After being in the industry for 10 years, how do you ensure that your team has the most up-to-date skills?
Webistry, a Canadian growth marketing agency, realized that to go beyond paid media and grow in a niche market, their team needed to expand and grow their skillset. Since they were highly specialized in one single field, this proved challenging.
In this edition of customer stories, we’ll look at how Webistry was able to go beyond their area of expertise towards CRO and experimentation while growing their team’s capabilities with the help of CXL.
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The status quo: going beyond paid media
As a successful paid media and marketing agency that’s been around for 10 years, going beyond the paid media space became a must to grow.
The Webistry team quickly spotted the opportunity to incorporate landing page building into every campaign, highlighting the importance of the post-click experience.
While its core foundation remains on offering paid media services, the team now has expanded to conversion rate experimentation (CRO), and experimentation.
Since it was founded, they have grown to a team of 40 and worked with brands like Adobe.
The challenge
As Webistry continued expanding and growing, it found two principal challenges:
- Expanding the team’s overall skillset
- Developing a formal training process for the new CRO and experimentation teams
With a highly unique niche, no university offered a degree that would help them build the skillset required in the industry.
This made it challenging to build highly qualified teams, as they needed a formal plan to develop a solid foundation of knowledge and tactical skills at every level.
Creating a unified methodology for managing projects and programs was key to continuous growth.
On the paid media front, the solution was to create an internal academy for learning and education. On the CRO and experimentation one, however, the agency needed an external solution provider.
Stefano Apostolakos, Co-Founder of Webistry, pointed out that a significant issue with marketing companies or agencies was the disparity in the team’s capabilities and output.
You have some companies that are very well organized and use scientific methods for their processes, and others that have a lackluster understanding of data and run ad hoc programs
Stefano Apostolakos
Upskilling their team with CXL
Since 2014, CXL has been Webistry’s place to go for digital marketing training, due to the advanced-level courses in analytics, growth, CRO, and more.
CXL provided a formal method of training that was constantly updated and could be tailored to individual team members, from junior to senior level.
A CXL Team’s All-Access Plan allowed them to train multiple people simultaneously, and incorporate practical work. This resulted in team members capable of taking on accounts within three to six months.
The cost-benefit of using CXL was reasonable, and the material was very satisfactory for the team’s needs.
Whenever new team members join, a regimented training program is placed. This played a crucial role in developing a pilot program to hire and train junior team members, especially those from diverse academic backgrounds like neuroscience and psychology.
Even if our test designers are not going to be running programs themselves, it’s important for them to understand the methodology and language.
Stefano Apostolakos
The program was documented, and for the first couple of months, the employees followed a day-by-day schedule.
By having one-to-one or many-to-one sessions with new team members senior management was capable of tracking their progress.
After employees have completed an entire minidegree, they can take additional courses based on their role.
With our new team members, we’re able to keep tabs and track as to where they’re at, so measuring their progress has been really easy. It’s one of the reasons why we’ve kept our CXL training license for so long.
Stefano Apostolakos
The results
Once Webistry started to get more customers than they had the capacity to handle, running the pilot training program and solving the capacity issue was their most important achievement.
Fixing this capacity issue and the scale issue had been the most important thing for us to solve, and the junior program was something that I wasn’t sure we were able to do for CRO experimentation.
I think, for us, that was the biggest thing that we’ve been able to unlock.
Stefano Apostolakos
Their partnership with CXL yielded impressive results, allowing them to streamline their training process and speed up the onboarding process for new hires significantly.
Growing their team and providing a strong foundation for their training program became easier. Training multiple team members simultaneously significantly reduced costs and time.
CXL training equips new hires with the skills to take on accounts within a few months.
We got the possibility to bring in 3-6 juniors and train them all at once. It has, and will unlock a lot of opportunities for us. That’s easily the biggest benefit of the courses.
Stefano Apostolakos
This investment in the skills and knowledge of their team undoubtedly contributed to Webistry’s growth and success in a niche industry.
The agency now feels more confident hiring junior team members, knowing that they can provide them with the necessary training for success.
