Marketers are professional jugglers. Or, they might as well be.
New platforms are constantly popping up while others fade away. Methods that work one day will fail the next. Marketers must keep a plenitude of strategies in the air, all while balancing analytics and creative strategies.
So if marketers are jugglers, expanding a marketing team is like juggling — while riding a unicycle. Blindfolded.
Scaling up a team is a test of resilience, and growing quickly can go wrong in so many ways. Impulsive hiring decisions might throw off the vibes of a streamlined team. Poorly planned or documented processes can become overwhelming. Communication can become fractured as the team plays a game of telephone with new directives.
There’s a decent chance it will feel like a circus.
For marketers curious about how scaling can be done well, Built In NYC talked to three local marketing leaders for insight into how they are proactively combatting growing pains in their organizations, and what’s exciting about that growth.
At Prove, Senior Director of Marketing Yuka Yoneda has grown from a team of one to more than a dozen people. With the extra support, she’s been able to transform from a jack-of-all-trades knowledgeable across all disciplines into a more specialized marketer, rounding out her T-shaped marketing skills.
At Clyde, the growing team has been able to shift its focus to a rebrand and new website launch. With extra bandwidth, the department was able to take time to focus on projects that didn’t immediately drive measurable ROI but set the company up for the future. Meanwhile, sports betting platform Tipico has been able double its team and expand its focus on customer retention.
Check out what else these teams have been working on as they grow, and take a look at their open roles.
What Are T-Shaped Marketing Skills?
Prove is a leading digital identity verification and authentication platform.
How has your marketing strategy changed during your tenure at the company?
We’re much more data-driven now with a few years of insights under our belts and the addition of several smart, analytics-minded marketers to our team. For marketers, having that view into who your target audience is, along with what has — and hasn’t —worked in the past is crucial to developing effective strategies. One thing that hasn’t changed is our focus on customer-centric, human-centric marketing. That means we look to understand what creates the most value for our customers and potential customers, and we invest in marketing channels that help us do that. In practice, that means viewing our customers and prospects as actual humans instead of numbers and hearing customer feedback firsthand, understanding the types of content customers and prospects find helpful, and knowing what events and activities they derive the most value from.
What are the main challenges that high growth poses for marketing teams, and how have you met those challenges?
No big surprise here. The biggest challenges we faced with the rapid growth of our marketing team were communication and the need to develop new processes in order to scale. Suddenly pivoting from communicating between two or three professionals to 15+ was no easy feat but having clear team structures and effective leaders disseminating information to each team are a few ways we help meet that challenge. We’ve also implemented new processes for many of our repeatable tasks and campaigns, which has helped immensely in scaling up our volume.
Finally, I always over-communicate the importance of over-communication. When you think everyone knows about something, share it with them one more time just to confirm.
I always over-communicate the importance of over-communication.”
As a marketing professional, what are the most exciting opportunities that working at scale has given you, and how have you utilized them?
First, I’m excited about deepening my T-shaped marketing skills. Starting out as a marketing team of one when I first joined Prove wasn’t easy but it enabled me to rapidly expand my foundation of T-shaped marketing skills — experience across an array of marketing areas ranging from content to brand to email to PR to marketing automation and beyond. When you’re on a small team, you really need to have many of those skills in your tool bag so you can be a Swiss Army knife marketer, switching between areas as needed. Now, as part of a much larger team, I’m able to focus more on specific areas of that T foundation and further my expertise. I’m also able to leverage other smart marketing brains on my team and learn from marketers who have more knowledge in certain areas than I do.
Second, I’m excited about mentoring other marketers. One of the most exciting aspects of growing our team has been helping other marketers to further their careers and development. Being able to share tips on what has worked for me in the past, advocate for their advancement, and help remove obstacles for my team is one of the most enjoyable parts of my job.
Clyde is an e-commerce technology company.
How has your marketing strategy changed during your tenure at the company?
When I joined Clyde back in 2019, it was with a mandate to build out the marketing strategy and team. At that point, we were a team of 15 people total in a small office in SoHo and I was the sole marketer. While our high-level marketing objectives have remained relatively consistent, the strategy we use to achieve these objectives evolves as we learn more about our prospects and as our industry evolves. We always keep in mind that what worked yesterday won’t necessarily work today. The biggest change has been building out processes and recognizing that as we grow, other teams are growing too. It’s crucial to stay true to your priorities and objectives and not to become too reactive and avoid working in silos.
As Clyde has grown, we’ve had to map our marketing org to our marketing strategy. While I had a plan in place to build out the key domains of a B2B marketing org, I had to remain flexible due to unforeseen macro challenges, like COVID-19. We’ve grown very deliberately, hiring for new roles as our team’s key metrics, audiences, and product evolved.
What are the main challenges that high growth poses for marketing teams, and how have you met those challenges?
High growth is an exciting challenge to have, but it can lead to disorganization, siloed working, and hiring mistakes. When marketing leaders don't focus on setting clear goals — both within the department and aligning with other teams — it can be easy to become reactive rather than consistently driving a strategy forward. I’ve certainly fallen victim to this at times. Clyde uses objectives and key results to realign each quarter on our goals and measure how we’ll attain them. Another challenge we've fallen victim to is setting objectives in silos. Marketing works very closely with other teams, such as sales, partnerships and product. We make a big effort to set goals together.
It can also be easy to make hiring mistakes during periods of high growth. We’ve hired on the marketing team each time key metrics, audiences, and our product have evolved. Three common challenges with hiring, especially in high-growth mode, are not clearly scoping roles, not defining key competencies, and not weighing soft skills. When you don’t take the time to clearly define what you’re looking for in a candidate, you’re prone to hiring the wrong person.
When you don’t take the time to clearly define what you’re looking for in a candidate, you’re prone to hiring the wrong person.”
As a marketing professional, what are the most exciting opportunities that working at scale has given you, and how have you utilized them?
Working at scale has allowed our team to be less reactive and to tackle larger initiatives that don’t necessarily drive immediately measurable ROI. One example of this is the rebrand and new website that Clyde launched this year. Once our core team was in place, we brought on an agency to help us better understand what Clyde’s brand purpose was and how we could better communicate that, both visually and with our positioning and messaging. Our rebrand has helped Clyde stand out and stand for more in a competitive market. It’s been exciting to take on larger initiatives that help set us up for the future.
Tipico is a mobile sports betting and gaming company.
How has your marketing strategy changed during your tenure at the company?
We, and the industry, have begun to move away from transactional messaging to buy customers. Much more of our creative is aspirational or emotional around the sport that customers watch and bet on. We’ve done this to better introduce our products and services and how they help a customer’s viewing experience. We’ve also focused significantly on relationship and loyalty building once a customer is in the door — retention has been and will be a top priority for us.
Retention has been and will be a top priority for us.”
What are the main challenges that high growth poses for marketing teams, and how have you met those challenges?
Agility will always be our biggest opportunity and challenge. In the past six weeks, we’ve doubled the team to get more productive and creative, enabling us to better respond to the dynamics of our customers in a quickly changing industry. With new folks on the team, we are working to effectively onboard and make them productive. We’ve hired a mix of people who do and don’t have industry experience, so blending them into a team and getting them engaged is a top priority for us.
As a marketing professional, what are the most exciting opportunities that working at scale has given you, and how have you utilized them?
The most exciting area is reaching a consumer in new and different ways. Using content, social and other modern channels to reach consumers requires us to plan and respond to conversations. We are in a crowded industry competing with other companies that spend more and are resourced differently, but authenticity and differentiation are how we can compete.
