How to start a growth marketing career in 2023 - Your step-by-step guide

Let's face it, growth marketing jobs are on the rise. Currently, there are approximately 116,000 open jobs for growth marketing on Glassdoor. In the US alone, more than 70K startups were established as of January 2022. And all they need is to make sure they grow fast. And they are ready to allocate enough money to marketing to make sure they actually grow. As an example, let's talk about SaaS companies. During their first three years of existence, SaaS companies typically invest from 80 to 120% of their whole sales revenue in marketing. So if you're just at the beginning of your marketing career, or if you want to change your job, this video will help you land your first growth marketing job. So I prepared this detailed mind map containing 8 steps anyone can take in order to land their first growth marketing job. And let's go through the steps together. One important disclaimer before we kick things off. I'm going to share the tips to land your first growth marketing job without a university degree. So we're skipping the university part entirely. So let's go. Step number one, basics. And it's very important to make sure you're clear on the very basics before you start your job hunt. First of all, you have to decide whether you want to concentrate on B2B or B2C world. I know that especially at the very beginning of your career with zero marketing experience, it may be really difficult to make this choice. But trust me, it's really important to focus on that first, because this will sort of shape your next direction in your career. Because for example, if you have some experience in B2B marketing, it will be way easier for you to search other jobs in this industry. And at the same time, it will be way more difficult for you to switch to the B2C world in case you want to. Also, location. In today's weird and crazy world, there are a lot of remote job opportunities, obviously. But of course, you have to decide if this is something you actually want to go for. Because I know that remote work is not for everyone. So first things first, decide if you want to focus on your country, on your area. For example, you live in Finland and you want to focus on the Nordics. Or for example, again, if you're located in Finland, you would be happy to land a job at a company that is located in the US. It doesn't matter for you. Or for example, you can decide that, okay, remote is definitely not my cup of tea. So I want to concentrate specifically on my country. In that case, you should start building your network. You should start researching the companies specifically in your area. For example, follow them on LinkedIn, at least. The next step related to the very basics, follow the brands that you love, that you're passionate about. Coming back to my very first point, let's say that you've decided that you want to focus only on B2B companies. In that case, go ahead and follow some B2B brands that you love. How I started my journey? I realized that I'm actually interested in B2B SaaS companies. So I started following various B2B SaaS businesses, like for example, STM Rush, I don't know, HubSpot. I was checking their blog all the time, their website, people who work for this company to understand what they do in their marketing. And this obviously helped me sort of to come up with a list of marketing skills that I need to nurture. Also, create your role model. In other words, there are obviously some outstanding marketers out there, especially from your favorite industry. So make sure you follow them again on LinkedIn. In the description below, I'm going to add a list of marketers that inspire me personally. Perhaps you can also follow them and check what kind of publications they make themselves, what kind of people they mention in their content. Step number two, find your niche. Growth marketer is typically a person who's wearing multiple hats. He or she is a jack of all trades. But of course, at the very beginning, you should focus on the very niche area of marketing because you can't be good at everything from the very beginning of your career, right? What I did in order to make sure that I pick my niche, when I just landed my first marketing job, I kind of look back, for example, at my school years, and I tried to remember what I was interested in when I was doing, I don't know, any kinds of school projects. So to me, it was writing essays. I really loved analyzing different kinds of literature, writing essays about it, discussing it with my literature teacher. And this way, I realized that content marketing would be the first thing that I should concentrate on at the very beginning of my career. Later on, of course, after producing a certain number of articles, after learning the basics of SEO, and it's important, it helped me to connect the importance of content marketing to other areas of marketing, to business goals in general, how content impacts revenue. And this is exactly what's going to happen to you. But first of all, you should pick your own niche. For you, it doesn't necessarily have to be content creation. Start with something I would say easier, maybe social media, easier cup of tea, or some design topics. Step number three, marketing courses. Even though I'm not a big fan of spending a lot of time on courses in order to grow as a professional, because I believe it all comes just with practice. But we're talking about a very junior marketer about you right now. So obviously, you have to start with at least some courses. So obviously, there are both free and paid courses. It all depends on your budget. It all depends on how much money you're ready to allocate and to invest in your future. But I would say that at least check out the courses from CXL. And they actually have a seven-day trial just for $1. I've also taken a couple of courses from them. And I would say they are quite good. And also, I really like the fact that they have a huge variety of courses from all possible areas of marketing. And since, if you follow my steps, you've already picked your niche, you can easily choose your topic of interest among all possible courses that CXL offers. By the way, I also have a video on my channel where we talk about different growth marketing courses. Feel free to check them out. But on top of that, there are a lot of great courses on Coursera, Udemy. Also, check out Google Analytics Academy, at least to get a basic understanding of Google Analytics, of the world of analytics in general. I highly recommend checking out Ahrefs and SEMrush Academy because they offer a lot of great material for SEO and content creation. Moving on. Now, while it's great to mention your courses, your certificate on your LinkedIn profile, on your CV and in all possible places, the next step should be actually