How to Hire a Great Growth Marketer
You’ve finally nailed product-market fit. Customers are telling you how much they love your product. Now it’s time to focus on building your team.
One of the positions that you need to be tactical about is the growth marketer spot. As they are meant to focus on the business’ growth, they need to have the right skills, experience, and knowledge to help you achieve your goals. The process isn’t as straightforward as you might like, however, as there are tons of considerations to keep in mind. So to help you ace this hiring task, here’s a quick guide to make things simpler for you.
Tips to Hire a Great Growth Marketer
Timing is Key
Your first growth marketer would be one of your early-stage hires but not necessarily one of the first people on board. Why? Because founders need to be the first growth marketers of their ventures. This spot requires you to get to know your market so you can better craft and develop your product into something that they need.
If you delegate the task to someone else before you even launch your brand, you might lose the opportunity to soak up customer feedback. You’ll most likely be working on something else already so you might not be able to focus on what the market is asking for. This can turn into a problem as you might not be able to fully realize your goals for your venture since someone else will be taking the reins in appealing to your target market.
It would be ideal to hire your first growth marketer right after nailing the product-market fit. Why? Since you’ve already crafted a great product that is now well-received by your target audience, you can already move to the development of other areas of your business. Since you’re acting as the growth marketer at this point, you can’t move on to other things if you need to handle such an important position. Hiring someone else will free you from the tasks that come with this crucial spot, however.
Your first growth marketer will work full time on further understanding your audience in exploring new venues to appeal to and provide solutions to them. Acquisition and retention will be their first tasks as well to further ensure the progress of your venture.
What to Look For
What kind of talent should you look for if you need to add the right growth marketer to your team? Here are some of the top characteristics to consider:
Someone with great potential for growth
As a young venture, you might not be able to afford someone with VP experience. You might not even afford someone who is a seasoned marketer at this point. Don’t worry, though, as you don’t necessarily need the most senior professionals out there. You can still fill this important spot with a very capable individual even if they’re yet experts in their fields.
A strong junior athlete will be a good candidate for the spot because they have the drive to take on different tasks that come with such a dynamic position. They will most likely have the motivation for it, too, as those who want to work for new ventures are mostly in it for the experience and promise of great accomplishment.
The challenges that come with the position will draw them in and that promises an excellent start. They will be willing to get down and dirty to find the most effective channels to boost your customer acquisition. It’s also highly likely that they won’t require large funds for their initial campaigns and operations.
Hiring someone young shouldn’t be a problem but they still need to have enough experience to lead a small team. Doing this will allow you to hire more junior growth marketers so your first hire can delegate some tasks to allow them to think up new tactics and channels that can further boost your sales.
Someone with excellent versatility
Since your first growth marketer will replace you in one of your first major roles in the business, it’s important to make sure that they’re up to the challenges. They should be flexible and versatile to ensure that they’ll be able to take on a myriad of tasks that come with their position.
They have to be quantitative and sympathetic to customers at the same time in order to truly get to know your audience. These traits will allow them to prioritize effectively and to be able to measure results. It will also allow them to put themselves in the shoes of your customers, giving them a good understanding of what your market needs.
Their versatility will also help them persevere despite not having a lot of resources. With great adaptability, they can execute high-quality campaigns even without having a large budget or a lot of help. They will also strive to get highly satisfactory results, not just on your end but also from the vantage point of customers.
Adaptability is another way to showcase one’s versatility and it’s also important to look for in a growth marketer. You need someone you will be able to play well with others as growing a venture is a collaborative process. As they’re also poised to lead a team, they should also be able to create good dynamics with others.
Someone with great motivation and drive
Growth marketers need to be creative and curious in order to accomplish their tasks and goals with flying colors. They have to be willing to try new things and test them out without being too scared of failure. They also need to come up with great ideas to truly contribute to your business’ progress.
Their motivation is also something you should look into. They should be impact-driven and self-starters as people with such traits are willing to go the extra mile to achieve their goals. They’ll be great assets to any growing business.
Someone with relevant experience
With such an important role to play, you can’t just give the spot to someone inexperienced. As mentioned above, a junior athlete would be the best choice as they have already gained good momentum and are looking for more ways to develop themselves and push their careers forward. So for this, you can certainly start looking for someone who already knows the ropes.
Look for someone with growth marketing experience and knows how to use marketing tools. This way, you don’t have to walk them through the basics anymore. They can quickly pick up from where you’ve left off, promising a quick and easy transition to retaining old and acquiring new customers. Those with experience in finance or management consulting are good candidates as well as long as they’re interested in solving hard problems, are impact-driven, and understand your P&L.
It would be great if they had experience in managing high-priority marketing channels in the past. It’s going to be even better if they had hands-on experience in a similar business. As different kinds of ventures have different marketing channels, it’s better if they’re already well-versed in the area that you’re in.
If they have prior experience working with a product team, that’s also a great plus. Folks with this background will know how to look at things from the customer’s perspective and will think not just about your marketing channels but also your funnels.
Someone with the right knowledge
Experience is one thing but wisdom is another. Not all professionals tend to take away the best things from their experiences so it’s best to check what a candidate knows when it comes to creating business value.
For this, make sure to check if they have adequate growth marketing knowledge, especially in terms of strategies and analytics. This is one of the most technical things their role entails, so they should have wide knowledge here.
They should also understand human behavior and the importance of creating value. Being able to read the market and realizing the importance of customer acquisition are also very important tasks that are in their job description.
Finding the Best Growth Marketer for Your Venture
It may seem very tricky to find someone who has all of the characteristics above but doesn’t fret. You will certainly find someone great to take the spot. You just need to create an effective process in assessing and vetting applicants.
To do this, make sure to keep these questions in mind when interviewing and evaluating a candidate:
- Are they willing to get in the weeds? You need someone who will be a self-starter, driven, detail-oriented, and hands-on when it comes to executing campaigns and projects. Someone who is willing to get down and dirty will ensure that they’ll be very involved and committed to the job at hand.
- Are they curious? Curiosity is vital if you’re going to find someone who wants to make a difference. They’re willing to learn new things and are not scared to experiment.
- Are they capable of understanding your customers? The best marketing teams can easily see things from their customer’s perspectives.
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