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THE GROWTH MARKETER

pabloceballosp@gmail.com

HANDBOOK

Advice from a range of

excellent practitioners
Growth Marketer
Handbook
Written by
Cody Juric
INTRODUCTION
Why handbook?

There is an increasingly evolving world in marketing. It’s called growth

marketing, which is marketing for growing startups. But the term has
become so controversial and even the people currently practicing
growth marketing seem to have constant differences in opinion.
Getting into growth marketing myself, there were many questions
about the profession. Core among them were questions about what
skills were most vital to have and what was paramount to making
myself the most valuable marketer possible.

There’s a heavy cognitive load when considering what marketer

you’re going to be in the long run. The more I learn and practice
marketing, the more questions arise about being a valuable marketer
today. So I wanted to hear how marketers really think about growth
marketing. Since growth marketing is a growing specialization and a
number of companies are still operating with antiquated methods, I
also wanted insights on assessing companies for fit.

With these concerns in mind, I set out to interview a number of great

growth marketing minds in the Bay Area who have helped grow
companies at different stages. I wanted to speak to a bunch of
individuals that have executed growth in a variety of ways with
different experiences and products.

I interviewed 15 marketers and each interview has a somewhat

different story to tell. There is a decent amount of overlap with certain
responses and plenty of differing opinions. Read on to discover the
thoughts and principles from 15 well-respected marketing minds.
CONTENTS

Frederik Hermann, previously Director of Growth at Jawbone……...3

Jamie Quint, Quint Growth & Interstate Analytics……………….…...6

Lars Lofgren, previsouly Director of Growth at KissMetrics……..........9

Hiten Shah, founder of CrazyEgg & KissMetrics………………....…..12

Chris Hedgecock, CBS Interactive, previously YouBetMe….….........15

Dan Abelon, previously SpeedDate.com………….……………..…..18

Dominic Coryell, 500startups Distribution HIR………….....................20

Robert Matei, Growth/Product at Quora………………………..…....22

Ivan Kirigin, YesGraph, previously Dropbox…………….....…….........24

Aaron Ginn, Growth PM at Everlane…………………….………...…..26

Blake Commagere, MediaSpike, previously Causes…………...…....28

Will Bunker, founded Match………………………................................31

Nish Nadajara, 1st marketer for Yelp………………..............................33

Casey Winters, Growth PM Pinterest………………………..................35

Julie Zhou, Growth PM at YikYak, previously HipMunk………...……38

 INTERVIEWS

Frederik Hermann
Prioritizing skill building

Frederik mentioned that you need to have a basic familiarity with the
skills stack. You should be data driven, and he emphasized the
analytical piece. You should become as familiar as you can, early on
with what it takes to measure the effectiveness of what you’re doing
as a marketer.

An example he gave was implementing Google’s tag manager

quickly when the need is there. He also thought you should have a
basic understanding of the web, HTML, and photoshop. And you
should know about what goes into creating and representing a
brand.

He considered it positive to develop complementary skills to skills

you’re already confident in. This is because several skills work hand in
hand, and you can “develop a strong piece of the pie” (the pie being
the growth marketer skillset) . Developing these skills can also be
project driven, which will open up new skills through necessity.

In his opinion, its important to know what you’re not good at yet. You
should definitely know how to build financial models early on,
however, as that’s something that is core to all growth marketers.

It’s important that you think about the different ways you can bring
your past experiences into a growth role. This can help you think
about the psychology behind certain user personas.
3
Developing skills at one company as opposed to several

It’s key to think about what you are being hired for. In essence, you
must understand what goes into the practice and be familiar enough to
know what arguments to make. Another consideration is in how you
react to the market. Think about what the current market is asking for in
terms of a marketer’s skills.

When you are at one particular company, the goals of that company
might not be aligned with your strong suits so you have to develop
new skills. This is a good opportunity to branch out and learn what is
needed. At a young startup, it’s your choice. If it’s your choice, build a
financial model for something you want to experiment on and sell that
direction internally. He also added that you might want to be looking
for a company where you can be sure you’ll be able to build on a new
skills axis.

If it’s your choice, build a financial model for something you

want to experiment on and sell that direction internally.

When you’re moving to a new company - don’t focus on the weaker of

their marketing channels, which they could improve on. Improve what's
already working.

Skill development depends on the stage of the company, yet you

should always have some tools to help out with the job. He mentioned
that the external environment always affects what you can focus on. It
helps to look at the core KPIs for a company and see where you have
skills already that you can use to contribute.

4
Length of time to focus on a marketing skill

Frederik’s barometer for this - you know you’re ready to implement a

new skill once you’re able to explain it well to someone who has never
heard of it before. He went on to explain that there’s definitely a
difference between understanding something and being an expert.
For a growth marketer, you definitely don’t have to be an absolute
expert in most subjects.

