Rock the Rankings vs. Growth Plays
Choose Growth Plays if you are a mid-market or enterprise B2B technology brand, developer tool or venture fund that wants content strategy mapped to the buyer journey, an agentic content engine built with your team, content-to-revenue attribution in your CRM, and a steady hand on migrations and rebrands. Choose Rock the Rankings if your board wants a pipeline number someone will be held to, you want published prices on a monthly plan with no six-month minimum, your CRM files AI-sourced demos as Direct, and you want the founder on the account.
Growth PlaysvsAt a glance
How Rock the Rankings and Growth Plays compare.
| Criterion | Growth Plays |  Rock the Rankings. |
|---|---|---|
| Positioning | drawB2B content strategy, SEO and GEO consultancy for tech brands, dev tools and VCs. Los Angeles, founded 2017. | drawAI search as a pipeline channel. B2B SaaS and tech only. 300+ engagements. |
| Forecast and commitment | loseA forecast delivered in Phase 1, after signing. Scenarios and commitment: Not public. | winThree scenarios before signing. The conservative scenario is the commitment. |
| Attribution method | drawMonthly reporting with pipeline from your CRM; attribution via HubSpot, Bizible or Roadway AI. | drawThe Two-Witness Rule: CRM source and buyer's answer, every contact tiered. |
| AI search baseline | drawAI prompts mapped and Gen AI visibility tracking set up in Phase 1; AI sentiment analysis tooling. Engines: Not public. | drawBaseline across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Mode, AI Overviews before work ships. |
| Migrations, rebrands and enterprise content strategy | winDomain and CMS migrations on your launch schedule; rebrand and M&A experience; dev tools and funds served. | loseNo migrations or rebrand work. Technical recommendations for your developers. |
| Who runs the account | loseFounder and CEO John-Henry Scherck is the named contact. Per-account structure: Not public. | winFounder, Justin Berg and a senior strategist. No account managers. |
| Pricing transparency | loseNo prices on the site. Six-month minimum stated on its agency profile. | winPrices published. Monthly plan, no minimum, 30 days' notice. |
| Link and citation building | drawNot named among its listed services. Not public. | drawFrom 5 to 8 placements a month at DR 50+, scaled to the forecast. |
| Content production | drawAI workflows with human oversight; built with your team as an agentic engine. Volume: Not public. | drawFrom 5 solution-aware pages a month from product interviews, scaling to 20 or 30+. |
| Best fit | drawMid-market and enterprise B2B tech wanting strategy, attribution and migrations from a senior consultancy. | drawB2B SaaS and tech wanting a pipeline number before spending, on a monthly plan. |
Comparison methodology
Scored on what Growth Plays publishes on its own site and its own agency profile, checked 14 November 2026. Nothing from sales calls or third parties.
We read Growth Plays' home page, including its engagement phases, additional services and client quotes, and the agency profile it maintains on Peec AI's directory, which states its minimum engagement, and scored only what those say. Rock the Rankings is scored on its published pricing, process and client results pages. Where Growth Plays publishes nothing on a criterion, the cell says Not public.
Win, draw and lose describe the Rock the Rankings column only. Win means we commit to more, or publish what Growth Plays does not. Lose means Growth Plays offers more. Draw means both agencies meet the criterion in different ways and the right choice depends on your situation.
We re-score every quarter and whenever either agency changes its published services, pricing or terms.
Researched, written and reviewed by
What you pay, and what you are locked into
One of the two publishes a full price list. The other publishes a minimum term and scopes the rest.
Growth Plays publishes no prices on its site; its contact form asks what you are building and where you are stuck, and promises an honest answer on whether it can help. Its agency profile states a minimum engagement of six months and an audience of mid-market and enterprise B2B technology brands, developer tools and venture funds. Notice terms are not published.
Rock the Rankings is $5,000 for Consulting, $8,500 for Done-For-You and $15,000 for Authority a month, with no onboarding fee, on a monthly plan with no minimum term and 30 days' notice. Day 90 is the first forecast review, measured against the conservative scenario you received before signing.
Growth Plays
- Published prices: No
- Contract term: Six-month minimum
- Exit notice: Not public
- Onboarding fee: Not public
Rock the Rankings
- Published prices: Yes, three tiers
- Contract term: Monthly, no minimum
- Exit notice: 30 days, any month
- Onboarding fee: None
The honest comparison: Growth Plays is the better pick if you are buying senior strategy for an enterprise content operation and a six-month term is how your procurement works anyway. Scoping around strategy, production and measurement is the honest way to price that work.
