Case Study-Provoke Agency

How Expandi Helped Provoke Agency Grow from $0 to $1.8 Million ARR in Less than 2 yr.

Provoke Agency is a LinkedIn prospecting and lead generation agency.

Its founder, Richard Mechaly, always took great pride in delivering first-rate results to clients – and Expandi has been a vital part of that process from day one.

Provoke Agency

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The Problem

Finding the safest LinkedIn automation platform with functionality for agencies

In the beginning, Richard faced all the usual challenges a new start-up agency has to overcome to succeed:

finding clients,
gaining trust,
and building lasting relationships that will result in a recurring revenue stream.

However, one particular question had to be dealt with first.

Namely, any LinkedIn-based lead generation agency needs a LinkedIn automation solution powerful enough to seamlessly drive new leads in clients’ pipelines while keeping them safe at the same time.

But, finding the right one in the bustling crowd of different tools proved difficult, especially for a beginner in the world of LinkedIn automation platforms.

Moreover, most other platforms are not optimized for agencies, as they lack the features an agency needs the most, such as:

A single dashboard overview of all clients, that helps with managing them all from one place
Comprehensive analytics reports for getting instant insight into every client’s overall profile performance
Options for easily finding leads’ business emails or quickly creating lists of leads by scraping relevant groups or posts
Seamless white-labeling that enables agencies to get their bespoke platform, with their brand colors, logo, etc.

And that’s when Richard found out about Expandi. Since Expandi is a cloud-based platform with many advanced features, it immediately sparked his interest.

“The problem is that there’s a ton of Linkedin automation software. And an early agency owner simply has no idea which one to choose.

But when you understand what you’re getting with Expandi — which is reliability and safety first and foremost — combined with the personal approach the owner himself took with me, the final decision was easy to make”

Richard Mechaly
Co-founder and Brand Strategist of
Provoke.Agency

The thing that definitely tipped the scale in favor of Expandi was its team’s very personal approach to all the trials and challenges Richard faced as a new agency’s founder.

In fact, right off the bat, Richard got a personalized demo with Stefan – Expandi’s CEO in person. That allowed him to experience firsthand what this platform could do for him and his clients.

And since Expandi also offers white-labeling options, Richard decided to give it a try, which became a turning point for his business ever since.

Results

Expandi’s white labelling options allowed Provoke Agency to have a bespoke LinkedIn automation solution. That enabled Provoke Agency to present the platform as its own, which significantly leveraged its overall success.

Furthermore, Expandi’s safety features ensured that none of Provoke Agency’s working accounts have ever been suspended or banned from LinkedIn. As a result, Provoke Agency built quite a reputation among its clients and prospects alike

Provoke Agency’s team’s rich experience with LinkedIn outreach and Expandi’s automation solution combined delivered excellent results over a very short period.

Provoke Agency provided its clients with excellent success rates, which allowed it to easily win over new clients and retain existing ones month after month.

Here is just one example of an average campaign that was run by using Expandi’s white-labelled platform.

That campaign alone got one Provoke Agency’s client staggering message response and request acceptance rates – of over 40% in just one week.

Moreover, that client gets at least 4 new regular clients each month through Provoke Agency and Expandi.

Those figures speak for themselves, so it’s no wonder that Provoke Agency continues to thrive and delight existing and new clients alike with Expandi by its side.

Today, Provoke Agency has over 50 recurring clients per month, with new prospects constantly streaming down its pipeline.

As a result, Provoke Agency went from being another start-up with an uncertain future looming over it to becoming a big player in the LinkedIn lead generation space, with almost $2 million in annual recurring revenue.

And all that was achieved in no more than 2 years.

Solution

So, how did Expandi help Richard’s agency to go from zero to millions of ARR in just two years?

Undoubtedly, every Expandi’s client is a unique success story in their own right.

However, there are some features that Richard – and other agencies that use Expandi – highlighted as the things that got this platform to stand out from the crowd of similar tools.

Firstly, Expandi’s team of dedicated experts never treat a client as just another number on their to-do list, which is why they took a personal approach to Richard from day one.

In addition to having all the support and help he could ever need from the entire team, Richard even got a personal demo from Expandi’s CEO Stefan right off the bat.

And Expandi’s team made sure to carry on in the same manner even after 2 years of successful collaboration.

Secondly, Expandi’s focus on providing users with bulletproof safety was something that distinguished Expandi from similar platforms. Some of the safety-oriented features include:

A dedicated country-based IP address – this means that each client’s account is assigned an individual proxy. That ensures that the location of Expandi’s session is the same as the one the client usually uses their account from;
Being cloud-based – a feature that makes Expandi virtually undetectable by LinkedIn since all the activity is run in the background. Moreover, given that Expandi’s not a browser extension, it’s not directly attached to your browser, or your account, which further minimizes the risk of restrictions;
Mimicking human behavior to perfection – Expandi achieves it by segmenting all of its activity in spaced-out batches, i.e., it never sends messages, requests or views profiles all at once.
Options for setting up working hours of each account – that way, all the automatized activity is carried out during that designated time window. This includes sending messages, requests, profile views, account and inbox syncing, and more.

Expandi offers settings modes that allow clients to customize their activity in such a way that it mimics human behavior. For example, you can set dedicated working hours which can be different for each day, limit ranges option which randomizes how many tasks (within a pre-selected limit) are to be sent per day, automatic request withdrawal after a selected number of days, and/or setting up inactive days (e.g., during holidays and vacations, etc.).

Finally, given their experience with being a LinkedIn-oriented lead generation agency, Expandi’s team know what features agencies such as Richard’s need to deliver unparalleled results for their clients.

And they include:

A clear and simple single-dashboard overview of all clients, that makes it easy to navigate between different clients as well as keep track of all of them;

Excellent scraping functionality that eliminates the need to use a separate tool for scraping LinkedIn data;

First-rate reporting features, which enable Richard and other agency owners to both gain insight into all the vital data on each client and present clients with tangible proof of the success they’re achieving with their agencies.

Those and other Expandi’s numerous capabilities helped Richard save time that would otherwise be wasted on dull and tedious tasks.

That left him much more room to keep delivering first-rate results, successfully take on new clients, and write winning LinkedIn messages his clients know and cherish him for.

Moreover, Expandi’s team is always up-to-date with the latest LinkedIn trends, limitations, and needs. That means they’re dedicated to:

Constantly innovating and improving their platform;
Providing users with continuous training and sharing their know-how on LinkedIn lead generation best practices.

That was one of the things that enabled Richard to smoothly overcome the problem of LinkedIn’s connection requests limit and continue doing business as successfully as ever.

“What’s cool about Expandi is that they slowly prepared their clients, especially their agency clients, to know how to adapt when LinkedIn introduced request limits.

At first, every single agency owner thought their business was finished. But Expandi was like, guys, we know this is awful, but either you continue saying it’s awful and you drown, or you adapt and start going after quality versus quantity. And it took me some time to appreciate that, but I do appreciate that today.”

Richard Mechaly
Co-founder and Brand Strategist of
Provoke.Agency

Finally, Expandi is one of the easiest platforms to white-label, as it’s very customizable and adaptable to various business types and needs.

That’s what allowed Richard to get a solution that reflects his agency’s brand to perfection – with his own brand coloring, name, and the complete freedom to set his agency’s pricing policy as he sees fit.