Founder(s): Jason & Therese Benedict
Industry: Sales & marketing agency
Joined Keap: 2013
growth in 2 years
The Automation Agency, a Keap Certified Partner since 2013, is a full-service agency that helps small businesses grow and thrive using sales and marketing automation.
In the past 2 years alone they’ve grown by 225%, and in 5 years they’ve coached and onboarded more than 3000 small businesses with Keap. Using automation as the backbone of their business, Jason Benedict and his wife have taken their agency from 6 to 7 figures, with more rapid growth on the horizon.
Before he ran his own business, Jason discovered Keap while serving as the marketing director at a company where he was in charge of growing the membership base.
He went through Keap certification training, then put it to use and grew the membership base from 300 to 900 within 6 months.
Not only did he get promoted, Jason found that his success with Keap gave him a big boost in confidence.
“When I went through the training with Keap, it helped me uncover skills that I didn't know I had. It's just a huge confidence builder. When you can recognize how much more marketing skill you have when you use a technology like Keap, it's an empowerment tool.”
Jason went on to start his own agency, helping other businesses achieve the massive results he realized were possible with automation. He became a Keap Certified Partner and developed such deep expertise in the Keap software that his agency now helps Keap onboard new customers.
When asked how to replicate his success, Jason points to the many free resources offered by Keap.
“The first thing that I recommend you do is leverage the resources that Keap has provided to you. There are so many resources available. Keap has invested a ton of time and energy to really separate themselves from the competition.”Jason credits two resources in particular as keys to his success.
“Use the playbooks, use the assessment tools. Those two key things are what took us from a six-figure agency to a seven-figure agency. If you can really focus on those two pieces of content and become an expert in them, you will continue to grow month over month.”
Jason loves the work he does because of the relief and excitement his clients feel when they discover the power of automation to transform their business.
“Clients will text me, they’ll call me, jumping up and down, and say, ‘Jason, we just did $150,000 in a week in sales!’ And I'm like, ‘This is the power of sales and marketing automation.’ When you set up the technology the right way, and you understand the milestones and your sales process, you uncover the little tweaks and adjustments that can have a huge impact.”
The power of automation, combined with software and support designed specifically for the growing small businesses his agency serves, makes Jason a true believer in Keap.
“We are exclusive to Keap. Keap started as the sales and marketing automation innovator in this space, and they have not stopped innovating since the first day they set out. We believe that Keap is the best sales automation tool on the market, period. It's very easy for us to recommend it to other small businesses because we know the language, we know the pain points that clients feel in their business.”
Jason knows those pain points because he’s experienced them in his own business, and he knows which parts of Keap will help a client solve their biggest pain points as quickly as possible.
Jason met with a pharmacist working a nine-to-five job who felt she had reached the ceiling of her earning potential. They connected on LinkedIn, had a discovery call, and she hired Jason to set up a campaign for her.
“Her name is Dr. Jamie Wilke, an amazing, very talented professional. We got her set up with Keap, we helped her create an automation solution that drives people to request information, then drives them to an online webinar. And within the first nine months, that campaign alone converted $140,000 in revenue. I think within one weekend she made $54,000 dollars. So she made more money in one weekend than she did as a pharmacist in a full year.”
Now, Dr. Wilke is doing what she loves. She's a consultant to other pharmacists, teaching them how to break from their nine-to-five jobs and start their own businesses. And she's become a referral partner for Jason, so the relationship continues to be mutually beneficial.
One night, Jason got a call from a client who had recently lost a sales rep and was concerned about the drop in revenue her business had experienced. She needed a way to boost sales, fast.
Jason asked, “Can you be available tomorrow morning to take calls and to start taking some inbound leads?” The client responded, "Yes, we'll do whatever it takes."
So Jason jumped into Keap that night. “We created a very simple campaign. It included an email, a text message, and a third-party integration to a voicemail drop. We took everybody who had already scheduled consultations but hadn’t booked procedures—we knew exactly the subset that was most likely to purchase. We sent out about 1300 emails, phone calls, and text messages the following day. And by that afternoon, I think the client had generated close to $60,000. And by the end of the next week, they generated over $150,000 in revenue.”
As much as Jason is an advocate of the Keap software, he loves the Keap community even more.
“It’s always open, 24/7. There's always somebody out there who's willing to help you, and you get to help them. There are Facebook groups, there are local user groups. You can post a question and, literally within a matter of minutes, you're getting answers from other experts in the industry. And so it really does feel like you constantly have support 24/7.”
Jason also highly recommends the resources and community for Keap Certified Partners.
“I love the Keap partner community. If you're a seven-figure agency looking to grow, looking to hire, looking to scale, there are other partners who have already been where you are. Anytime you need to reach out and ask for help and get that level of guidance, it's right there at your fingertips.”
Jason acknowledges that achieving success with Keap is work, but it’s work that pays off.
“It's not going to be easy, but if you put your nose to the grindstone, as my grandfather would say, you're going to get through it. You're going to learn from every experience and continue to make positive changes each and every day. And you'll have success.”
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