Rock the Rankings is the better pick if a six-month minimum is longer than you want to commit before seeing a result, and you want the number on the page. The tradeoff is that we are built for the retainer, not the enterprise programme.
"Justin and his team have been phenomenal from Day 0, and the consistency in quality and the measurable results they have delivered have been a true transformation to our business. We are extremely happy and we have already recommended them to our friends."
Who commits to the number before you sign
Both agencies say pipeline is the outcome. Only one puts a number on it before the contract.
Growth Plays' line is "pipeline, not just pageviews". Its Phase 1 foundation ends with a client workspace holding the content plan, a training wiki, initial drafts and a forecast, after opportunity mapping has ranked content, keywords and AI prompts by effort and impact; one client quote says the strategy "paid off 10x better than they estimated". The forecast comes after signing, and whether it carries scenarios or a committed case is not published.
Rock the Rankings builds three scenarios (conservative, realistic, optimistic) from your GA4 and CRM data before any agreement is signed, with capture rate as the only input that changes between them. The conservative scenario is the commitment, reviewed at day 90 and quarterly after.
Growth Plays
- Pre-contract forecast: No; forecast delivered in Phase 1
- Scenarios: Not public
- Commitment: Not public
- Re-forecast cadence: Monthly reporting; performance data steers the plan
Rock the Rankings
- Pre-contract forecast: Yes, on your GA4 and CRM data
- Scenarios: Conservative, realistic, optimistic
- Commitment: The conservative scenario
- Re-forecast cadence: Day 90, then quarterly
The honest comparison: Growth Plays is the better pick if you want the forecast built after a full foundation phase, on top of a knowledge base, a site audit and a prioritised opportunity map, and you are comfortable committing before you see it. A forecast built that way is better informed than one built from exports alone.
Rock the Rankings is the better pick if you want the forecast before you sign rather than inside a Phase 1 workspace after. The conservative scenario is what we are held to; it leans on benchmarks only when CRM data is withheld.
How each agency gets you named when buyers ask ChatGPT for your category
Growth Plays builds the content engine to earn LLM visibility alongside rankings. We baseline the engines first and build outward from the pages.
Growth Plays builds content engines that earn visibility in search and AI assistants. Phase 1 maps the content, keywords and AI prompts worth winning, ranked by effort and impact, and sets up live rank tracking, Gen AI visibility tracking and dashboards; ongoing work adds daily technical crawls and AI-visibility tracking, and its AI Sentiment Analysis service uses proprietary tooling to assess whether LLMs recommend you, describe your positioning accurately, or tell users to avoid you. Which engines are tracked is not published.
Rock the Rankings baselines across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Mode and AI Overviews before work ships, then builds in the GEO Stack order: solution-aware pages first, citations second, problem-aware capture last.
Growth Plays
- Engines covered: Not public; "search and AI assistants"
- Baseline before work: Gen AI visibility tracking set up in Phase 1
- Off-site surfaces worked: Not public
- Day-90 review: Monthly reporting; daily crawls and tracking
Rock the Rankings
- Engines covered: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Mode, AI Overviews
- Baseline before work: Yes, before any page ships
- Off-site surfaces worked: Citations at DR 50+ by manual outreach
- Day-90 review: Against the conservative scenario
The honest comparison: Growth Plays is the better pick if you want to know not just whether AI names you but what it says about you. Sentiment analysis that flags when an LLM tells users to avoid you is a layer most tracking skips, and Growth Plays runs it as a service.
Rock the Rankings is the better pick if you want the five engines named and the baseline tied to a number, rather than sentiment analysis on its own. We start focused and scale as the forecast proves out.
"I have been impressed with Justin and team's knowledge, work ethic and commitment to improving SEO. I have been in the digital space for nearly 20 years across different verticals and Rock the Rankings is the only SEO agency that I have worked with that has made a meaningful impact to the associated business. If I found myself at another company, needing help with SEO, Justin would be my first call"
How each agency proves the demos came from search when the CRM says Direct
Attribution is the thing Growth Plays is best known for. The two methods ask different questions.
Growth Plays' reporting brings together site performance, AI visibility and pipeline numbers from your own CRM every month, and its Content Revenue Attribution service shows which topics and page types lead to qualified leads, opportunities, pipeline and closed-won revenue, with attribution support in HubSpot, Bizible and Roadway AI and a view of which content creates, assists and influences deals. How AI-sourced demos that arrive in the CRM as Direct are reconciled, and whether a self-reported source is read, are not published.
