VanEck
Growth Advisor
Long-term Growth Advisor to VanEck, a global asset manager: advising the European marketing & growth team on growth strategy, experimentation, conversion optimization and channel focus since 2022.
Ward van Gasteren
Freelance Growth Consultant @ GrowWithWard.com 🟠| Startup Founder @ GrowthOrange | Always happy to help!
Nijmegen, Netherlands (+01:00 UTC) Dutch, Englishfrom Nijmegen, Netherlands
Usually responds in 3 hours
Free
Price per hour
30 min
Time Blocks Available
5.00
89 reviews / 129 sessions
Fri
09
Next availability
Already a second call with Ward, again amazing, our first call was more about a general overview of my freelancing career and my next steps (lots of big picture and prioritization), while this call was a deep dive into paid meta ads: he was giving me best practices and feedback on where should I take my collaboration with a specific client for whom I'll be running ads in the next 3-4 weeks. Really insightful. Ward is my evergreen mentor and I'm really grateful he found time for me again! Thank you!
Marianna Czudorova
What started as a casual call turned into one of the most valuable conversations I’ve had this year. Ward listened patiently as I rambled through my challenges, yet he immediately identified the real issues in my business with incredible clarity. He pinpointed exactly what needed to change and gave me practical, actionable steps I could implement right away. I’m genuinely grateful and already looking forward to our next session in two weeks!
Molin
Today, I had my first session with Ward, and I felt extremely uplifted by his feedback, knowledge, and precise recommendations. As I work in an agency, my goal is to become highly skilled at diagnosing what a company needs before implementing any marketing strategies and tactics. Using specific frameworks to guide me, like the Lift Model and the Pirate Funnel, we worked through a client example to identify potential problems and determine which marketing strategies and tactics are most suitable. He also extended our mentoring session to dive deeper into the topic, and I am very grateful for that. I feel like I’ve found a new role model in the marketing world. A hundred thanks!
Andrea Cayuela
Bio
Hi I’m Ward 👋. I'm one of the first Growth Hackers in Europe, work for 11+years now as a Freelance Growth Consultant through GrowWithWard and have been awarded Best Growth Freelancer in 2021, 2022 & 2023 in Europe. - I've worked for 120+ Clients, ran 1000+ Growth Experiments and managed €6.3M in Ad Spend across Meta, LinkedIn, Google & TikTok. - I work with many corporates on their Growth strategy & process, with clients like Unilever, TikTok and Pepsi, but also work with many startups & scaleups to kickstart their growth or setup a proper experimentation framework - In 2021, 2022 and 2023, I’ve been chosen as the #1 Best Growth Hacking Freelancer based on my quality of work, ratings & knowledge sharing, and I work hard to stay true to that reputation. - Since a lot of freelancers in Growth reach out to me for questions, I want to highlight that I always love to share my experience and I'll be an open book about how I get clients or work as a freelancer, and I even wrote a book 'Growing Happy Clients' about it with Daphne Tideman (who's also here on the platform) to share this knowledge. - I'm also building a SaaS by myself on Bubble.io, so if any SaaS founder want to talk about those growth-challenges or anyone needs no-code Bubble support, I'm happy to help! You can talk to me about any of the following challenges: - Getting started in Growth - Applying Growth Hacking in your own company - Brainstorming Ideas for Growth Experiments - Setting up a Growth Team or a steady Growth Process for Experimentation - Advanced Strategies for Activation, Retention or Referral - Product-Led Growth (PLG) for SaaS or Apps - Hiring a strong Head of Growth or Growth Freelancers - Growing your career as a Freelancer / how to get more freelancing clients - Or any struggles about no-code building in Bubble.io On GrowthMentor, I'll only do free calls, since I get just as much energy from these calls as you do ⚡
Expertise
Career guidance
I am one of the first Growth Hackers in Europe and have always worked as a freelancer, so after 10+ years I get a lot of questions from people how to work as a freelancer, how to get freelance clients or how to grow as a growth consultant. Ask me anything & I'm always happy to help!
Design / UX
A good UX has a very big impact on Growth, thus is a topic that I am always very excited about. Feel free to ask me for input on how to design a Growth-minded product for PLG or have a look at my self-designed startup: www.GrowthOrange.com
Growth marketing
10+ years of work as Growth Freelancer, from execution to strategy for 100+ growth marketing clients. I have one of the top blogs online about Growth Marketing and am a frequent guest on Growth podcasts. Happy to share any tips on getting started in growth hacking, run growth experiments, setup a growth process or growth experiment process. Just anything to run a great Growth Team or anything around Growth Experimentation from hypotheses, assumptions & growth experiment outlines.
Idea validation
I've worked for dozens of startups to grow past the idea validation stage, and have been building my own startup for some time. I have countless of tactics to quickly & effectively validate new ideas or concepts.
No-code
I am no coder, but I have built a full SaaS (GrowthOrange) in Bubble.io, many small no-code / low-code tools and Claude.ai is my best friend to write the code with me still being a no-coder. Ask me anything about integrations, easiest ways to get it done or just to vent frustrations!
Personal branding
I've been voted Best Growth Freelancer for 2021, 2022 and 2023 already, and am working as a freelance growth hacker for 10+ years now... and I personally think that that has mostly been possible thanks to my personal branding efforts; building my own website, creating recognizable content and giving value to others. Feel free to ask me anything!
Product market fit
Most of the early stage startups that I've worked with, the focus was on PMF. I can help you see how to get there, give you actionable tactics on how to get there faster and give you honest, direct feedback that you might need right now.
