Marketing Guru for the Digital Age
Michael Mothner was on the last round of interviews for a coveted job as an analyst at Goldman Sachs in New York. The managing director looked over his résumé and noticed a company called Wpromote, which Mothner said he had started and had some success with as a sophomore at Dartmouth in 2001. "To call my bluff, he asked why I would want to work for Goldman if my company had been successful," says Mothner, now 29. "That was a defining moment for me. I stood up and said, 'You know what? You're right. I don't think this job is right for me.'"
After recovering from the shock, he began building Wpromote a search engine marketing company that then offered a cheap platform for submitting websites to multiple search engines. This was 2004, and Google was just coming on--but Mothner foresaw its dominance. "I was having a lot of success using Google's pay-per-click services to drive traffic to my company," he says. "So I came to the conclusion that there was a market for helping consult and manage these PPC campaigns for other people."
Michael Mothner was on the last round of interviews for a coveted job as an analyst at Goldman Sachs in New York. The managing director looked over his résumé and noticed a company called Wpromote, which Mothner said he had started and had some success with as a sophomore at Dartmouth in 2001. "To call my bluff, he asked why I would want to work for Goldman if my company had been successful," says Mothner, now 29. "That was a defining moment for me. I stood up and said, 'You know what? You're right. I don't think this job is right for me.'"
After recovering from the shock, he began building Wpromote a search engine marketing company that then offered a cheap platform for submitting websites to multiple search engines. This was 2004, and Google was just coming on--but Mothner foresaw its dominance. "I was having a lot of success using Google's pay-per-click services to drive traffic to my company," he says. "So I came to the conclusion that there was a market for helping consult and manage these PPC campaigns for other people."
Wpromote did just that, launching a
tiered service that helped people create PPC campaigns, choose keywords and
manage bids. In the process, Mothner and his team were learning a lot about
what elements helped websites get better Google rankings, so Wpromote offered a
search engine optimization service too.
The strategy paid off: Wpromote
rocketed from $500,000 in sales in '04 to $2.8 million in '05 and $6.2 million
by 2007. Then the economy went south, but Mothner barreled ahead anyway.
Today Wpromote, based in El Segundo,
Calif., has 62 employees providing PPC, SEO, web development and social media
advertising to 2,300 clients, including Hewlett-Packard. It had $8.5 million in
sales for 2009 and expects to book at least $12 million to $13 million this
year. Plus, Mothner plans to run Wpromote as if he will own it forever: "I
think it is dangerous when people build companies with the sole intention of
selling them.
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