August 7, 2024
What
Kuba and Wiktor offered me a chance to join Netguru in 2015 asking for “growth”. I had no idea what “growth” was back in the day (I knew what revenue was), but I really tried hard (my poor early team members). Result were different tactic, ideas, playbooks that, sometimes, brought in good results. Good times.
Artefacts of work created by the most lovely team I ever had pleasure to work with that lead between 2015 and 2020 to skyrocketing growth of the Netguru.
Why
The company aimed to capitalize on the growth period of the entire software development category and secure a fair market share. Despite initial "organic" success, Netguru needed to professionalize, structure, and scale its operations to maintain momentum.
How
Oh boy, where do I start! So many things, that I will be trying to update from time to time.
- Team. One of our first goals was to define a growth team strategy. How would we build a growth team? What people did we need, and how should we structure it? It was quite an adventure over the years, especially since I had no previous experience setting up B2B marketing teams. Initially, I focused on the wrong things—reading blog posts about growth hacks and primarily implementing viral loops focused on B2C businesses or e-commerce. It took a few years before I understood how the team should be set up. I learned which functions were crucial and should be internalized, which to outsource to agencies, and where to keep the core team. I was incredibly fortunate to work with Ola Prejs, who became my right-hand person and ultimately the head of growth herself. I'm deeply grateful for her support throughout this adventure.
- G2M. The second main mission that I remember from those years was to find and define the channels that could work for us, how to use them, and the associated processes, KPIs, and best practices. Essentially, it was the foundation of our go-to-market strategy. I talk a bit about this in podcast with Romeo (check links at the bottom).
- New brand. We had to rebrand ourselves. By rebranding, I don't mean just the usual suspects like logos, corporate identity, colors, or presentations. It was more about our entire messaging—building our identity, establishing a tone of voice, and determining how we'd communicate this brand across various channels, key personnel, and other collateral. I'm writing about this in more detail in the Netguru brand section because it was a substantial project in itself.
- High intent traffic. One of the things I quickly understood and found to be a valuable investment was the importance of our visibility in search channels. We needed to address not only low-intent educational inquiries but also to be visible on high-intent landing pages. Whenever someone was looking for a company like Nant Guru, we had a comprehensive plan in place with clear action points, a. clearmeasurement system, and well-defined ideas. I believe this. plan is still being utilized by the teamto some extent. We. achieved great results, navigating substantial traffic,and to this day, we continue to generate a significant number of leads from this channel, which I am really proud of.
- Allbound (ABM). It’s funny because I now understand this much better than I did in the past. In a large agency, the primary function of marketing, especially for high-ticket, expensive services, was to enable the sales team to effectively deliver the message to customers. This can be described as sales enablement and brand-building activities. We decided to adopt account-based marketing, essentially partnering with the Business Development team to identify a good list ofIdeal Customer Profiles (ICPs) and buying personas within those accounts, and aimed to deliver a clear message and marketing. program in collaboration with the sales team. The start of this was very challenging, and to this day, it remains somewhat difficult to ensure that both teams collaborate effectively. However, one thing I am really proud of is that, out of the initial 25 companies on our list, we won 10 of them using the precise tactics we designed. Nothing makes me prouder than seeing the results from ideas we believed were good.
- Disruption platform, global events
- Hidden Heroes
- Public relations - Youtube, awards, press
- Product Hunt launches
- Marketing CRM (Hubspot) operationalization
- Check these slides