Rock the Rankings applies The Two-Witness Rule on every plan: the CRM source and the buyer's own answer are read together and every contact is tiered confirmed, recovered, probable or dark. On one client funnel, 11 CRM-attributed AI leads sat beside 809 self-reported ones, a 73× gap. Where CRM access is restricted, we work from an anonymised export under NDA.
Growth Plays
- Dashboard: Live dashboards connecting traffic to pipeline; monthly reports
- Attribution model: Created, assisted and influenced revenue in HubSpot, Bizible or Roadway AI
- Self-reported source used: Not public
- Revenue reported: Content tied to pipeline and closed revenue
Rock the Rankings
- Dashboard: Monthly reconciliation, no live view
- Attribution model: The Two-Witness Rule, contact-level tiers
- Self-reported source used: Yes, read with CRM source
- Revenue reported: QBR opens with the pipeline number
The honest comparison: Growth Plays is the better pick if the question is which content influenced revenue across a long enterprise journey. Asset-level revenue attribution, built to survive a CFO's review, is the agency's core discipline.
Rock the Rankings is the better pick if the question is why the CRM says Direct when the buyer says ChatGPT, not which asset influenced a deal. Our reconciliation is monthly, at the contact level, by hand.
What else each agency can run for you
This is where Growth Plays does work we do not.
Growth Plays runs domain and CMS migrations on your launch schedule, hands your WebOps team a plan it says they will not roll their eyes at, and draws on years of rebrand and M&A work; it builds owned-media content plans for complex, omnichannel B2B buyer journeys, with competitive analysis and a knowledge base of positioning, messaging and battlecards built in Phase 1. Clients it names include Lattice, Calendly, LaunchDarkly, Vercel, LangChain and Sapphire Ventures. Its audience is mid-market and enterprise technology brands, developer tools and venture funds.
Rock the Rankings does no migration, rebrand or M&A work and does not serve venture funds; we hand technical findings to your developers as a prioritised list and work with B2B SaaS and tech companies.
Growth Plays
- Domain and CMS migrations: Named service
- Rebrands and M&A: Stated experience
- Developer-audience content: Core audience
- Venture funds as clients: Named audience
Rock the Rankings
- Domain and CMS migrations: Not offered
- Rebrands and M&A: Not offered
- Developer-audience content: Within B2B SaaS and tech scope
- Venture funds as clients: Not served
The honest comparison: Growth Plays is the better pick if a migration, rebrand or acquisition is in the plan, or if the buyer you are writing for is a developer. Keeping rankings through a domain change is specialist work, and Growth Plays sells it as a core service.
Rock the Rankings is the better pick if the site is stable, no migration is coming, and you sell B2B SaaS. We start focused and scale as the forecast proves out.
"Extremely responsive and analytical. We were impressed with the depth of knowledge brought to every meeting. Justin was great to work with. I highly recommend Rock the Rankings for your GEO/SEO needs."
Who you will actually talk to after the sales call
Both agencies are founder-led boutiques. One publishes who runs delivery.
Growth Plays is led by founder and CEO John-Henry Scherck, the named contact on its agency profile, and maintains a team page; its engagement runs content drafts to your team for publishing and sets up a workspace so your team can execute alongside it from day one. Who leads delivery on a given account, its seniority, and whether the founder stays on after the sale are not published on the home page.
Rock the Rankings is founder-led through delivery: Founder, Justin Berg runs strategy on every engagement alongside a senior strategist with B2B SaaS category experience, with no account managers in between and Slack and email with same-day replies.
Growth Plays
- Account manager layer: Not public
- Founder on delivery: Not public; founder is the named contact
- Seniority stated: Not public
- Communication: Not public
Rock the Rankings
- Account manager layer: None
- Founder on delivery: Yes, every engagement
- Seniority stated: Founder plus senior strategist
- Communication: Slack and email, same day
The honest comparison: Growth Plays is the better pick if you want a strategist with a long public record on B2B SEO, including the case for competitor pages and zero-volume keywords, shaping an engine your team then runs. The collaboration model keeps the capability in-house.
Rock the Rankings is the better pick if a content engine your team co-owns is not what you need and a founder who runs the account is. Output scales to the forecast, not to a roster.
"Our commercial pages were losing organic sessions month over month, and the demand coming from AI assistants was effectively invisible in our CRM. RTR pointed the first batch entirely at bottom-funnel pages. One quarter after launch, organic sessions to that page set were up 9x and demo requests attributed to search and AI had grown 2.3x. They also rebuilt how we read attribution, combining what tracking captures with what buyers tell us on the form. That surfaced roughly 12.5x more search and AI demand than our native classifier was crediting. That's the number our leadership team can actually defend."
