6: A counterintuitive method to excel when leading a new marketing team — Ben Sperry, Marketing Manager at Place

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GUEST BACKGROUND

Ben Sperry leads the marketing department at Place – makers of an agile finance platform built on Salesforce. In his first six months with Place, Ben grew inbound demand by over 400%. Ben has also held various sales and marketing positions at Gartner and is a Teach For America alum.

MAIN INSIGHT

When starting at a new company, minimize the assumptions you make based on your experiences at previous organizations.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. The great thing about performance marketing is that you have all the metrics necessary to assess everything with enough data clinically
2. Depending on volume – a typical campaign can be assessed after 45 days upon launch
3. Speak the language of your target audience by collaborating with your colleagues or interviewing current clients

PRACTICAL STEPS

1. Approach any marketing role at an early-stage company with humility
2. Familiarize yourself with the company’s objective in the short, medium and long term
3. Minimize the assumption and acknowledge the known and unknown
4. Identify the strategy you’re going to use to achieve the objective and execute it with confidence
5. Assess your strategy/campaign clinically once you have enough data
6. Tweak your strategy to achieve the metrics that you set

TIPS FOR SUCCESS

1. Stay flexible on your marketing tactics and strategy
2. Having a hypothesis is excellent but always minimize the assumption of what’s going to work and what’s not
3. Collaborate with your colleague that spends a lot of time interacting with your clients