5
 Jamie Quint
Some pointers to developing yourself as a growth marketer

Jamie had some funny and smart ways to quickly develop yourself as
a growth marketer. One of which is to trick a company into doing
certain growth related things when they don’t absolutely have to. It
also helps to trick a company into hiring you so that you can start
exploring various tactics and learn on the job. He thinks this is great at
a small company because you learn from someone and then go off
and experiment. Its beneficial to not get put on only one channel. In
addition, you should find somewhere you can build the company’s
acquisition funnel on your own.

Prioritizing skill building

You should have a basic knowledge of statistics and data. You should
have product experience - what is important and when. For more
Product Manager type growth roles you should definitely know SQL
and be able to talk efficiently to a data analyst. Similarly, you should
be able to ask data scientists the right questions at the right times. On
top of all this, you should layer marketing skills. You should
understand what goes into landing pages and paid acquisition. You
should also know about DNPs, DSPs, and generally how data works.

He also emphasized the importance of developing a variety of skills.

For instance, you can learn remarketing, email, and also know how to
build a good product and get great retention out of customers.

6
Skill balancing

You should try to be good at as many things as possible and should be

sufficient, at least, at most things in marketing. This means striving to
be at least above average at most things. This way you can join a
company already good at most things then build a couple new skills.

Length of time to focus on marketing skills

He mentioned that a lot of people say they’re good at paid acquisition

but really aren’t. As an example, he said that it’s hard to hire someone
from AirBnB because you don’t really know if they’re bad or not.
People tend to think they’re doing well even if they aren’t. If you’re
making decisions but unable to explain why, you’re using that channel
incorrectly.

If you’re making decisions but unable to explain why,

you’re using that channel incorrectly.

Developing complementary skills

You should develop skills anywhere related to what you want to learn.
You don’t necessarily have to do something for a year. It can be
sufficient to do something for a couple months. It helps to constantly
talk to people who really know what they’re doing. This will help you
jump ahead in knowledge. Jamie is adamant about attending meetups
and dinners with interesting people regularly, a regularity that is
continually growing.

7
Developing skills at one company vs moving companies

It’s easier at one company to start going deep in any one skill. At a
small company it’s great to expand your skills.

Assessing roles

Pick a growing company. It’s even better if the founders have sold a
previous business before.

8
 Lars Lofgren
Prioritizing skill building

Lars thinks a great growth marketer must have the willingness and
desire to get coding chops. Understand frontend and Rails. That’s a
good direction to head. Second to that, copywriting is hugely
important for every marketer to become exceptional. With great copy
you’ll intrigue anyone and get them to take action. Every channel
depends on copy: SEO, content, paid, etc. Some advice he gave for
this one - find an expert’s copy and write it out verbatim. Then repeat
and repeat some more.

In response to being asked how he felt about the marketer

shape

Basically, it’s all semantics. You just need to be awesome. When you’re
trying to get your first role, try to specialize in something. Fill a niche.
It’s all about the quality of your skillset. If you want to be at the top of
your game - leading growth - you have to be great at everything and
management to boot.

Skills that are similar

Focus on skills that are in two categories. In one category are the skills
that you’re passionate about - this will help you learn them quicker.
The other category should be defined by what the market needs at the
time (particularly beneficial if they become necessary skills or if you’re
hitting a wall with something else).

It helps to focus on one camp at a time. You can also get good at stuff
people don’t want to do, such as SQL and Excel.
9
Skill Optionality

Always maximize for learning. Stock options shouldn’t really be part of

the equation for deciding where you’re working. If the day-to-day
routine starts to get monotonous, get out. You want to be changing
and adapting. Find opportunities to work and accelerate your
personal brand name along with the brand you’re working with. A
second tactic is to find and work with a mentor who knows a certain
part of marketing that is especially interesting or valuable.

You want to build career capital and leverage it for the next
opportunity. Your next opportunity in this case should be something
that fills what was missing before. Your next role should build on what
you did before and allow you to keep you expanding.

Always maximize for learning.

Time to be competent in skills in order to sell ideas to

stakeholders

You’ll need to be working on something hardcore for a month to be

“up to speed”. This definitely won’t be close to expert level.

World class copywriters and A/B testers take about 5 years to get to
where they’re at. Even content and PPC can take that long. There’s a
separation between competence and world class status.

He went on to explain that the SEO world is kind of dying in a certain

way now. So for people that have doubled down in that world, they
might need to change and optimize for App Store rankings now or
something similar.

10
Assessing the next opportunity

The team you’re joining should be practiced in pushing responsibility

down the ladder. As in, they should offload responsibility and work
entirely to someone else. This increases someone’s responsibility as
quickly as possible. If you find a situation where it’s difficult to change
a process or where you have little wiggle room, you might be in the
wrong place.