Where Growth Plays wins
When is Growth Plays the better fit?
Growth Plays is the better fit when you are a mid-market or enterprise technology brand, developer tool or venture fund and the work is strategy first. Its Phase 1 builds a knowledge base from your positioning and battlecards, audits site health, maps content, keywords and AI prompts by effort and impact, ships a first batch of content, stands up rank and Gen AI visibility tracking, and hands your team a workspace with the plan, a wiki and a forecast. From there it drafts search- and AI-optimised content for your team to publish, crawls daily, and reports monthly on traffic, conversions and pipeline from your own CRM, with revenue attribution in HubSpot, Bizible or Roadway AI. It runs migrations, rebrands and M&A without disrupting WebOps, and its clients include Lattice, Calendly, LaunchDarkly, Vercel and LangChain. If you want senior strategy and attribution for a complex technical product, this is the kind of partner to call.
It is also the better fit if you are a venture fund building content for a portfolio or a platform, an audience we do not serve.
If what you need is a demo number you can defend before the spend is approved, with the prices and terms on the site and no six-month minimum, that is the case we are built for.
Recommendation
Choosing between Rock the Rankings and Growth Plays.
Choose Rock the Rankings if…
- Your board wants a pipeline number someone will be held to before any invoice
- You want published prices on a monthly plan with no six-month minimum
- Your CRM files AI-sourced demos as Direct and nobody has reconciled it
- You want the founder on the account from the first call onward
Choose Growth Plays if…
- You are mid-market or enterprise and want senior content strategy co-built with your team
- You want asset-level content-to-revenue attribution in your CRM
- A migration, rebrand or acquisition is in the plan
- You sell to developers, or you are a venture fund
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FAQs
Rock the Rankings vs. Growth Plays: common questions.
If yours is not here, bring it to the call. Same unpolished answer either way.
How does Rock the Rankings pricing compare to Growth Plays?
+Rock the Rankings publishes its prices: $5,000 for Consulting, $8,500 for Done-For-You and $15,000 for Authority a month, with no onboarding fee, on a monthly plan with no minimum term and 30 days' notice. Growth Plays publishes no prices; its engagements are scoped around strategy, production and measurement, and its agency profile states a six-month minimum. If you need a number before the call and the option to leave in any month, that is one of the two.
What happens if it is not working after 90 days?
+At Rock the Rankings, day 90 is the first forecast review: results are measured against the conservative scenario you received before signing and the plan is adjusted from there, and you can leave in any month with 30 days' notice. Growth Plays' minimum engagement is six months, so at day 90 you are halfway through the term; its review cadence and notice terms are not published.
Does either agency give you a pipeline forecast before you sign?
+Growth Plays delivers a forecast inside its Phase 1 workspace, after signing and after the knowledge base, site audit and opportunity map are built; whether it carries scenarios or a committed case is not published. Rock the Rankings builds three scenarios from your GA4 and CRM data before any agreement is signed, and the conservative scenario is the number we are held to. If you want the forecast built on a full foundation, Growth Plays does that. If you want a number before the invoice, that is us.
Which agency is better for AI search visibility in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity?
+Growth Plays maps the AI prompts worth winning in Phase 1, sets up Gen AI visibility tracking before scaling content, and offers AI Sentiment Analysis with proprietary tooling that checks whether LLMs recommend you or warn users off; the engines it tracks are not published. Rock the Rankings baselines five named engines before any page ships and builds in the GEO Stack order from your own pages outward, held to a forecast. Choose Growth Plays if you want the capability built inside your team; choose us if you want a measured baseline tied to a committed number.
Who actually works on the account at Rock the Rankings vs Growth Plays?
+At Rock the Rankings, Founder, Justin Berg runs strategy on every engagement with a senior strategist, no account managers, and same-day Slack. Growth Plays is led by founder and CEO John-Henry Scherck, the named contact on its agency profile, and builds its content engine in collaboration with your team; who leads delivery on a given account and whether the founder stays on it are not published.
Can we use Rock the Rankings and Growth Plays together?
+In two shapes. Growth Plays can run a domain or CMS migration, rebrand or M&A transition while we keep the organic and AI search programme running against the forecast, since we do none of that work. Or Growth Plays can build the content-to-revenue attribution model while we supply the contact-level reconciliation of AI-sourced demos; the two attribution lenses answer different questions. Running both on content strategy would overlap.