“Don’t be afraid to experiment with your product ideas, marketing ideas, growth strategies, and anything else that can have a positive impact on your business."
Meet Brendan Ward, founder of Growtoro, a growth marketing platform that caters to eCommerce and manufacturing companies, freelancers, and digital marketing agencies.
Ward’s entrepreneurial journey started in high school when he began flipping products online, and since then, he has become passionate about helping people learn how to build their brands online and get discovered without spending a fortune or experiencing frustration.
Growtoro offers specific digital marketing tools that are tailor-made for entrepreneurs and small businesses, and Ward believes that his platform’s extreme value and best-in-class support set it apart from other platforms. Growtoro’s primary goal is to help people overcome the difficulty of profitably getting discovered online.
Brendan is here today to share his insights on the challenges of starting an online business in 2023 and how Growtoro can help businesses overcome those challenges.
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Table of Contents
We are excited to have you join us today; welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive CEO interview! Let’s start with a little introduction about yourself and your company.
Brendan Ward: My name is Brendan Ward and my company, Growtoro, is aiming to be a leading top growth marketing platform. I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was in high school when I started flipped products online.
I’ve had the opportunity to be involved in many cool businesses since and have become super passionate about helping people learn how to build their brands online and get discovered, without having to pull their hair out in frustration or spend a fortune.
We cater to eCommerce and manufacturing companies, as well as freelancers & digital marketing agencies. Whatever your marketing, sales or strategic relationship needs are – you should be able to meet those goals with the help of our platform, which is jam-packed with every growth feature you need.
Our constant commitment to innovating and bringing the most valuable/powerful features that are complementary to growth and marketing functions will enable us to serve our customers in the best way possible.
If you had 20 seconds to pitch your platform to Jeff Bezos, how would you describe your company, mission and products? What makes your company better than others, and what’s your top strength?
Brendan Ward: That we’re product-focused and customer-obsessed, something he would appreciate. We are offering extremely powerful data, marketing & growth tools for an affordable monthly price where value truly exceeds costs.
Our platform contains a set of specific digital marketing tools tailor-made for entrepreneurs, small businesses & sales + marketing folks across key verticals that we believe our tools can work particularly well for.
What makes us better is extreme value + best in class, unwavering support. We think so many platforms don’t provide enough guidance, help, or support to their users, where that’s our first priority. Our key duties are to innovate, support & market ourselves.
Our top strength as a platform would be the ability to provide all of your core & most needed tools under one roof, without you having to switch tabs and pay for multiple subscriptions across other marketing platforms.
What’s the real problem you’re trying to solve with your platform? details of that success.
Brendan Ward: The issue of just how hard it is to profitably get discovered online today. Sure, if you have a gazillion bucks you can just throw that into mega Meta or Google Ads for instant awareness, but that’s out of reach for nearly everyone, and it’s also a massive waste of money.
We believe in smart, targeted, surgical and strategic direct outreach methodologies that can generate the same results as any other method, but for a lot less and much more efficiently. We want to help people gather their target audiences and help them with effective outreach that gets results and is scalable.
Who are your key target audiences with this platform?
Brendan Ward We are aiming to serve 4 key target cohorts early on – namely in eCommerce, manufacturing, freelancing and digital agencies.
- For eCommerce – we can help companies find unlimited amounts of brand ambassadors, affiliates and influencers.
- For Manufacturing – we can help them find new retail stores to carry their products.
- For Freelancers – we can help them book more paid gigs and increase their awareness.
- For Digital Agencies – we can help get them more leads and net new clients.
And many more use cases that will arise as we diversify & polish our offering.
What would you say is the hardest part about starting an online business in 2023?
Brendan Ward: The ability to be “seen,” establish yourself, create a legitimate pipeline of prospects, interests, affiliates, and more key needed players.
There are a lot of complexities today and it’s easy to get lost in the noise or overwhelmed by the burdens of having to figure everything out.
It’s even harder if you don’t have a team, but being a former solo wolf dog entrepreneur myself, you can do it and you can thrive – you just need to play your chess pieces wisely. Also, never be afraid to ask anyone for help, and not just chatGPT =).
People tend to focus or get frustrated on the wrong, less important areas of their business – namely in the branding, “setup,” planning, etc phases. Where they need to be focused on – early & often – is growth marketing, sales & building hype/buzz/awareness.
Don’t get me wrong – you absolutely have to set things up correctly, legally, and in the proper ways. But don’t be afraid to jump right into the digital ocean and begin to get yourself out there. Social media, direct marketing, email and other non-paid strategies are great places to start.
But nothing else will matter if you can’t establish awareness, which will lead to organic growth/excellent SEO/free leads coming to you – which has to be your #1 long-term marketing goal.
Why are you in the digital marketing space, isn’t it crowded?
Brendan Ward: Of course it is – but it’s also the most in-demand, coveted skill & need for just about every business in today’s day and age. We believe there’s always room for a new entrant that is delivering extreme value and extraordinary growth tools in one, super intuitive suite.
We genuinely believe we can help hundreds of thousands of business and online professionals looking to grow, and we want to be a go-to, everyday resource for them.
What is the best advice you’ve ever received as an entrepreneur, and how has it helped you in your business?
Brendan Ward: That in the sport of business, you can strike out 99 times and hit a home run on your 100th try – and those 99 failures instantly mean nothing. They just serve as stepping stones and lesson builders to help you hit that home run on the 100th try. It’s a sports analogy and lesson on perseverance and never giving up – which to me, is my #1 underlying belief and driver.
If this is your 1st business or revenue-generating project, or your 15th or 270th, and you just haven’t hit it “big” enough yet where you feel like you’ve made it, or can take a few months off, or a few years, or forever – or whatever your final financial goal is – you have to go as hard as you can on it and learn along the way. Strikeouts are just learning opportunities.
What’s your goal for the rest of the year?
Brendan Ward: As we near launch soon, to gather critical feedback, market ourselves, onboard, listen to our early users and tweak where needed, then get back in the lab and evolve.
We want to grow and help as many people as possible this year while gearing up for the long haul. We aim to be a robust community of businesses, freelancers, thought leaders and contributors, all facilitating communication.
What are your hobbies or passions outside of business?
Brendan Ward: I love animals and traveling, mostly in that order & together. Going to another corner of the world to immerse myself in a new environment with unbelievable animals who have roamed the earth long before us is a powerful, humbling experience.
I love being able to get outside and disconnect from society every so often… But never too long as user satisfaction for our platform is my #1 priority!
Advice for anyone looking to launch a business or grow an existing one?
Brendan Ward: Don’t be afraid to experiment with your product ideas, marketing ideas, growth strategies and anything else that can have a positive impact on your business.
Jerome Knyszewski, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Brendan Ward for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Brendan Ward or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
Disclaimer: The ValiantCEO Community welcomes voices from many spheres on our open platform. We publish pieces as written by outside contributors with a wide range of opinions, which don’t necessarily reflect our own. Community stories are not commissioned by our editorial team and must meet our guidelines prior to being published.