As a piece of advice, he noted that you’ll never feel ready for a new
opportunity. You just need to be on your toes and raising your hand
whenever there’s a new problem. He mentioned that the key is to
constantly do well when you’re thrown in the deep end with a
problem. Opportunities are given to those who show a track record
for following through. Always say yes, even if an issue is not part of
your team’s normal responsibilities.

11
 Hiten Shah
Prioritizing skill building

For the majority of marketing, it comes down to creating great copy.

Hiten notes that you can take anything in marketing and boil it down to
the copy. He is adamant about not making marketing too complicated.
You should be creative, and you should be able to measure
effectiveness. As he noted, nothing is brand new with marketing
messaging.

Marketer shapes

He wanted to make clear that it’s important to think about expanding

the idea of how human beings work together. Marketers should have
cross functional knowledge to work well with a variety of teams and
individuals. In this respect, the T-shaped marketer makes sense to have
around your organization. In startups, people typically avoid single
concentration marketers.

Effective marketers can get away with being extra creative. The optimal
case would be to have a good mix of creative and analytical abilities.
Hiten does believe, though, that it is tough to get away with not having
built some kind of personal brand first. You should have experienced
the pain of marketing yourself at least. This can come in the form of
blogging, social media, referring lots of folks, etc.

12
Expanding skillset

At any moment in time, marketing has been about an idea working out
for a particular business. There’s always something on someone’s mind
to be tested out, and you need to have the right mentality and ability
to make that idea work out. For example, with Dropbox, a lot of things
didn’t work out for awhile. If someone didn’t have the particular skill
and didn’t cut it right away for the idea to be attempted, then what?
What next? Well, they didn’t just consider that one path to be the only
thing that could work.

Information and knowledge is not the most important part of

marketing. It’s more about how quickly you can pick something up.
The act of marketing is a skill. The rest are just tools, paths, etc to help
you market better. You just need to put your mind to it and do what it
takes whether it’s paid, blogging, or something else.

He said that most people are incentivized in some way to make things
seem more complicated than they really are. Most skill development
or channel knowledge today shouldn’t really take that long. On a
fundamental level you need to get traffic and convert it.

The act of marketing is a skill. The rest are just tools, paths,
etc to help you market better.

13
Diversifying your skills

This has everything to do with the individual. He advised not thinking

about what your company can do for you. You should be ready to
adapt, put your head down and figure out what needs to be done to
get the traffic that will help the business. He honestly believes that
sharpening your Googling abilities should be one of your top
priorities. No joke.

Marketers should be able to think really fast and figure problems out. A
good marketer should be able to break down a system. One should be
able to know how something works at each level. He mentioned Ads
platforms as an example.

Assessing your next role and team

The company should have product market fit. At the very least you
should believe wholeheartedly that they can get there. You should be
able to tell if people are tweeting about them organically. This is one
obvious indicator that you’ll be working with a product or service that
people care about and want to talk about.

When you’re talking to founders, you need to be able to ask them

certain questions. How do they make decisions? It there’s a channel
you want to try, what process do I have to go through? The first 90 days
- what would they have the marketer do? The founders should also be
asking the questions back to you.

Additionally, you should assess everything that’s already going on, find
what is working and improve its effectiveness. If nothing is working,
don’t work there. At Kissmetrics, for example, emails were working,
and he knew he needed to turn on the blog next and then move to
webinars. 14
 Chris Hedgecock
Prioritizing skill building

In Chris’s opinion, growth marketing starts with retention. Even if

you’re working really hard on acquisition methods, your problems with
retention will constantly limit the effectiveness of that acquisition
effort.

He went on to mention that organic search is huge still. When it comes

to something like utilizing Facebook, there are different degrees of
expertise. He noted that he’s always learning and being surprised by
what some can do on platforms like Facebook. He also said that
personal branding can help some growth marketers, but it isn’t really
necessary and some people just don’t have something to sell.

Marketer shapes

The T-shaped marketer concept is not really his forte. He said he’s not
really T-shaped at all; he’s more of a sideways E marketer. He went on
to say that everyone does it a different way. Basically, the skills are
going to be different depending on what project you’re working on.

You have to work at selling yourself internally to be given the

opportunity to do different kinds of marketing work you haven’t done
before. Then you have to put in the time to learn that marketing on the
side. It’s all about figuring out what else is needed and learning to do
the work.

15
Skill expansion

It depends on the situation. If something you’ve been doing is

working, then find out what else is similar that can also work well. You
need to explore different fields and verticals, then go down the rabbit
hole and find out what doesn’t work. You just have to not be afraid of
something being wrong.

Diversifying skills

Find an excuse to do something new. Cruise around and see what the
competition is up to. “This competitor is doing this tactic, we should
at least be…” Then you’ve got to think about how you’re going to
bring a case to superiors around how it will be profitable. You’ve got
to sell up the ladder.

Skill development time

Talk to future opportunities about why you’ve had a successful

experience with some type of marketing. Then detail out the x,y,z of
why it was successful. If you can do that effectively, you’ve definitely
had enough time working on a particular marketing skill.

