This one was this was one of the latest roles that we hired for our team, around the 15th person. The company was 100-150 people at the time: series A, almost series B.

We didn't have a lot of comps for audience marketers out in the market, so we made up a lot of this stuff ourselves. We were looking for a communication manager or social media manager, and a brand strategist all mixed into one.

This person rolled up into the Head of Brand Marketing. And their goals are around audience development, distribution and amplification of what we're trying to do, so it's multi-channel in nature. We wanted to elevate the idea of this not only being a social media manager. But a social media manager plus all these other things that you would get to do and get to be part of.

It's changing the outcome from we want you to drive performance on social media, to we want you to drive performance of getting our name out there however you choose to do that. Whether that's through social or community or communications, etc. You get to make that decision and play that role."

This one was this was one of the latest roles that we hired for our team, around the 15th person. The company was 100-150 people at the time: series A, almost series B.

We didn't have a lot of comps for audience marketers out in the market, so we made up a lot of this stuff ourselves. We were looking for a communication manager, social media manager, and a brand strategist all mixed into one.

This person rolled up into the Head of Brand Marketing and their goals are a lot around audience development, distribution and amplification of what we're trying to do. So it's multi-channel in nature. We wanted to elevate the idea of this is not only being a social media manager. But a social media manager plus all these other things that you would get to do and get to be part of.

It's changing the outcome from we want you to drive performance on social media, to we want you to drive performance of getting our name out there however you choose to do that. Whether that's through social or community or communications, etc. You get to make that decision and play that role.

At this stage in the company we were changing up our JD boiler plates. We ended up hiring someone from a direct-to-consumer business for this role. And so the intent with the more casual language was to make it more broadly appealing to get someone with a bit of a different background in.

We got a wide variety of applicants, but we didn't get a high volume. In hindsight it was probably because it was such a new type of title. People who are on a career trajectory might not want to take a detour into audience marketer if no one knows what that is. And so we had a lower volume, but the quality was really high. We had some really interesting backgrounds from a bunch of different industries.

There's three things I look for when I hire folks. I look for curiosity, drive, and empathy. If someone comes into the role with those three things, almost regardless of their experience, I feel really great about them being able to come in and contribute at a high level.

Curiosity is: are they interested in the work that they're doing? I care a lot about folks who are intrinsically motivated by their work because I don't really believe in extrinsic motivation being something that's lasting and powerful. So they need to be naturally curious about the work that they're doing, especially at a startup because the work is so different and it changes so often. If you're not curious, then it becomes a lot more work for me as a manager to show you things and point things out and you don't quite learn as fast.

Drive is a big one and I found this to be especially true in remote environments. It's up to you to set your day and your pace. I build teams with a results-based work environment. As long as you're getting the work done and the results are coming in great, do it however you want. So you have to be naturally self-driven in a way. And there's something about, not necessarily the classic ambition of climbing a corporate ladder, but ambition to be the best version of yourself at work. And it's on me as a manager to create an environment where you feel safe and capable of doing that work the best you can do it. So ideally, bringing folks in who thrive in environments like that, who are driven and self-motivated and eager to come in and be proud of the work that they do. I find that to be a really good mix.

Empathy goes a couple different ways for me. Both empathy for your team and the people that you work with. Are you empathetic to understanding what it's like to work with you and to put yourself in the shoes of the people you spend so many hours with every day and every week? I think that makes a really lovely work environment when you bring a lot of empathetic people together.

And then on the marketing side, I think empathy's also important because of needing to have empathy for the customer and the audience. I didn't ever really think of myself as a marketer and a lot of the reason why was because marketing for me felt icky and gross. I don't want to go sell people things they didn't need needed all day. But I think part of that was because I had often been marketed to by un-empathetic campaigns. On the flip side of that, you can make marketing can feel really good and inclusive and welcoming if it's done through a lens of empathy.

So having folks on the team who understand that and think naturally in that direction fits really well with the type of marketing that I want to be doing and known for.

You won't see these traits in the JDs, of course, but those are the behaviors that I'm looking for within the process

For me, personally, all of my marketing skills were self-taught and learned on the job. So I tend to believe that any marketing skill can be learned if you have the right attitude and mindset for it.

