Growth Insights #019

Free backlinks strategy, insights from a former Microsoft, Twitter & Pinterest commercial lead, and Jasper’s growth playbook

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Without further ado, let’s dive into this year’s first edition!

Source: Growth Bites

Quality backlinks are essential to SEO. Boost your SERP rankings by giving your product away to nonprofits in exchange for a backlink.

Many companies get SEO juice from nonprofits by sponsoring or donating in exchange for a backlink. But if your budget is tight, there's a cheaper way — offer them your product (or service) for free. As long as onboarding new users is cheap, it won't cost much. And it may be worth it to get a little boost in the rankings. If you think your product would be helpful to a nonprofit, reach out. Offer it for free and ask for a shoutout on their sponsor page, blog, or somewhere similar. Since most have a pretty small budget, they're often up for this type of arrangement.

Growth talks with Thomas Bailly on transforming growth strategy from good to unparalleled


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This time, we’re featuring Thomas Bailly, director of agency development at Utiq, and a commercial transformation consultant with a proven track record of helping organisations drive growth and building unstoppable sales teams. With nearly two decades of experience at leading companies like Pinterest, Twitter, and Microsoft, Thomas has worked on deals ranging from $5,000 to $300 million, while also mentoring countless professionals to excel in the field.

Thomas combines his deep knowledge of sales, partnerships, and strategy to craft clear, actionable plans that deliver real results. Over the years, he’s seen firsthand how sales organizations need to reinvent themselves to stay ahead—adapting to macro trends, balancing strategic trade-offs, and navigating changing priorities.

His expertise is now distilled into a proprietary framework that helps businesses transform their operations, negotiate smarter, and upskill their teams. What began as a passion for technology and people has evolved into a career dedicated to solving complex problems and helping organizations grow stronger every day.

Get ready to dive into Thomas’ journey, hear his insights, and learn how he turns big challenges into even bigger opportunities, and don’t miss out on checking Utiq’s website and his own!

Read the full talk below 👇

From GPT-3 Experiment to AI Marketing Leader: Jasper’s Growth Story

Source: Various Sources

The beginning

In 2021, Jasper.ai set out to solve a simple problem: writing content takes too much time. Fast forward a few years, and they’ve grown into a powerhouse with 100,000+ customers and $55 million in revenue in 2024.

How did they pull it off? Smart execution, a sharp focus on marketing teams, and a few bold moves that set them apart.

Finding Market Fit & The $40M ARR Breakthrough

Jasper hit $40M ARR in just 9 months.

The founders—Dave, Chris, and JP—had spent six years in the trenches, so they perfectly knew their audience. That experience gave them three key advantages:

  • Deep industry knowledge – They understood marketers’ pain points because they’d built for them before.

  • A pre-built audience – They already had an email list of past customers and a network of marketers ready to test a new tool.

  • First-mover advantage – They were one of OpenAI’s earliest partners, productizing GPT-3 for marketing before AI became mainstream.

Instead of launching a general AI writing tool, Jasper tackled one acute problem first—writing Facebook/Google ads and landing page copy. This made the product easy to explain, easy to sell, and easy to adopt.

Within 30 days, Jasper had a working version reselling OpenAI’s tech with a better UX, marketing-friendly templates, and industry-specific workflows.

The result? Immediate traction. Marketers flooded in, Jasper expanded use cases, and momentum never slowed.

Moving to B2B: Jasper’s Enterprise Evolution

Jasper’s early success came from small businesses and individual marketers, but to scale further, they needed bigger customers. That meant shifting from B2C to B2B.

Here’s how they made the leap:

  • Built for Teams, Not Just Individuals → Jasper evolved into a collaborative platform, adding:

    • Team workflows

    • Brand voice customization

    • Enterprise security & compliance

    • This made Jasper indispensable for large marketing teams.

  • Targeted Enterprise Clients → Instead of chasing solo marketers, they went after Fortune 500 companies, offering custom AI solutions for enterprise teams. By 2024, 850+ enterprise clients were using Jasper—including nearly 20% of the Fortune 500.

  • Repositioned the Brand → The messaging shifted from “AI for marketers” to “AI-powered marketing teams”, leaning into automation and enterprise-grade workflows.

  • Changed the Business Model → Moving beyond self-serve subscriptions, they introduced custom pricing, enterprise contracts, and high-ACV deals, unlocking a more scalable revenue model.

New Features Powering Enterprise Growth

To accelerate AI adoption for enterprises, Jasper launched two major innovations:

  1. AI App Library – A directory of 80+ marketing-focused AI applications, allowing teams to generate ads, optimize content, and build full campaigns. Enterprises can also create custom AI apps tailored to their needs.

  2. Marketing Workflow Automation – A game-changer for large teams, enabling end-to-end automation of marketing processes by:

    • Pulling CRM data

    • Generating personalized content at scale

    • Seamlessly integrating with platforms like HubSpot

Jasper’s own marketing team used these automations to execute a massive account-based marketing campaign in minutes, resulting in:

✅ 20x ROI
✅ 11x boost in email click-through rates
✅ 4x increase in response

The Bigger Picture: Jasper’s Future in AI Marketing

Jasper is no longer just an AI writing tool—it’s now an AI-powered marketing platform helping enterprises scale content, automate workflows, and drive real business impact.

And with AI adoption still in its early days, Jasper’s position as the go-to AI for marketers is only getting stronger.

Thank you for reading! ✌️

We look forward to sharing more with you next week. Stay tuned!

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