“You have to work at selling yourself internally to be given

the opportunity to do different kinds of marketing work
you haven’t done before.”

16
Assessing next role and team

Take a good look at the track record of the company: are they in sore
need of help or are they doing really well? Is it a really good product?
Is there great retention? This all certainly makes growth easier.

Some questions to ask:

Do they really want me (the growth marketer)? Or will there be some
kind of resentment from the other teams? Ask questions to find out if
they’re people you’d want to spend time with. See if you can find out if
they’re the type of people that are ok with the fact that you might be
wrong sometimes. Ask questions to see if you’ll be around people who
want to win, are capable of listening, and can define success and
manage expectations.

17
 Dan Abelon
Prioritizing skill building

In Dan’s opinion, your need to develop certain skills will depend on

the type of company you’re working for. He noted that now would be
a good time to become familiar with anything mobile. At a minimum,
marketers should understand paid quite well. Understand what it
takes to deploy capital in order to acquire customers and also what
it's like to target across devices. Some products benefit greatest from
viral integrations, and if there’s opportunity for gain in this way you’d
better be familiar with what it takes.

Dan also added that it can be an advantage to go after whatever skills

are most scarce at any time. This can separate you, and you’ll be able
to bring coveted value to the table. All in all, it is mostly a skill to
figure out which product you are going to be best at growing and
where you’ll add the most value.

Skill expansion and marketer type

It is a generally good approach to develop skills  related to the

channels you’re already comfortable with. Pick the right tactical axis to
work on and go deep. It also helps to broaden your knowledge and
familiarity with all facets of growth marketing as this can help make
you more of an expert and more rounded out. It’s also quite possible
to know a lot because most of the parts of growth aren’t really all that
difficult.

“Understand what it takes to deploy capital in order to

acquire customers and also what it's like to target across
devices.” 18
Diversifying skills

At smaller, earlier stage companies, you can change a lot. At larger

companies you’re likely to become pigeonholed. There is an
alternative route - consultancy - where you can be happy working on
just the parts of marketing that you enjoy most.

Skill development time

When you are a practitioner, each skill will typically take about 3-6
months. But this can also depend on the channel type and if you can
utilize a type of arbitrage at any particular moment in time. For
example, at SpeedDate, there was no virality going on with many
other products at the time so it only took a few weeks to shoot to the
top with practice. Whenever there’s a new platform that is getting a
lot of new use, you can easily get on top of the experience ladder and
position yourself as an expert on that new platform. He also went on
to add that it is not really necessary for a marketer to be a coder.

Assessing the next role

It would be great if you can find an awesome person leading growth

at the company you’re joining next. Another huge opportunity is if the
company and/or people in it aren’t all that great at growth and sorely
need your aid. Know that you're joining something where people are
obsessed with the product - make sure that you do your research or
ask questions to see if there’s a huge market, if they have a decent net
promoter score, and if they’ve been surveyed at all.

19
 Dominic Coryell
Developing skill diversity when starting at a new company

There’s a danger in being too generalist a marketer. This is something

you need to be wary of unless of course you’re going to be a founder
- as Dominic stated. He personally knows referrals really well and
understands most other parts of marketing to other varied degrees.
When you’re beginning somewhere, you should work to tell a story
around what work is documented. What work have you done and why
is it compelling.

“When you’re beginning somewhere, you should work to

tell a story around what work is documented.”

Skill development time

To Dominic, the main barometer here is how much you know

compared to others in similar roles. You should know how you
compare to other people that you’re talking to - in meetings,
internally, and at marketing meetups.

20
Assessing the next opportunity

He advises to get a picture for what the turnover is like in the

marketing department. This will give some indication of how people
are valued and what structure you’re entering into. For the next role,
you need to ultimately consider- what you value most, what motivates
you, and then measure for that.

Some questions to ask:

What are the growth levers? How will you scale those? What is the
month over month growth for a given two months? What are some
new opportunities for potential arbitrage? How is the team broken
down? What is the experimentation model?
In assessing your next opportunity, it doesn’t hurt to look for
companies with good to great customer optimization (i.e., companies
that have figured out a way to retain their customers). This is, unless
they have a leaky funnel. If there’s a leaky funnel and/or bad customer
optimization, it will make the marketer’s job obsolete. You can always
buy more customers, but you can’t afford to be always losing them.

21
 Robert Matei
Prioritizing skill building

Robert told me that there are two branches of the world when it
comes to abilities in growth marketing. One where you modify a
consumer product to grow faster organically and another where you
drive people to the product. For modifying the product branch - you
need a good developer or designer as a PM. For driving the people
branch - you need good content and copy.

