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Researched profile. Starter Story's AI research system compiled this page from 90 public sources — the founder didn't write it. Automated research can misread or misattribute a source, so treat figures as best-effort. How this works →
How Time Doctor Grew
Employee time tracking and productivity analytics software for remote teams
How did Time Doctor grow?
Summary of the sourced claims below
Time Doctor initially relied heavily on a product-led growth strategy, designing the product to address clear needs for remote work and productivity, which helped attract and retain customers through the product's inherent value. They focused on SEO and content marketing by creating content that addressed problems their software could solve and optimizing their website to rank well on search engines, which led to significant traffic and conversions. Paid advertising on platforms like Facebook and email marketing through newsletters and targeted campaigns were also important channels that yielded measurable results and high return on investment.
Channels
23 channels · grouped by how Time Doctor grows
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SEO
· 8 mentions · 8 sources“Content either drove trials or it didn't get built... Content marketing is a revenue acquisition channel... At Time Doctor, we built the first chapter of our growth entirely on demand fulfillment. ... best category listicles buyers are actively searching ... We built SEO content and off-page bran...”
highShow 7 more quotes
“I posted on my own blog and it's more for SEO.”
high“Are we going to spend a lot more money on SEO this month? Are we going to punch out a whole bunch of really fantastic content, have it reviewed, get it up and running on the blog and then promote it? Is that going to move the needle for us?”
high“At Time Doctor have been investing in SEO since day one, and it is absolutely the best return on investment in terms of ad spend of any other source of advertising that I have come across. ... now we get hundreds of thousands unique visitors a month. All from SEO.”
high“Their go-to-market strategy focused heavily on search engine optimization (SEO), building a robust content engine to drive organic traffic and conversions.”
medium“To attract their first paying customers, Time Doctor focused on SEO and content marketing. They strategically created content that addressed problems their software could solve and optimized their website to rank well on search engines. Their efforts in SEO led to a 202% return on investment, sig...”
high“SEO has a 202% return on ad spend.”
medium“SEO, Paid Ads, and Email Channel Rankings”
medium -
Organic social media
· 6 mentions · 6 sources“That’s the only form of social media that I actually directly respond. In other than that Linkedin Twitter threads I’m actually having a lot of fun with threads right now. So go check me out there.”
highShow 5 more quotes
“We would send it out on Facebook and LinkedIn communities, things like that.”
medium“Maybe that will help numbers. So, let’s do those podcasts and then let’s measure and let’s see what’s happening? Are we going to spend a lot more money on SEO this month? Are we going to punch out a whole bunch of really fantastic content, have it reviewed, get it up and running on the blog and t...”
medium“It was blogging, it was paid ads, it was social media, and it was all the stuff that people do to be able to get there.”
high“Linkedin and Instagram, all that stuff. I’m @liamremote on most of those things. If you really want to go deep, go to my YouTube channel, youtube. Com/runningremote. Other than that, set up for a trial of time doctor.”
medium“To spread the word initially, they relied on personal networks and direct outreach. They communicated with potential users about the need for their app, which helped them get feedback and early interest.”
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Advertising on social media
· 4 mentions · 4 sources“Not to say that we don’t invest in advertising, of course we do, you need a multifaceted funnel in order to actually effectively build a bootstrapped SaaS product.”
highShow 3 more quotes
“It was blogging, it was paid ads, it was social media, and it was all the stuff that people do to be able to get there.”
high“Another crucial channel for Time Doctor was paid advertising. They strategically allocated their budget to platforms like Facebook, focusing on campaigns that yielded measurable results.”
medium“Paid ads has a 155% return on ad spend”
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Product-led growth
· 3 mentions · 3 sources“we don’t like to call it PLG, like product-led versus sales-led, we like to call it unassisted versus assisted. We were almost entirely unassisted at the beginning. It was a self-serve trial. You either buy it or you don’t buy We ended up then adding a sales team in 2018.”
highShow 2 more quotes
“Initially, Time Doctor relied heavily on a product-led growth strategy. The product itself was designed to address clear needs for remote work and productivity, making it easy to attract and retain customers through the product’s inherent value.”
medium“The product led engine actually converted all of those customers. 98% of our customers were converting through our product led model where a lot of our competitors didn't have that.”
high -
Email marketing
· 3 mentions · 3 sources“Email marketing was another high-ROI channel for Time Doctor. They effectively nurtured leads and maintained engagement with existing customers through regular newsletters and targeted email campaigns.”
mediumShow 2 more quotes
“email has a 127”
medium“SEO, Paid Ads, and Email Channel Rankings”
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Reddit
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“For their first couple of years, Yega's team lived on Quora and Reddit, answering every question they could find about sales content and knowledge management. That's how the inbound started.”
highShow 1 more quote
“I mentioned before, posting in Quora is a really simple thing to do, and it can lead to business. There are some other sites like that, but Quora is actually probably one of the best ones.”