There are some things that are need-to-have in order to hit the ground running and do the work to a certain level at first. But the bonus things are the nice-to-haves, but nice-to-haves that we could teach you over time and they would be additive to your role.

When I think of demand gen for this role, we weren't going give this person a lead number. But the concepts behind demand generation - how you go out there and use different channels and attract people in a way that you have a means to get back in touch with them and stay connected with them - were really important for this role.

I didn't necessarily want to exclude people who see demand gen and get scared off. But to say, please still apply. So it's part of my philosophy that you can train folks up into this stuff. But also not wanting to scare people off if that stuff didn't resonate with them and their experience.

How I learned was that whatever I was told to do that week, I probably didn't know how to do it, I had to go learn it. So it was quite organic at first. But then there was a point in time where I thought, I could see this skill being really helpful for the business, or I could see this being helpful for my career. Then it was a bit more self-directed learning. I took some early Reforge classes and gained a lot of confidence there. And so my learning did take a bit more of a strategic shape but at first it was just whatever you're asking me to do, I need to go figure out how to do it.

Kevan Lee

I wrote this job description to help find a marketer that could wear many hats: communications manager, social media manager and brand strategist. 

We’re looking for someone to focus full-time on delivering value to a growing audience. You’ll focus on getting our brand in front of a new customer segment through content distribution, organic and paid promotion, and creative campaigns across social media, search, email, partnerships, and any other channel you believe in. You’ll be asked to grow our existing audience and establish a new one. You’ll help us shore up lifecycle marketing at the top of the funnel.

Every new piece of content reaches 1000s of people, thanks to you

Reproducible playbooks for distributing content via paid social, display ads, email, and search

A fantastic, on-brand social media presence that makes people go, “Whoa” Low CPMs and CPCs, getting lower every day

Build an audience development strategy from the ground up.

Create a 10x social media presence for us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn: high-quality, on-brand, consistent, delightful, and engaging.

Own, execute, and deliver a paid social media strategy that drives reach, traffic, and awareness

Manage all paid sponsorships and display advertising across email, events, podcasts, and web

Take over our SEM efforts and improve the processes for search advertising

Contribute to a cross-functional lifecycle marketing strategy, and execute on your ideas for improving TOFU and nurture messaging across multiple audience segments

Work with partners (as needed) to launch new campaigns and find new opportunities for promotion, distribution, and brand expansion

Manage the advertising budget and allocate resources based on performance

Measure and report your progress. Educate the team on how distribution is performing

Discover the best channels and best messaging to reach DTC marketers

Oversee testing roadmap, analysis, and implementation of learnings. Continually improve organic and paid distribution

Put together creative as needed for campaigns

This role will work closely with the content and brand marketing teams to increase our footprint among target customers.

You see yourself as a T-shaped marketer with core competencies in a handful of areas but also with baseline skills across a multitude of marketing disciplines.

You have a firm understanding of demand generation funnels, funnel conversion and the tactics used at each stage within the funnel

You understand CPA, ROI, LTV, payback periods.

You have an easy fluency with how different metrics affect one another.

You have a strong handle on growth experiments: specifically, can devise a sound experiment in order to learn with incomplete data.

You have a growth and data-driven mindset (testing, measuring, iterating)

You have experience designing and creating display ads that convert

You have a proven track record running campaigns to lower CPM cost

You have impeccable organization, creative ideas and proven execution

You are a marketing tech expert (Adwords, HubSpot, and more)

You are a strategic thinker who understands how the pieces fit together

You thrive on flexibility and taking on new projects outside of your comfort zone.

You can consider, play out, and weigh alternative scenarios based on strategic objectives.

You have expertise in strategies, executing on the plan and measuring campaign performance

You have at least 3 to 5 years of B2B demand generation experience (bonus if you also have SaaS experience)

Bonus: Have built demand gen processes from scratch and are familiar with demand gen best practices in B2B SaaS context

Bonus: Relentlessly sets aggressive short- and long-term goals and possesses a strong internal drive to achieve them.

Audience Marketer Job Description at Buffer

Job Description: Audience Marketer

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