Both of these branches share some common values the growth

marketer must command:
An understanding of SEO
Creating great landing pages
Partnerships for inbound links
Copywriting and A/B testing

In general, a growth marketer should have the analytical rigor to

measure whatever marketing was done. You should be able to have
sight on what the three biggest wins are to drive revenue. From there,
you should be able to optimize the results. What most defines a
growth marketer is your ability to drive better results.

When you’re thinking about skills you have to consider that there is a
problem to solve for a particular product. What are the possibilities to
solve that problem? You have to look at what systems are working and
how you’re going to take advantage of as well as improve on what’s
occurring. After that there’s basically a lot of grinding to find what
works. He also noted it being hard to get hired as a generalist unless
you’re able to show measured results.
22
Assessing your next opportunity

First consider whether or not the people you’ll be working with are
smart. If this is apparent then you’ll be respected if you can get
results. You’ll also be successful if you believe in the product. Do you
see it getting big? Robert mentioned that he was able to picture in his
head how Quora’s growth dynamics worked. Once a growth loop
works, find out if its something you believe in.

What to ask:
Where does most of the traffic / growth come from now? What is that
driven by? Then continue to ask questions: if most people come from
search, how are they retained? What is churn? Do people lead to
more viral growth? Lastly, examine how the growth loop is benefited
by their acquisition.

“What most defines a growth marketer is your ability to

drive better results.”

23
 Ivan Kirigin
Prioritizing skill building

Ivan commented on there being lots of skillsets. He went on to state

that HTML is important (without excessive depth), as well as Excel,
data analysis, Mixpanel, RJ metrics, and data systems knowledge. He
noted that if you have more of a product role, it might be more
advisory. At the end of the day it comes down to the speed at which
you pick up what is essential.

Customer optimization vs Customer acquisition

It is crucial to look for a high quality product. For your skills, it

depends on what you’re doing. There are lots of tools and skills
involved in whatever it is you need to get done. There are many more
systems used to get the job done now. How do you get practice?
Grow anything. If you have a friend with an app, grow that. After
demo days at some of these accelerators, go to startups and
volunteer. They may worry about managing you, however, because
there’s a non-trivial level of responsibility.

“You’ve got to be comfortable with change. Embrace

moments as they come and don’t be embarrassed by what
you don’t know.”

24
Marketer skill optionality

Ivan feels that the word “growth”, attached to marketer in some way,
has been tainted. He struggles with the word. There are many other
terms, in his opinion, that might be more acceptable like PM or
marketing analyst.

When is comes to the key skills a marketer should have - skill

optionality is overrated, depth is better. Then, if you want to get into
something else, you can do it. Just broaden out. After that, measure
how you are getting better with each part. It’s very common to
change roles and careers, especially in tech.

He thinks it’s optimal to have a growth mindset as a marketer. You’ve

got to be comfortable with change. Embrace moments as they come
and don’t be embarrassed by what you don’t know. Marketers do
better by practicing. Encounter something you’re unfamiliar with and
practice it.

Assessing next opportunity

Questions for the company: People are chaotic and messed up in

startups. You need to ask questions to suss out how the product
should run. What are the OKRs? What should they be? Is personal
growth cared about? How was the product made? Who decides
things? Are individual teams responsible for metrics? How do they
deal with the conflict of people wanting responsibility for metrics?
Are users / customers loving the product? How is sales incorporated
in the product? No communication is bad. That goes the same for the
support team.

25
 Aaron Ginn
Prioritizing skill building

In Aaron’s view, there is a matrix that has to be dominated by the

growth marketer. The growth marketer has to have a part in
developing the product, they need to greatly understand how people
operate online, they need to have down a logic of how they break
down problems, and the definitely need to have a grip on why
people are doing what they’re doing (with product, digitally, etc).

After all this, there is a secondary layer of “skills” marketers should get
down. What’s most important is truly understanding user motivation
and behavioral economics. It also is powerful to have true product
sense. One should know how to influence people. That is key to
being an effective marketer. A really strong marketer should also
demonstrate structured thinking. They should be able to learn
something, then break down a user problem for someone and
explain how a solution will work in solving it.

Skill expansion

Marketer shapes are based on your position and what you need to be
doing. You’ll find generalists at early stage companies and specialized
marketers at later stage companies when it’s more defined what
companies are looking for. Aaron also noted that it could take 2 years
to really be competent in a particular marketing skill.

26
Assessing the next role

What do they expect you to do? What are the resources you’ll be
getting? As a company, is there maturing growth? It is optimal to go
somewhere you can come in and pour fuel on the fire (so to say).
Look for companies that seem to appreciate individuals that have the
‘growth mindset’. You should also find out if you’ll be somewhere
you’ll have the authority to initiate new projects. Think like an investor
would.

Also ask about what engineering resources you’ll get and if you’ll be
able to affect the product right away. Ask about what the current level
of debt of company is. Ask questions to get a better feel of what the
organization is like. How many users are added every week?

