SEO has been around for decades, but it’s still one of the most important growth channels for early-stage startups. Factorial Digital is a growth marketing agency based in NYC that specializes in search and startups. Co-founder Corey Eulas shares his philosophy for growth marketing and how his distributed team collaborates with companies across a variety of verticals.
On Factorial Digital’s process
“Discovery is incredibly important to us. We want to know your backstory, internal processes, what strategies worked and didn’t work in the past, etc. After gathering those details, we’ll do a deep dive to learn more about your business and market category. In our first conversation, we want to identify quick wins, so we’ll propose three ideas that we can try right away. That means we’re starting to deliver value on day one.”
Advice to founders
“The best SEO agency in the country, hands down.” Meredith Wood, NYC, VP of Marketing, Fundera
“I always challenge founders by asking: What if the channel changes? What if consumers stop using it? What if the ad policies change? What if the costs just double and become too prohibitive? What do you do at that point? You’d have to start from scratch. We encourage founders to run marketing strategies in parallel to growth, and to never be complacent about growth because there’s always somebody who is coming right behind you.”
Below, you’ll find the rest of the founder reviews, the full interview, and more details like pricing and fee structures. This profile is part of our ongoing series covering startup growth marketing agencies with whom founders love to work, based on this survey and our own research. The survey is open indefinitely, so please fill it out if you haven’t already.
Interview with Factorial Digital Founder Corey Eulas
Yvonne Leow: How did you get into the game of growth, and why did you decide to start Factorial Digital?
Corey Eulas: It all started at a pretty young age. I was building websites and as I was trying to find ways to generate passive income, I gradually gravitated towards the affiliate marketing space. I learned about all of the different channels that can be used to acquire more people to visit your website, and I found it to be pretty fascinating and exciting.
Later in my career, I worked at a startup in NYC with my now co-founder Sasha Dagayev, and our team was often frustrated by the digital marketing agencies we partnered with. It seemed like there was a huge opportunity to deliver deep expertise and high-touch service – especially given the incredible people I was surrounded by. And that’s what we strive for today.
Yvonne Leow: Awesome. Tell me a little bit about why you think Factorial Digital is better.
Corey Eulas: We’re a small team of 10 people and we’re a very flat organization. We have no account managers, no salespeople, and no long-term contracts. Every solution is unique, so we always want clients speaking directly to our subject matter expert – the person who is actually working on their project. Removing a lot of the sales process also gives us a closer understanding of the problem.
We don’t believe in tying the client to a long-term contract, because if we’re not doing a good job then we know the client is going to seek help elsewhere. Our model motivates us to stay on top of it, and it gives the client relief to know that they won’t get stuck in a relationship that’s not a good fit.
Yvonne Leow: How did you recruit your team? Who are they and what are their areas of expertise?
Corey Eulas: The number one thing that defines our team is empathy. We all have experience working for both large corporations and growth agencies. We know firsthand what life is like on the client side. And I think that’s why we all thrive on adding value in fast-paced and unpredictable environments. You’ll notice working with us that our response time is very, very high. All of our team joins our client’s Slack channel and we try to become a part of their organization.
Yvonne Leow: What’s your criteria when you’re deciding which companies to work with?
Corey Eulas: We’re actually one of the few agencies who will take clients of any size – from Fortune 100 companies to seed stage startups. The only clients we won’t take on are those that don’t have specific growth goals. Of course, if a client asks us to help set their goals, then we can do that – but having a shared vision that everyone’s excited about is a requirement before work can begin.
Secondly, we’re looking for teams who are truly excited to get things done. If a client sits on our recommendations and doesn’t make the changes needed to be successful, why bother?
Finally, we’re looking for people we can grab a beer or a cup of coffee with – people who are smart and curious. They’re aware of the things they’re good at and the things they’re not. For instance, they’re going to speak to their customers more frequently than we are, so we want to work with folks who are collaborative.
Yvonne Leow: Totally. How important are their specific business models?
Corey Eulas: We take on a variety of business models, from retailers and e-commerce to publishers in marketplaces. Of course, you have to measure success differently in B2B and B2C organizations. For instance, if we brought on Nike, we could definitively show that we sold 1000 shoes versus 100 shoes last month. It’s easy to see the value of the work that you’re delivering.
