We were series A, a team of ~5 in marketing, and 70-100 people in the company. Buffer was technically B2B, but we have a a B2C2B motion so we borrowed a lot of inspiration from B2C and oriented this role in more of that direction.

We didn't have a sales team and so all of our growth was through product-led growth. A lot of the growth marketing job descriptions were very B2B focused; you need to know how to manage a sales funnel and market really deep classic B2B playbooks.

But we needed someone with a more of a traditional growth background and the way that we saw it manifest in the B2C space. You're really focused on LTV, you're focused on pricing and monetization and activation, and a bit more of the user health metrics down funnel. My marketing team was accountable for all of growth in that sense.

And it wasn't just to get leads in the door, it was to actually get people into the product and using the product and succeeding with the product in a similar way as we saw on the B2C side where you're focused on getting those individual folks in and helping them to expand and then eventually take the software with them to a new job. So that's the final B of the B2C2B.

A lot of candidates had most of these skills except for the copywriting. A lot of the skills and experience skewed towards strategy and implementation but less so on the more the softer skills of writing and creation. That was a more rare skillset to find.

What were were asking this person to do was everything from creating website copy to landing page copy to initial product onboarding copy. Sometimes there's lifecycle tests that need you mock up quick email copy. In the way that our company was organized, we found this role worked really closely with engineering and product folks who don't necessarily have that copy skillset. Design reported into Product and they had the design skillset, but not the content writing skills. So it was important for us to have someone who was comfortable with that.

Growth originally lived in product and not marketing but it wasn't working out there. So we thought it was time to try it in marketing and we had that discussion with product and others.

The folks that we put in the role in product were more niche-focused into building features to drive growth rather than a holistic acquisition/monetization/retention lens into growth. It was a bit narrow and didn't quite deliver the results we wanted. We needed something that was a bit more connected to our go-to-market motion and product was so far downstream of all that that it just wasn't as effective as it we were hoping it would be.

The person we hired started with pricing work and optimization work at the top of the funnel. I know there was some skepticism of how well can a marketing person actually run experiments inside the product? But was something we were we worked through when I was there and ended up being successful.

LTV is a pretty expansive goal. It's a very cross-functional goal. It's everything from getting people to sign up and to pay, and then to keep paying and to not leave you. Basically the whole journey. A lot of this goal hints at being able to work really well cross-functionally, especially being comfortable with Engineering. It's a much more traditional growth role in that sense of, you need to be willing to flex in that direction.

And then the rest of the goals here are around those different points along the journey. Are you taking people from hitting the website to actually signing up? Are those people signing up for trials and at what rate are those trials converting into paid plans? Are they activating once they get into the product and are using it? How are things going over time? Are they engaged? Are they at risk? Are they churning? Things like that. So phrased those as the inputs to LTV.

We asked a lot of this person. Partially it's an outcome of the fact that this person needs to be comfortable doing all these things, but knowing what to do at what time. It's not that every week you'll be doing all of these different things, but over the course of the next year you may need to get deep on pricing tests this week and you may need to jump into research another week, or growth loops or website performance.

So it's a bit of knowing how to do all that. And then since it's a "Head of" role they also need to enable people to go and support you in that work. If it's website, for instance, do you know how to work with an agency on that or hire someone who's great at that and to scale your records that way?

And so it's intentionally a long list, but it's that way to find someone who's comfortable doing all those things and able to prioritize what to do at what point in time.

I've found that growth roles really appeal to generalist and generalists often can see themselves in so many different things. A long list of things also appeals to the kind of person we wanted and helped us qualify and disqualify people at the very beginning.

Kevan Lee

I wrote this job description when the Buffer Marketing team was 5 people. The company was without a sales team and this role would be in charge of driving product-led growth.

Role description: Head of Growth Marketing, B2C

You will have a sizable impact on the growth of [Company Name]— how we create a high-converting, highly-polished website experience; how we understand and optimize our marketing levers to unlock growth; and how we approach pricing and monetization so that we’re perfectly positioned for the needs of our customers.

Ultimately, we want this role to make a positive impact on LTV

. Since LTV can be a lagging indicator and is influenced by many factors and many teams, we will look at leading indicators and secondary metrics as goals. These include:

% of engaged customers, at-risk customers, churned customers

You will contribute to marketing strategy by driving research and models of our growth loops and channels

You will create quant models and Mixpanel dashboards that show the health of website metrics, lifecycle metrics, and revenue opportunities

You’ll analyze and report on your progress to share learnings with the full [Company] team as well as key stakeholders in marketing, product, and finance

You will connect growth KPIs to the customer experience, and you will show good judgment in optimizing for customers over profit and “doing the right thing” over growth hacks

You will own the performance and quality of the website

You will experiment regularly with high-impact tests that increase revenue You will drive monetization at [Company Name], including constant research, testing, iteration, and value alignment with [Company’s] pricing plans and the needs of our customers. You will collaborate on this work with key stakeholders in product and finance

You will coordinate regular pricing tests on the website and model out the impact of your pricing work

You will develop and implement various pricing changes in order to adapt to business goals and market changes. You will evaluate the results and communicate the outcomes.

You will conduct constant customer research around monetization and pricing. This includes surveys, cohort analysis, and segmentation of our customer types and use cases.

You will work with key stakeholders on pricing strategy and will share your findings, advocate for change, and lead projects. You’ll ensure pricing is aligned with product strategy and revenue requirements

You will iterate regularly with improvements to landing pages, including new copy, new positioning, and new signup paths. You will have support from design & engineering on this.

You will be a go-to copywriting resource for the team, writing your own awesome copy to improve our pages and helping teammates as needed with copy improvements across the website and the lifecycle

You will monitor key website metrics related to conversion, performance, and traffic

You will report on website metrics and speak strategically to the website’s place in the customer journey

As part of these areas, you will manage experimentation, working with the data team and product & marketing leaders to ensure a disciplined, scientific, and adaptable method of learning.

You’ll organize, project manage, and communicate experiments across the team to share your work on our website, signup paths, and pricing page.

You’ll organize your work transparently and manage our experimentation and website projects project trackers to keep the team informed.

You will use your knowledge and context with growth, revenue, and conversion to help inform strategy and roadmap items.

You will keep a pulse on product team initiatives as well as marketing goals so that your projects always align with broader initiatives.

5+ years experience in a data-driven marketing role

Background with SaaS, HTML/CSS/JS, SQL, data science preferred

You’re data-driven and analytical, with a desire to learn and an attention to detail You’re highly advanced in knowledge of all things SaaS metrics (LTV, MRR, churn)

You have a history of optimizing conversion rates throughout the entire customer journey from acquisition to activation to revenue to retention

You’re fluent in growth loops, including the primary [Company] loops of XYZ

You think strategically about what changes to make and are able to adjust rapidly with changes to the market, changes to the product, and changes to goals and timelines

You report and iterate on results in a clear, confident, and approachable way

You are a compelling copywriter who knows that good copywriting is data-backed, customer-first, and creative.

You have a solid knowledge of UX patterns and customer experience best practices.

You are a collaborator. You know how to build strong relationships with those you work with, regardless of role, team, or title.

You know how to communicate with technical teams on experiment implementations. You can talk shop with data scientists.

You’re adaptable and aren’t tied to a strict definition of your job.

You’re a teacher. Your learnings will be impactful. You know how to share them widely to increase the IQ of our entire team.

Head of Growth Marketing, B2C Job Description at Buffer

Role description: Head of Growth Marketing, B2C

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