Proving worth as marketer

Show that you have a track record with measured results. If you don’t
have number that you can point to, you need to use social credibility.
It’s also beneficial to demonstrate intuition. These days there
happens to be an unnecessary obsession with ROI for growth roles
without looking for what is really valuable from marketers.

“A really strong marketer should also demonstrate

structured thinking. They should be able to learn
something, then break down a user problem for someone
and explain how a solution will work in solving it.”

27
 Blake Commagere
Prioritizing skill building

Not all products are equal. It all depends. With development of tech
you can leverage particular platforms, tools, etc. Marketing is an art
and a science. There is a human component that relevant. There’s
also consideration of what is culturally relevant at the time.

The art part is hard, in Blake’s opinion. Developing an innate talent to

reach people is something impressive. The science part is like
running on a treadmill. Your own personal ceiling is what limits you in
the art part. That’s not the same case for the science part. There is an
overlap of art and science - something like, here’s the tools and then
how is each individual person using the tools. How are they creating
art with tools.

For consumer facing products, most people miss the art part often.
They don’t realize there are lives elsewhere in the world. Lives with
different experiences and limits than those close to the person
marketing. For example, when you’re charging people a certain
amount of money who are living in a different part of the world you
can’t presume people react to a certain amount of money the same as
they would around Silicon Valley. That is a non-trivial part of the
business and non-trivial part of marketing considerations.

You can even think about this kind of thing like making jazz vs pop
music for the masses. Jazz music will only really be appreciated by a
confined subset of the human population. Jazz can only be tailored to
people that deeply appreciate fine music. Pop music is shared with
everyone.
28
If wealth, in any part of the world you’re marketing to, is the factor that
you’re considering when establishing who your product and message
speaks to - you can think about the Mustang as a nifty helper. How
people talk about a Mustang in a particular area is an indication of the
type of wealth there (people bat an eye at it = wealthy area; people
think you’re well off if you’re driving it around = less wealth). It really
helps to tie any and all of your life experience in to your marketing to
help you understand the people you're talking to with your service.

The more topics that are exposed to you the more you can reconcile
what’s different from you. It’s difficult to only just question people to
find the answers to worldly questions because people lie or stretch
the answer.

Skill development

Blake talked about skills today not being relevant tomorrow.

Therefore a breadth of knowledge is crucial to a long lasting
marketer. Its also critical to know what is right for any one product.

When a company you’re working at starts to get large you’ll need to

start specializing more and more. You sometimes just need to go after
one type of specialization for a while and see if you’re pretty good at
it. People tend to surprise themselves with what they’re good at. They
have to do the task to really know if it suits them or not. Just keep
trying to tackle a problem and see if you have the ‘chops’.

For skills, in general, if you’re reasonably intelligent, and spend

enough time on something, you’ll get the hang of it. If you have more
of the art down when it comes to marketing you might have a bit of an
advantage. Most people can do the 80% of technical or quantitative
work. But it’s harder, for many people, when it comes to the art part.
29
Time for marketing skill development

What resources are available to you? What data can you play with?
Your path of learning will also be determined by things like: if a
business has daily product/collateral pushes. For seminal learning to
take place one must be in control of every step of a process. In this
case there will be no consensus building and no stakeholders. One
must own the entire chain (e.g. marketing channel execution).

Diversifying skills in a company

Do you have the latitude to try the things you want to try? Do you
have the time? These are the important parameters that will
determine your diversification. You’ll be able to diversify more if
you’re somewhere that enables fast iteration. Somewhere that lets
you try the things you need to learn about a particular type of
marketing.

Assessing a company for being the right place

Figure out early if you’ll have the flexibility to try what you want to try.
Scope out what would work for that company in order to see if it
aligns with what you want to learn.

Questions to ask:
Can you influence product decisions? Is it an afterthought? Who does
the growth team report to? Hopefully the CEO or close, not
engineering. You should also understand release cycles. What are
you allowed to do? Is there a separation between engineering and
the QA department? Are they equal at the table? Do you have the
authority to own something?

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 Will Bunker
Prioritizing skill building

This is situational. It depends on the the company or project. You

should be intellectually curious overall. You should consider,
“Knowledge today is useless tomorrow”. It’s powerful to embrace
systematic learning. Also, you should have a grip on how much time
you need to allocate to learning what's important at any time.

Marketer Shape

There are fundamental skills a marketer should have that won’t

change. One should understand the psychology behind good ad
copy. They should understand concepts and practice in statistical
analysis. SQL is important to be able to use.

What is vital for a marketer is to be able to separate the medium from

the message. Know what the purpose of a message is. Then make a
distinctions between distribution areas. You should develop strength
in the analysis of messages. Tactics arenew, but the fundamentals
aren’t.

The people that you’re trying to reach - whichever channels they’re

interested in are the ones you should have specialization of. Also, the
channels which are growing more popular. Fundamentals are still the
big payoff, however.

