‘We Saw an Opportunity to Change an Industry and Turn the Tide on Overused Buzzwords and Empty Promises’: Kevin Roy, co-founder of GreenBanana SEO

“Despite being in business since 2009, we have made the Inc. 5000 list three years in a row and Massachusetts Fast 50.”GreenBanana SEO is a pay-for-performance SEO company and full-stack results-driven digital marketing agency. It also offers conversion-based AdWords management, digital display, geo fencing, and social advertising. The company operates across the United States.
GreenBanana is headquartered in Greater Boston Area, New England.

Kevin Roy spoke exclusively to The Silicon Review. Below is an excerpt.

Q. What inspired you to start GreenBanana SEO? Brief us about the journey so far.

Fourteen years ago, when I started on my own, I connected with three area business owners and offered to do their digital marketing at no charge. If they were happy with the results, I asked them to tell their friends. Fast forward, I had more work than I could service on my own. I was connected to Mark (co-founder), who had a fantastic set of complementary skills, and we eventually became partners and formed GreenBanana.

To this day majority of our growth is attributed to our inbound leads that come from customer referrals owing to the amazing performance of our team. We currently don’t have a sales staff, and I always joke that we have been fortunate enough to not have made a cold call in 13 years (laughs).

Q. GreenBanana provides SEO (through performance-based search engine optimization and transparent digital marketing), conversion-based AdWords management, digital display, geo-fencing, and social advertising. How uniquely do you address your customers’ pain points per this?

At GB, we have had the pleasure of working in almost any industry you can imagine, from aerospace to plastic surgery, defence and churches, biotech, and holistic medicine and chiropractors to consumer products, accountants, equipment manufacturers, HR companies, lawyers and management consulting firm, etc. While every business is different, they all come to us for the same thing—conversions—be it leads, calls, sales, form fills, texts, chat engagements, etc. Every company we work with has a unique customer profile—our job is to analyze their market and develop a digital plan to help them succeed. But even more important is what we do once we launch a campaign by carefully scrutinizing the data that comes in—we refine the campaign, the audience, the messaging, and even the marketing delivery methods (programmatic, social, Adwords, etc.) based on the feedback we get from the conversion data collected.

Q. What are the key factors that determine your company’s success? And what are you doing to stay ahead of the curve?

The number one factor is our team an our culture an internal innate drive towards continuous improvement for ourselves and our clients.

We have a pay-for-performance SEO program where we only charge clients if we rank. Meaning, they are on page one of a Google search for the keyword phrase they choose. We have also created an SEO billing app in order to scale our “page one, or you don’t pay” search engine optimization program. We had to build an internal platform that enables us to manage pay-for-performance SEO, reporting, and variable billing at scale. Our application allows both automated and manual rank checking and reporting, but it also automates variable billing by seamlessly integration with billing platforms such as QuickBooks and FreshBooks. Finally, we have a custom application that allows us to generate and launch SEO pages and remove them without connecting to the client site.
Besides, all of our paid digital campaigns (AdWords, display, social, geo-fencing, OTT, email) are built to maximize KPI (Key Performance Indicators), or conversions are designed to be medium agnostic so that we can quickly shift budgets from underperforming mediums to those that perform the best.

In order to service our agency partners (advertising agencies who use our white label digital advertising services), we developed a software application that allows approved partner agencies to log in and order digital advertising products. The orders are generated internally and added to a workflow process where progress can be monitored, and the ordering agency can request changes. This would help other digital agencies manage clients as they scale more efficiently and effectively.
Also, we are constantly evaluating new digital marketing products, methodology, and technology and adding the ones that work to our arsenal.

Q. What new endeavors is your company currently undertaking? What does the future look like?

We have spent the last two years buckling down and rebuilding our order entry, delivery, client communications, and reporting platforms and systems to effectively scale without sacrificing our clients’ campaign performance, now we are ready to scale.
Despite being in business since 2009, we have made the Inc. 5000 list three years in a row and Massachusetts Fast 50. As long as people advertise online and we continue to adapt and innovate for our clients, the future looks fantastic.

Leadership | GreenBanana SEO
Kevin Roy, co-founder. He has led a digital agency in the Boston market for over 15 years. His leadership and success are marked by consistently earning a top spot in Inc. 5000’s ‘Fastest Growing Companies’ three years in a row. Each year he’s earned this title by helping national household brand names like Planned Parenthood, Alignable, and Salvation Army build a more impactful online presence and get better conversion in an ever-complex digital marketing landscape. With a strong business development background and an MBA from Bentley, he aligns to his clients’ business goals with ease. Kevin brings expertise in Digital Strategy, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Sales, Web Design, and Content Marketing.

Mark Annese is the co-founder of GreenBanana. For more than 20 years, he has worked with both firms, large and small, to help shape digital offerings. Having worked with students, entrepreneurs, innovators, and technologists, he considers himself lucky enough to have been involved in building teams and solutions that help foster growth and collaboration within organizations and with their clients.

"We have created an SEO billing app in order to scale our ‘page one, or you don’t pay’ search engine optimization program. This platform enables us to manage pay for performance SEO, reporting, and variable billing at scale."