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Word of mouth
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“If you have a company that's worth more than 10,000,000 ARR, particularly if you have a large customer base, let's say more than 10,000 customers, they're going to talk and that referral engine is something that's going to feed you to a 100,000,000, in my opinion.”
highShow 1 more quote
“First, we wanted to keep our customers for life. And second, it helped with our word of mouth marketing. Because we didn’t have a true viral app like a Zoom or a Slack, we needed our customers to brag on us to their friends. And they did!”
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Pay Per Click Advertising
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“Paid ads has a 155% return on ad spend...Do SEO, paid ads, and email in that order. If your CMO tells you to do anything different, they don't know what they're talking about.”
mediumShow 1 more quote
“SEO, Paid Ads, and Email Channel Rankings”
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Direct sales
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“the first part of the business was me calling up all of my friends that were looking for this solution that I’ve had conversations with in the past saying 'Man, I wish that this solution, I wish that this thing did that.' That’s the core of where all of our first customers came from.”
highShow 1 more quote
“Initially, Time Doctor was almost entirely unassisted, relying on a self-serve trial model. They later added a sales team to handle larger accounts, which proved invaluable during the COVID surge. This hybrid approach of unassisted for smaller customers and assisted for larger ones has been a key...”
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Content marketing
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“Some of the marketing strategies that have worked has been the content marketing, all sorts of infographics that I've done, looking at very specific targeted infographics and content marketing, looking at competitor comparison articles...”
highShow 1 more quote
“We built SEO content and off-page brand presence targeting high-intent buyers at the moment they were actively evaluating email tools. Reclaimed #1 for "inbox zero" with organic visibility across Google and AI search surfaces.”
high -
Referrals
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“67% of our customer base comes from referrals as a business so it’s a really now very easy business to run but in the first few years it was incredibly difficult.”
highShow 1 more quote
“Most Referred Business: Mariana Gamalero – for driving the most business from customer referrals!”
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Guest posts
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“We have now hired a guy who's doing some guest posts. And so he's doing that for us.”
mediumShow 1 more quote
“Guest posts on publications your buyers trust”
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Guest posting
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“We have now hired a guy who's doing some guest posts. And so he's doing that for us.”
highShow 1 more quote
“We also place listicles and brand mentions on high-trust publications.”
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Content Marketing Partnerships
· 1 mention“We also place listicles and brand mentions on high-trust publications.”
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Speaking at conferences
· 1 mention“my co-founder, Rob, I remember I was at South by Southwest, I was speaking on a panel there, that’s where I was introduced to my co-founder, Rob.”
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Chamber Of Commerce
· 1 mention“For their first couple of years, Yega's team lived on Quora and Reddit, answering every question they could find about sales content and knowledge management. That's how the inbound started.”
high -
Answer A Direct Intent Question
· 1 mention“For their first couple of years, Yega's team lived on Quora and Reddit, answering every question they could find about sales content and knowledge management. That's how the inbound started.”
high -
Podcasting
· 1 mention“Podcast appearances in front of your ICP”
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Earned media
· 1 mention“We also build your brand off-page through podcasts, YouTube, and listicles on third-party sites. That's what drives AI recommendations and creates demand that didn't exist before.”
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Freemium
· 1 mention“But if I were starting all over again, I would take one page out of their playbook. And that’s freemium. Freemium is the lowest cost customer acquisition strategy to get customers into your door. A freemium strategy will also enable you to scale your customer base and get significant penetrati...”
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Integrations
· 1 mention“why don’t we start playing with those guys, as opposed to, what I mean by that is integrating with all these guys, as opposed to building out our own project management app. ... That’s exactly what we did, and things went much smoother after that.”
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Enterprise sales
· 1 mention“We literally are actually building a small sales team and CS team just for that one single client because it’s so important for us that it could be a huge growth partner that could take us to No, 100 million ARR, no problem.”
high -
Video content
· 1 mention“The best place would be actually going to my Youtube channel youtube.com/runningremote all of our talks are up there for free and if you want to be able to check out all the content there. Go check it out also comment and I will respond. That’s the only form of social media that I actually direct...”
high
How 3,289 businesses grow
Of businesses with mapped growth channels, the share using each —
Time Doctor’s highlighted.
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Social media64% ◀
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Referral/Word-of-mouth64% ◀
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Search/SEO58% ◀
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Email47% ◀
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Community37% ◀
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Content/Inbound35% ◀
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Partnerships32% ◀
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Events24% ◀
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Paid ads23% ◀
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Outbound/Sales19% ◀
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Press/PR17% ◀
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Marketplaces/App stores12%
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Podcasting4% ◀
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Influencer partnerships3%