“What is vital for a marketer is to be able to separate the

medium from the message. Know what the purpose of a
message is.”
31
Growing and diversifying skills while working

Peel off a little money to budget with and start experimenting with
new ways of marketing on your own. Work on all the things you’d like
to understand better with side projects or initiatives of your own. It
could take a good 6 months to really develop a new skill so
experiment over and over.

If you’re at larger companies, there will be more of a payoff to have

more expertise. Try to be at a company where they need multiple
channels at be worked on at the same time.

Assessing the next company

Really listen to the team members. Practice deep listening. Listen to

their stories and listen to how they talk about their product and
mission. Do they speak towards having success and optimism.
Because you need to have founders that will be highly optimistic.

See that they have a logical plan moving forward. Find out if the
people at the company get along with each other, that they hang out
with each other. See if you actually like the people that you’ll be
working with (you’ll have to enjoy working long hours with these
people).

32
 Nish Nadaraja
Skills focus

Marketing is really about smart money. It’s about getting people to

like something so much that they spread it. Facebook ads can be
pretty valuable right now. Just trying to do ‘growth hacking’ is for a
short game but a long pain.

You have to also think smart about a strong brand voice. This is done
by understanding who you’re getting to use the product. You can’t be
expressionless to get this to happen. There has to be a brand
message that people can grab onto internally and externally. When
you think about your brand type, consider - if you were at a bar what
kind of person would be? What kind of interactions or presence
would you have. Really specify personas you’re reaching and know,
also, who you don’t cater to. Know who your message is and is not for.

Building shape

Nish leans somewhat towards being a marketing generalist and

community engagement focused. He did mention that very few
people are good at anything let alone many different things. This
applies to being a marketer as well. Also, given your product offering
there are only so many things you can do, which will make sense.

Be smart and resourceful about where you’re putting your time when
it comes to developing skills. When at a company you may just need
to spend money for something to happen. You might need to just
think about making the person above you look better. The time to
develop certain skills can be change given how experienced you are
with certain things. 33
“It’s about getting people to like something so much that
they spread it.”

Assessing opportunity

Ask the people at the company how they approach marketing now.
Make sure they know that they need marketing. Who are the direct
and indirect competitors? Do they know their target customers? Why
didn’t this product exist before? If it did, why is their solution better?

Only work somewhere you want to work. Figure out what the plan is
to take something to market. Why is it important to work on? Figure
out early if there’s something missing as to why people might not
want to work with the people. Ask questions about the mission /
about the big vision. Founders don’t usually know how hard
marketing really is.

34
 Casey Winters
Prioritizing skill building

Technology and tactics are on the rise. Younger people are picking
up on trends more / faster than older practitioners. At the moment, if
you wanted to get ahead on a developing trend in marketing you
should put your focus towards mobile marketing. Although, there’s
depth in this. Something like app store competency is done in an
hour.

There are two ways that companies are growing. One is through the
art and science behind virality. You have to get good at the art
behind the flow, which is then backed by data tracking. The other
way people are growing is through paid.

It would be intelligent to start getting good at creating a holistic

experience from mobile to web. Getting ahead of the game with
something like push notifications - for instance - since that will be
more and more utilized.

Diversifying

You have to place multiple bets on skills as a marketer. You have to

be ready for the possibility that one skill will dry up. The ideal shape
would be something like a wavering pyramid. Have a base layer of
fundamentals with one spiking channel skill and another near that in
strength depending on where you are in your career / company /
interests.

35
When you’re collecting skills, bet on something valuable that is
growing. As well, core strengths in analysis (statistics, excel, ltv/cac,
sql) help you self learn in the future. You’ll also be valuable as
someone who can analyze effectiveness wherever you go.

“You have to place multiple bets on skills as a marketer.

You have to be ready for the possibility that one skill will
dry up.”

Time to develop skills

Skill development for the modern marketer used to be gained

through lots of trial and error. But now you can skip a lot of the error
part. There’s some pretty sufficient information out there from people
that have gone through the pain of a lot of the error part in
marketing.

There’s two different levels of competency when you’re building

skills. For the first level - you could think of the example of email
marketing - where you’re testing and optimizing for 6 months until
you’re pretty refined in your process. For the second level - you’re
starting to get into the weeds. This can take years until mastery. For a
lot of the parts of marketing, you’ll be best to optimize for the 20%
that will get you 80% of the way there.

36
Assessing the next opportunity

You can either go somewhere for learning or for earning. Early on

you should go somewhere that is as large of a company as possible
before becoming too refined and specialized in your work that you
can’t use it later. Casey also advises not going to a super early startup
where you are the Head of X. This is because you’ll pour a lot of
energy and effort into something that will spread you out and
startups commonly fail. If the startup where you put all that work in
fails, you’ll be left with little credit to hang your hat on.

