Growth isn’t Marketing — My Bitnob Experience
When I started my career in marketing in 2016, I had never heard of the term growth marketing. I will argue that both are the same because what’s the essence of marketing if not growth, I thought? A few years down the line, I decided to explore the tech ecosystem and search for marketing opportunities within that space. I always had a thing for tech, no doubt. I wasn’t going to be an engineer and the closest I will be is a product manager. While trying to explore Product management, I found myself contributing more to developing a go-to-market strategy. Obviously, this is born out of my previous experience but I wanted something more than marketing. I wanted to affect the company's bottom line and explore even more through experimentation and data analytics.
After speaking with a lot of people within the tech community, I was advised to explore Growth and data analytics. Shortly after this, an opportunity came knocking to lead growth at mDoc, a digital healthcare company in Lagos. My first challenge was trying to explain what I do to my friends and Family. It was easier to explain marketing than trying to explain growth hacking — “Hacking… what like hacking computers?”. Sometimes I’d get fancy in my explanation and claim I was a “data-driven marketer” or “growth marketer”, but often I’d feel too lazy to explain growth hacking. It gets tiring after 50 times and not quite the right conversation for a party.
Fast forward to early 2022. I was interviewed for the Head of Growth position at Bitnob, a financial blockchain technology company that is powered by Bitcoin. I am far more confident in saying “I’m a growth hacker”, mainly because I didn’t need to spend another fifteen minutes explaining what that meant given the job title.
During my interview, the conversation turned to the various marketing channels and my proficiency at generating awareness. I boldly said:
“If you are looking for a Head of Marketing, I am not the right person; Marketing and growth are not the same.”
Thankfully, the COO agreed, it was precisely the answer they were looking for, and I got the job. After being a marketer for 6+ years, building a brand’s growth team from scratch was exciting.
So how did I end up leading the marketing team 3 months later?
It was 100% my fault. Despite all my claims and knowledge that marketing was different to growth, I eagerly took on the marketing side of the team. I thought it would allow me to drive more impact. Instead, I held the team back.
It turns out that six years after casually calling myself a marketer, I’m still struggling with untangling marketing, growth and even product. Attempting to work out the best possible setup to ensure all three teams succeed.
Now I’m fixing my mistake, and growing in public means you get to learn through full transparency how to avoid the same trap that I fell into, head first.
- How did marketing end up under my wing after all?
- What is a better team set up for success?
- How do I align the two and set the team up for success?
Taking the Marketing Team Under My Wing
When I joined Bitnob, one of the core things I wanted to change was the content marketing strategy. For an outsider, it was difficult to know exactly what we do. Some people think we are a trading platform, others think we are an investment company. Sadly, the communication we have previously been putting out does not outline the value proposition of the brand.
Our social and community manager, Ellie, needed a new direction, I could see she was bright and talented but not experienced in the data side. I needed to work with her on content planning and road mapping. This will enable her to create relevant content that will go beyond brand visibility to drive consumers further down the funnel. Further down the road, we employed a content writer who will work with Ellie to deliver desired content market strategy and implementation.
With the new introduction, I was still demanding a lot from my team members and I lost focus on doing my core responsibility: GROWTH
I underestimated the importance of creative time and pushed hard on results. It seems obvious now that it was the wrong approach, but who else would have led the marketing team without a Head of Marketing? I don’t think the biggest issue was that I led them but that I had focused too much on the end goal and on all areas following the growth process.
Balancing Growth and Marketing
Realising this I started delegating duties to team members and making them more responsible. We split the team into two squads: marketing and growth. Both worked closely together, but marketing was encouraged to focus on the top of the funnel growth of ongoing channels and campaigns. Our growth team could concentrate more on experimenting with crucial growth levers such as value proposition. We still get together Twice a week to align actions and shared resources. Here is how the two differ:
It isn’t black and white, you need data for marketing and creativity for growth, but these guidelines helped us distinguish the two areas.
Beyond Definitions
When I started at Bitnob, I treated the difference between marketing and growth as a superficial matter of definitions. But it is more than that: it is an organisational challenge to embrace the overlap and differences between the two to create the best possible customer experience.
You need to see how you structure the marketing and growth team to give each the freedom to play to their strengths but ensure they are aligned.
I still work closely with Ellie and the rest of the marketing team, but I try to give them more space and freedom. To not stifle their creativity with a strict growth process of only experimentation but instead support them in understanding the data and the customer.
Don’t make the same mistake I made. There may be growth or marketing people out there who are strong at both marketing and growth, yet I’ve met only a small handful. You have creative people and data-driven people, you’ll need both to be successful, but each has its superpower.
