're writing content on, and we're gonna continue to iterate on, and we're actually already seeing success in, but it's just not where you would see it. It's not in our analytics yet. It's on page 5 of Google. It's one of our 100 articles that gets traffic every month. Not the highest, probably one of the lowest, and we're doubling down on that. So we're creating all these foundational—
So you're seeding it first, and you're seeing what goes well, then you're upgrading it.
Yeah, and what we'll essentially do, we're creating— we are gonna be creating a book on this, and an ebook, on all these things combined. We're creating all the individual chapters and sections of this book, and if it starts to trickle out as it plays out, we're gonna put this into a giant kind of book. And it's almost like the reverse of a 10x piece of content.
Mm-hmm.
Instead of, instead of creating the piece of content first and then pushing it and promoting it, because the ROI is not there for us, we're creating individual pieces, and as it starts to unfold, put the book and 10x piece of content together.
That's a really good point. That's actually what we're planning to do with the Marketing School Podcast too, just 'cause it's like every day. So look, it's the seed and grow. You should just coin that term.
Seed and grow.
Seed and grow, there you go.
It fits well with Single Grain.
Oh yeah, it does. Seed and grow, there you go. You got it from this video first. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Yeah, so one of the other things is that we're doing that in 2019 is we're really looking for and doubling down in our ICP, our ideal customer profile. We're looking at what they actually care about. And I'm taking out the marketing stats and the details of like, does this, how much traffic does this drive? I'm looking at like, okay, at Mailshake we're targeting a salesperson, an SDR, sales manager, VP of sales, what have you. Like, you know, the different types of roles that salesperson would be in. I'm thinking about what kind of content would would be thought-provoking for them. What are the struggles they're going through? What struggles in their day? What are the things they're looking for? Where are they hanging out? And I'm actually trying to just go after content that really fits those folks. So I don't care if it has high volume or whatnot. I want to really strike their emotions and their hearts.
Cool. So there you have it. There's just a couple things. There's like a million different things I guarantee you that Sujin is planning for 2019. But leave in the comments, let us know what you think, what you plan to do in terms of growing in 2019. Don't forget to also subscribe as well, and that's it for this series. Don't forget to check out the next video that's coming from this wonderful channel where, uh, you get to learn about growth and just cool stuff that's gonna help make you amazing. Bye.