building your portfolio and showcasing your practical skills. Because certificates alone won't help you land your job. Recruiters care about how you actually help businesses with real examples. I've already mentioned it in one of my previous videos, but here we have to kind of shamelessly steal tactics and strategies from designers, from data analysts, because for them, building a portfolio is a huge step in their recruitment process. And I've heard a lot of examples from my friends, for example, who landed their design or analytics jobs without even sending their CV. They only shared their portfolio and this was enough for recruiters. So how can you start building your portfolio? You can start with, for example, You can also create a blog, let's say on media, especially if you want to showcase your content marketing skills, this will be an incredible way to do so. You can also run your own YouTube channel. For example, you pick advertising as your marketing niche. In that case, you can create some tutorials on how to create LinkedIn ads, Facebook ads, I don't know, Instagram ads. And trust me, you don't need to have thousands of followers to make sure that your YouTube channel is a valid portfolio. Recruiters actually care about what you've done. At this point, they don't really care about how many followers you have. So I highly recommend considering a YouTube channel as an option. You can even build your own website where you can show how you actually build landing pages. You can showcase your copywriting skills. There are a lot of free website builders out there. So consider this option as well. The next step, it's kind of related to the previous step that I just talked about. So in the mind map, I even placed them within the same area. But anyways, the next step is to make sure you get your first hands-on experience. Obviously, your portfolio is already one step of doing so. But at the same time, I'd say it's the time to search for your very first opportunities with real businesses. So what you can do at this point, for example, check out freelance platforms such as Fiverr or Upwork. There are tons of businesses who search for people who can help them with just, you know, one small task. And this will be a very nice way for you to start your practical experience in the world of marketing and maybe even get some extra income at this point already. There are also tons of Slack communities with marketing professionals and business owners who search for junior marketers. And if you have some extra budget, you can even create your first ad. For example, if you create your YouTube channel or your blog, why not to advertise it, say, on LinkedIn? And yeah, a very important comment I want to add here, whatever you do at this point does not have to have the growth marketing title as such. Because like I said earlier, growth marketing is an area of marketing that requires experience in at least a few areas of marketing. The best way to actually get into growth marketing is to make sure that you're good at least at one or two areas of marketing. Now, the next step, make sure you always keep up with the latest marketing news and trends. And even though I sort of framed it as a separate step, I am convinced that this should go hand in hand with all the steps that I mentioned on this mind map, because marketing is all about constant learning. You will never know enough. Or actually, let me put it another way. If you work as a growth marketer, you'll eventually face a situation where you know that you don't know a lot of things. And unfortunately, there are a lot of mediocre content out there. That's why I really love following SaaS Reads. It's a weekly or bi-weekly newsletter. I'm going to place the link in the description below. Other resources that I can recommend are, for example, Supermetric blog, Ahrefs YouTube channel, in case you want to have diverse channels, not only written content. Also, the Growth Hub podcast. I think now they renamed it into SaaS. Also, the State of Demand Gen and a really good copy. And talking about podcasts, I've created a separate video where I talk about my most favorite growth marketing podcast. Make sure to check it out after watching this video. And now is the time to apply to your first internship. Of course, there might be some exceptions, and you'll be lucky enough to land your first job and keep the internship part. That would be an ideal scenario, but I would say a traditional way is first to have some kind of internship. And unfortunately, you have to be ready to have your internship as a non-paid one. This really lets me down a lot. I believe that any job should be paid, but that's the reality we have to face. A lot of internships are non-paid ones. And ta-da! The very final step, job application. It's time to apply to a real job, finally. Now, first of all, you have to nail your CV. I created a super detailed video following a CV template that helped me personally land marketing jobs. And actually, you have to keep your CV quite short and to the point. I've also helped a few people to kind of eliminate the clutter on their CVs. So in case you need help with your CV, feel free to reach out to me, and I'd be happy to have a one-to-one consultation to help you. At this point, you also have to make sure that you draft a very good cover letter. And I would say focus on your portfolio even more than actually your cover letter, because we are facing the trend where cover letters and even CVs are getting less and less important. So it's all about portfolio and your personal brand. You have to practice your interviews. A lot of junior marketers mistakenly suppose that, you know, they're going to apply to some place and they're going to land a job immediately. No, unfortunately, first, you have to go through a wave of rejection. So first of all, you have to sort of build this tolerance to being rejected. This is also a very important experience to have. With every interview, you just get better and better. You nailed your intro. You know how to respond to some common questions. And by the way, I've created another video on my channel where I talk about the top 25 most popular questions in any marketing job interview. So feel free to check them out. I also have a series of videos where I talk about growth marketing job interviews and how to answer some of the most popular and frequently asked questions. And in case you're considering a marketing job in the Nordics or a remote position, I'm also going to add a few links where you can find your first marketing job. That's it for today, guys. I hope this video helped at least some of you. Please make sure to subscribe to my channel because I'll be providing even more helpful content for fellow growth marketers. Thanks a lot for watching. And as usual, see you in my next video. Bye-bye.