SEO
I have one of the biggest Growth blogs in the world with 25K monthly visitors from SEO, and it is one of my favourite tactics since it is so evergreen and compounding, and really rewards good quality products.
Toolkit
Airtable
I use Airtable for Experiment Management. I've followed several CRO courses on how to use Airtable as a company-wide experiment knowledge base, so feel free to ask anything!
Bubble
Wow I didn't expect Bubble.io to be here, but this is one of my favourite tool since a few years: I've build a complete Project Management software for Growth Teams in Bubble (GrowthOrange.com) and have built many small no-code tools for growth marketing purposes.
Canva
Canva is my everything 😅: Simple Images, Ads, Presentations, Videos, PDFs, Leadmagnets, and I even use it for creating supporting visuals in my Youtube videos.
Figma
Figma is my personal UI design tool of choice. I've worked on it with several clients and helped several teams to get used to it. For simple designs, I personally use Canva so be aware that Figma is not my everyday tool.
GrowthHackers
I've used the GH Experiments / North Star / Projects (😅) tool for many years, and for many different clients to set up a growth process. Happy to help you out!
TikTok Ads
Yes I'm on TikTok as a user (for too much time per day) and as an advertiser I ran several great campaigns there. TikTok for Business was even a Freelance Coaching Client of mine to set up their growth teams in 2019, so definitely happy to help!
Google Ads
I've done millions in ad spend on Google, from Youtube ads, to Display and Search and even tried many options that don't exist anymore today. Also a great way to get a quick feedback loop on your SEO ideas ;)
Ahrefs
I've been a long-time Ahrefs user for all my SEO / Content efforts. Really love the tool and have used many different features. Love to use it for content creation and finding new growth opportunities for scalable, programmatic SEO ideas.
Google Analytics
Obviously the most logical analytics tool to use... Since GA4, it feels like a bigger pain than a solution... Don't ask for me help with GA4 unless I can use an AI chatbot to help me understand it haha
Google Tag Manager
GTM is one of the tools that I use by default with clients, because it can be so easy and quick to setup your tracking if you need to. Also great to track very small specific actions and even better if you let AI help you out with teeny-tiny trackers. Book a call to learn more!
HubSpot
Not my favourite tool to work in, but have found my way through it by having to use it at different clients throughout the past decade, from startups to corporates.
Jira
As for many of you, JIRA is a tool that I couldn't choose myself, but had to use because of others. Have worked with it for many years now and when I talk to project managers who work with developers... it's still the tool I recommend and show how to use.
Mixpanel
Mixpanel is my go-to tool for analytics in desktop or mobile apps. I guide clients on how to interpret the data and even help developers better understand how the tracking works and how they should set it up.
Experience
AIHR | Academy to Innovate HR
Freelance Growth ConsultantAIHR is a worldwide leader in HR education and B2C has been flying, but B2B was a new territory, so they hired me to focus in on finding a sustainable acquisition flow, nail the message/market-fit and get the MQLs up.
GrowthOrange - Growth Management Software
FounderGrowthOrange is the Experiment Management Tool for Growth Teams to keep track of your experiments, learnings and related tasks. I created this tool as no current software was covering the needs as I saw them with my consulting clients: self-built solutions in Airtable/Notion/Excel are too buggy/prone to error and therefore I've been saying that I'd built this tool for 5 years, build/validated it in 1 year and now it's finally live. Together with my wife (as marketing/support), we're scaling this tool up to be a new household name in the Growth industry. Your full GROWS Process is now covered within one tool: this is your central place to get started in the morning and oversee what experiments are coming, live or completed. From here, you can brainstorm new ideas, assign subtasks to colleagues and document learnings from each growth experiment.
My personal freelancer brand & blog with 25K readers per month on all the fundamentals of growth hacking. As a freelancer, I've worked for companies like TikTok, Unilever, Deliveroo and 100s more, to set up their growth process and growth frameworks to run as many growth experiments as possible within their growth teams.
Scala Sports
Freelance Growth LeadScala Sports is the official tennis app for the Netherlands & UK tennis associations, and is now expanding to the US in collaboration with the USTA. To level up their growth (marketing & in-product) & to develop a playbook for city-by-city growth, they've hired me to rapidly run experiments.
Klearly - Your Phone is Your Terminal
Growth Lead a.i.Klearly's app makes accepting payments easy for SMB throughout Europe, by allowing any business to use their mobile phone as a pin terminal (SoftPOS). Their app transforms smartphones and tablets into secure payment processing devices through the existing NFC technology, enabling businesses to accept payments easily. With this POS solution, businesses can focus on what they do best, while Klearly handles the rest. I lead Klearly's growth from start to finish - taking responsibility over strategy, website, marketing assets, visual identity, copywriting, their B2B approach and in-product growth. 12 Month results: - From 0 to 10.000+ customers with the validation of 3 growth channels - Cutting CAC in half for self-serve users by optimizing messaging to market needs - Unlocking sales-led funnel with consistent stream of leads to feed a 5-person sales team
Consumentenbond
Growth ConsultantTrain & guide the set up of two new Growth Teams
Ahold Delhaize
Growth Lead a.i.Project lead for Emakina to Ahold Delhaize
Pepsi Lipton
Growth Product ManagerLaunching a D2C, third-horizon corporate venture from zero to exit in 6 months.
RockBoost | Leading Growth Hacking Agency
Interim Head of GrowthCoach current team, consult corporate clients, and help to setup long-term processes
Talpa
Growth Consultant bij Talpa NewsBegeleiding van validatie traject voor Corporate Startup Project
Mentoring the internal FinTech startup division
Financial services