Just exactly how do you build a world-class SaaS marketing team? We caught up with Frida Ahrenby, CMO at GetAccept, to hear how she’s scaled GetAccept’s marketing org from a team of 3 in Sweden to a global team of 25 marketers spread across multiple international markets.
How to get started on scaling your team
According to Frida, GetAccept was originally very sales-oriented and focused heavily on outbound sales. Outbound sales, while a great tactic, can only get you so far — so, they needed to figure out another way to scale further.
When Frida joined, she had a clear objective: Building an inbound machinery to support the outbound sales.
She began by building a marketing team ready for growth. The marketing team was contributing around 15% to the ARR back when she started, so she set out to get that number up to 50% during her first year at the company.
“Of course, I had to figure out how to build a marketing team to support that,” she explains.
She started with a 3-person team that was heavily focused on content, organic social media, and events. One of the first roles Frida then proceeded to hire for was a performance marketer, to ensure visibility, kick off paid acquisition activities, and boost SEO.
Then, once the website traffic grew, it was time for her to hire a web manager to handle their website and ensure it was optimized.
“These were the first two hires I made one or two months after I started,” Frida says.
Building brand awareness and tackling positioning were the next things on the list. She quickly realized there was some work to be done on the brand itself.
So, a designer was brought onto the team to ensure and develop the brand platform further.
Because GetAccept was growing and spreading to new markets quickly, it was important to hire local marketers to ensure that everything that needed to be localized would be localized.
“It was still a team of 12, 11 people, so they could still all report to me,” she says. “It wasn’t until the end of 2020 that we came to the conclusion that the team has grown so much that we need to see how to restructure the team.”
The team was eventually restructured into five sub-teams. Three of these were global teams: content, brand, and partner marketing, and then two regional demand gen teams: one for Europe and one for the US.
This was the opportune time to bring in team leads to ensure that the teams can function smoothly. This happened at the beginning of 2021.
“Today, I have five global sub-teams and two regional sub-teams,” she goes on to say. “Now we also have a web and CRO team, and a product marketing team.”
🔥 Want to consume more of our content? Try this blog post on the importance of brand in B2B SaaS growth.
What to look for when hiring top marketers — and how to keep them
“We have a thorough recruitment process,” Frida explains.
Their process consists of screening calls, several interviews, case interviews, and even personality tests.
GetAccepts wants to make sure that each candidate meets with their potential future colleagues during the recruitment process, with a focus on the competence in question as well as cultural fit.
“We have a very clear GetAccept culture, and we want to make sure that the person we hire connects to that,” she explains. “I would say that is one of the important things we look for.”
But also, they are a global company looking to hire people from different backgrounds, different experiences, and so on. It’s important to get different kinds of perspectives and ideas in.
“On the marketing team solely, we now have people from nine different countries, speaking 15 different languages. I think that’s pretty cool.”
GetAccept also has a clear success review process. They are done every year with every employee.
The employee and their supervisor will go through their performance and discuss how they wish to develop. This is then closely monitored throughout the year to ensure everyone can develop in the direction they wish to develop in.
They also have an internal mentoring program where everyone can sign up to be either a mentor or mentee.
“For example, if you’re on the marketing team, you might want to be mentored by someone from the product team,” she explains. “This way, you can learn more about the product. Or on the sales team to understand more about the sales process.”
Listen to the full episode to hear more about the culture at GetAccept — including being energetic, positive, friendly and open-minded — as well as Frida’s answers to our fast five challenge. Frida also shares her views on sales and marketing alignment, one of our favorite topics.
🔥 Psst! What growth metrics should you be reporting to your CFO? Find out in this blog post.
TL;DR
In this episode, we cover:
- How GetAccept scaled their marketing team, in what order, and why
- How all their teams work together
- What to look for when hiring top marketers
- How to nurture talent and enable marketers to grow their careers within your company
- An insight into the culture within GetAccept’s marketing team
- How to get your marketing team working well and aligned with your product & sales teams
Enjoy the show! ❤️
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Links
GetAccept >> www.getaccept.com
Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg >> www.goodreads.com/book/show/16071764-lean-in
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Advance B2B >> www.advanceb2b.com
Follow The Growth Hub on Twitter >> twitter.com/SaaSGrowthHub
Follow Edward on Twitter >> twitter.com/NordicEdward