Get in on a team where you can absorb information all the time. Then
leverage on that skill set to start doing other types of skill based tasks
somewhere. Impress and grow. You should be trying and able to
learn without being expected to have it all figured out. The longer a
company has been stable, the less likely they’re doing innovative
things with growth. Try to go somewhere in between too early and
too late. Try to build a network with a growth team.

Questions to ask:
Who will you be working with? Are there any training programs? Are
there rotational applications? Ask about someone in a similar role
that was hired last year, what is their role like now?

37
 Julie Zhou
Prioritizing skill building

Your abilities with quantitative analysis are the most vital. Quantitative
analysis is really what you should focus on the most first. When
considering other skills to start layering - it really depends on what
kind of growth marketing you are going to be doing. The best thing
to have along with quantitative analysis is an insatiable curiosity
towards the parts of interaction with a product. You should always be
thinking, “Why is something a particular way?” or “Why does x cause
this?” You should constantly be asking questions.

Marketer shape

There is room for all types of marketers. If a team is looking to hire for
growth and thinking that the thing that is holding them back from
astronomical growth is a lot of users then they will need people who
know how to acquire users.

If a team is at a point where they don’t really know what they need,
they should probably be looking for a generalist that can command
all aspects of marketing well. That person can design a plan for what
marketing is needed and as you grow they will need to find people to
add on to their team where certain needs are apparent (design, data,
etc).

38
Expanding on skills

Julie made it clear that she primarily worked on user acquisition

prior to now. She was very centered on acquisition tactics. She
mostly always wanted people around her that were teachable and
ready to learn what is required at any point. In this respect, you
should be able to quickly learn whatever is needed, when new
concepts for helping the business grow, come around.

She also mentioned growth concepts tied to product that she’s

working on now (e.g. push notifications) that she had never dealt
with before. There can always be new moments where current tactics
are worth exploring and learning. You can also always benefit from
making yourself an expert of a newly arising marketing tactic that has
not been widely experimented with yet.

When building out a new program for acquisition (or tied to product
for retention) or getting up to speed on a newer platform – it could
really only take something like 3 months to become kind of an
expert. What’s really important to demonstrate is how you think. Its
more important to show that you’re intellectual and explain
processes through structured thinking.

Parts of growth at different companies

She was completely on the marketing side of the business at

Hipmunk, dealing with acquisition all the time. Then she made a
deliberate change to work directly with product at YikYak. She knew
that she wanted to work closer to product for some time so she
made deliberate efforts to ensure she would be able to work in such
a role.

39
She advises making deliberate efforts towards growing into a new
strength of marketing or new role in general. She herself made the
effort to find and connect with several product type mentors to help
her on her path. She also made sure to take on side work whenever
possible. Side work that was product focused, which was available at
any point for someone to take on. It was through these experiences
that she was able to speak to product work experience and leverage
that to gain her new role as Product Manager.

Assessing the next opportunity

Make sure that they have product / market fit. There will be no point
in trying to grow if this has not been found. You want to understand
how they make decisions. This can be difficult to ask because if you
do many people will answer, “based on data”. But this don’t really
answer the question. You want to know more. For instance, some
companies have the marketing department controlling everything
and for some companies, product makes the final decisions. You’ll
want to find out who you’ll report to.

Questions:
Will growth have a voice at the executive meetings? Understand
culture – are they at the office all day? Do they have other interests?

Demonstrating value

You’ll want to show that you can think through challenges. You’ll want
to have an answer when someone asks you what you’re going to work
on first. You should have some kind of structured thought into what
you’ll do in the first 30 days to get results for the business. Show that
you can think strategically – “I think that if you do this… this will
happen”. She even mentioned utilizing Sean Ellis’ ICE model for
prioritizing experimentation. 40
 Acknowledgements
Cody has had the priviledge of gathering insight and
recommendations, during the development of this handbook, from
many amazing people. This project wouldn’t have even occurred if it
wasn’t for the encouragement of others.

He would like to give a big thanks to the Tradecraft community.

Thanks to everyone that helped out in ways big and small. All of the
thoughts, suggestions, quick tutorials, etc were more than one could
of asked for. Thanks, especially, to Graham and Brett Hunter for the
advice, push and encouragement in making this happen.

Finally, this handbook wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for

the kindness and generosity of all the great marketing minds who
were interviewed. To all the marketers, thank you for your time,
thanks you for your thoughts, and thank you for your candor.

41
 About Cody
Cody is a digital marketer currently in the Bay Area. He is a recent
graduate from Tradecraft, where he focused on learning and
practicing growth marketing, along with a number of other talented
marketers, after previously heading up marketing for an early stage
startup out of 500startups.

Cody feels at home while marketing, improving tactics, and learning

more about an ever evolving profession. He’s very interested in the
fintech and healthtech space, but is open to breakthrough
companies solving for important problems, regardless of industry.

© 2015 Cody Juric 42