When we started off 2017, Peerfit was a team of 16, and our marketing department a team of two, with a new hire on the way mid-January. By the time February rolled around, we were a three-person marketing department.
Then, I was off on maternity leave, bringing the team back down to two running the Peerfit marketing machine. Of course, I returned a few months later, bringing the team back up to three. Sounds like a rollercoaster, doesn’t it?
Through all this growth (and reduction), we managed to help contribute to 800% company wide growth for 2017.
Our marketing department brought on a fourth person mid-year to complete the “Wolfpack”. With that addition, we were able to create a team that functioned like a 10+ person department; communicating as if we were sharing the same cubicle, developing and executing on integrated strategies that are comparable to national brands that have been established for years.
So, how did we do it?
We’ve all read a million and one articles about marketing in a startup environment. But how do you build a department and streamline processes and practices to get you past the startup phase? Every team might have a different response, but here’s how we managed it:
We were scrappy…
But not like the little dog from the Scooby-Doo cartoons. We were resourceful. We worked with what we had (limited budgets and a small team) while still trying to reach all of Peerfit’s complex customer channels.
We evolved from the T-Shaped marketer…
…into something that resembled a letter from the Balinese alphabet.
Coming from different backgrounds, but with a huge passion for marketing, we all chose and focused on different areas of channel expertise. Since we were a small team, we each chose more than one. We built on marketing foundations together to ensure that we were covering the wide gamut in order to be a more diverse and complete department.
Our team evolved the T-Shaped marketer concept to help support our startup environment and stay agile and flexible as we grew. This concept helped continue to steer us to stay focused on specific areas of marketing where we would see the most value company-wide.
We pivoted our strategy… and then pivoted again…
Then another pivot, into a pirouette, down into a jazz split, only to then repeat the dance to another tune all over again. We weren’t afraid to fail because we knew it would open up more ideas and opportunities.
We realized how sexy data can be…
When efforts are geared around what the analytics tell us. Which came in handy for all those pivots.
We focused on building trust…
Because your favorite brands out there aren’t your favorites because they have the best product. It’s because they are dependable and trustworthy. So this became a cornerstone of our brand. Without saying it out loud, our community knows they can count on us. That we are honest and dependable. That we are trustworthy.
Tony Hsieh said it best: marketers should be less concerned with generating buzz and more concerned with building engagement and trust.
Our users count on us to provide them with a great service from sale, to integration, to rollout, to engagement. We then count on them to help us improve our product so we are building what our users want, not what we think they need.
Our marketing department is constantly moving. We’ve kept the conversation around Peerfit a steady hum via our channels to our community’s ears and lips.
Having recently closed our Series B at $8M, plus some additional funds exchanged, we are humbled. We closed out 2017 with 40 team members, massive studio and market growth, and some additional announcements that are coming very soon.
And our marketing team is just getting started.
Maria Juan is the Director of Marketing for Peerfit. She is a scrappy Googler and serial strategist, welcoming daydreams as a potential next big idea.