But in a B2B organization, where the sales cycle is a little bit longer or the attribution model is difficult to parse, you have to be more thoughtful about measuring growth. And that’s crucial. We want to make sure we’re delivering work that matters, and we always want to align with client expectations.
Yvonne Leow: If I’m the founder of a seed stage startup, what’s it like working with Factorial Digital?
Corey Eulas: Discovery is incredibly important to us. We want to know your backstory, internal processes, what strategies worked and didn’t work in the past, etc. After gathering those details, we’ll do a deep dive to learn more about your business and market category. In our first conversation, we want to identify quick wins so we’ll propose three ideas that we can try right away. That means we’re starting to deliver value on day one.
Yvonne Leow: What were some of the mistakes you made early on and have since learned from?
Corey Eulas: Learning to focus on doing what we do best was a major lesson. For instance, one early client wanted us to develop an analytics dashboard for a unique vertical. We knew we were capable of it, but it ended up being a far more resource-intensive project than we anticipated. So that was a learning experience. Focusing on your areas of excellence lets you maximize your innate talents, and helps you avoid costly ‘unknown unknowns’.
Yvonne Leow: In retrospect, what project are you most proud of?
Corey Eulas: There was a project in which we helped a startup that was really early stage, maybe 15 employees, grow to 150 employees. We watched their growth channels go from 10,000 visitors to a million-plus visitors, and we felt like we were primary contributors to a lot of that growth. When the organization reached nearly 200 employees, we found that the best thing for them was to have somebody in-house running and building a growth team. The company was just so fast-paced that it didn’t make sense to use a third-party partner anymore, so we actually sourced the Director of SEO who they brought on to build the team.
We keep an eye on the company from the sidelines, and they’re continually doing great things. It’s deeply gratifying to step back and see a client thrive without us.
Yvonne Leow: What’s your philosophy when it comes to growth?
Corey Eulas: I believe real growth has to be sustainable. “Growth hacking” is exciting, but what’s the long-term marketing plan it fits into? I always challenge founders by asking: What if the channel changes? What if consumers stop using it? What if the ad policies change? What if the costs just double and become too prohibitive? What do you do at that point? You’d have to start from scratch. We encourage founders to run marketing strategies in parallel to growth, and to never be complacent about growth because there’s always somebody who is coming right behind you.
Yvonne Leow: Great advice. Finally, what is your payment structure?
Corey Eulas: We have three types of engagement models. One is a quick three-week project. It’s generally inexpensive, and allows clients to learn about us while we capture some quick wins. The second model is a nine-week engagement, which allows us to accomplish more without asking clients to sign a longer-term contract. The last one is an ongoing, month-to-month retainer, which is what most of our partners choose, with an average retention rate of over 500 days. This lets clients leverage us as an extension of their team, so we can collaborate seamlessly and scale up or down with them.
Founder Recommendations
“We used Factorial both at Square and at Uber for a link recovery effort. This is much easier, “white hat” and faster than building net-new links, while improving the user experience. The guys at Factorial immediately did an analysis on all of our lost backlinks and found the appropriate places to redirect them, completely absolving my team and I of needing to dedicate any extra mindshare or time to the effort. Would highly recommend them!” – Jackie Chu, SF, USCA SEO Lead, Uber
“They guided us through an SEO strategy as we re-platformed to Shopify. Extremely knowledgeable and helpful.” – Will Ferguson, Head of Marketing, NYC, Bark
“The best SEO agency in the country, hands down. They know how to handle or work through any strange or peculiar challenges better than anyone. They’re behind some of the best brands for SEO for a reason.” – Meredith Wood, NYC, VP of Marketing, Fundera
“We hired Factorial Digital to build and scale our SEO program. They provided a full-stack solution including technical expertise, content marketing strategy and link-building capacity. Their thought leadership and in-the-weeds support has been second to none. And most importantly, the impact they have had on our business speaks for itself — since engaging Factorial, qualified leads from SEO activities has growth ~400%, and we now rank in the top 5 positions for all major head terms.” – Ari Gayer, NYC, Senior Director, Customer Acquisition, Zola
“They’ve been our core partners for SEO and Content for several years, and have provided immense strategic, technical and content marketing guidance to help us take SEO to the next level.” – Senior Director of Marketing in Brooklyn, NY