Interview with Emmanuel, Growth Marketer at Bitnob

There’s work to be done, there is a north star metric to hit!

Mar 21, 2023

Hey! Hope your week is coming up well. Noticing’s latest conversation is with Emmanuel, Growth Marketer at Bitnob.

We talk about his marketing career, the stories we tell ourselves, his lifelong love for numbers, and his wealth of experience working in many different — yet overlapping — spheres of the marketing and tech industry.

We seemed to cover a lot of ground. I hope you find it interesting.

How are you doing, Emmanuel?

I'm doing fine, Lolade. Thanks for asking. Trust you are also doing fine.

Yes, I'm. This won’t hurt a bit (fingers crossed behind my back). So to start, what were you doing before becoming a growth marketer?

I'm not exactly sure how to answer this question before the war of "there’s no difference between (digital) marketing and growth marketing' start. But I went fully into 'marketing things' right after I dropped my NYSC Khaki in 2019.

Since then, I’ve worked at a couple of agencies as a performance marketing specialist, and now working as a growth marketer in the startup ecosystem.

Can you give us an introduction to your journey and experiences so far as a marketer?

Oh yes! I think I've had a great journey. In 2019, I applied for a content and client service role at Cerebre Media Africa.

The highlight of the interview for me was getting an entirely different role due to what some of my interviewers said. They made me see why I'd do better in the science of marketing than the art alone (something along those lines).

They engaged and we had a fantastic pros/cons discussion. The experience was efficient and fast. The team was enthusiastic about my candidacy and knowledgeable about my background.

I got the job and I resumed at the agency as a Digital Marketing Analyst, working on a couple of business verticals: banking and finance, Investment banking, and Health insurance among others. Side note: I worked on two top banks and I normally feel like someone from my family or friend must have seen an ad I ran for the brands. Haha 😂

Haha! May the feeling never die.

Thank you! So, I left Cerebre to join Webcouper, another top agency (the first Google Premier Advertising Partner in West Africa) in 2021. There, I worked on one of the top Telcos in the continent and other great brands. Then I left the agency side for the client side in 2022. I joined a FinTech brand that’s changing the narrative of how Africans take part in the global economy leveraging bitcoin and its technology; Bitnob.

To be honest, it’s been a lot, demanding, stretching, and also rewarding because it’s great to know and see the result of your input to businesses in real-time.

You transitioned from the agency side to the client side. How's it been for you? And is jumping to this side of the fence a magical cure for the challenges of agency life?

I don’t miss agency. But if I were to start my career all over again, would I start from an agency? A big YES! Agency affords a lot of experience and learning.

Yes, you'd work on multiple brands but the learnings are extremely valuable. I'm “enjoying” my new challenge on the client side. It’s great to compress all of one’s learning over the years to push a particular brand. Trust me, it’s not a walk in the park. Whether agency or client, work dey! There’s work to be done, there is a north star metric to hit!

Will I say it is a magical cure for the challenges of agency life? Not exactly, because there are always KPIs to hit, the only difference for me is that at some point in my career, I decided to build a business rather than work on various brands at the same time. Of course, it’s no news that agency life can be stressful, I do not miss that part. Different strokes for different people, I know people who will always choose agency life over and over, and that’s fine. I just think everyone needs to decide on what fulfilment is to them and stick to it.

Let me seize this opportunity to say this: client—agency relationship needs to be handled with empathy. Some things/requests wouldn’t make sense to you until you cross sides (from any of the two sides), many factors are beyond the contact person’s control but one thing can be controlled, how conversations are held, we are first humans, so empathy and courtesy should be constant.

Could you tell us about the most exciting project you've worked on and how you were involved with it exactly?

I've worked on a couple of interesting projects but one still stands out for me. It was the digital campaign I worked on at my first workplace. The campaign was for one of the top 5 banks in Nigeria (FUGAZ) and the budget for the digital campaign was in the hundreds of millions for 12 months. Bruh, it was such a “crazy time” for me. That’s the first time in my career I'm working on such a huge budget and I'm grateful for the opportunity given by the management and the guidance provided.

I was actively part of the strategy and stakeholders meeting with both client and the media partner involved – Google. I also worked on keyword research, ad copy, targeting, and campaign execution.

One interesting thing is that when I left (I left the agency before the campaign ended), my new agency had an account (one of the big Telcos in Nigeria) that spends half of that (my then “biggest budget”) every month. Just like the African proverb, “na pikin wey never waka well go think say na im father farm big pass”.

How many years of experience do you've as a growth marketer?

Most of all my experiences (performance marketing) have always had a direct impact on the business bottom line, I’ve been doing this for 4 years now. However, took up the growth marketer job title when I joined my current workplace, which is a year now.

In these years, what’s the biggest disappointment or surprise in terms of something you thought would work, but didn’t?

There have been many challenges and disappointments!! (that exclamation should give you an idea). However, the one that still stands out is the “hundreds of millions” naira campaign I spoke about earlier.

I did everything necessary and my iOS ad group wasn’t delivering result and I needed to troubleshoot, don’t forget the budget was big, the client needs result, and I need to report to my boss (If my boss were still doing everything, why are they now paying me, so I can’t even be asking questions all the time, we have a media partner to manage), the tension was high.

I was researching all I needed to do… To cut the long story short, mentorship came through for me. Pelumi Oyetimein is worthy of a mention at this point, he’s one of the most badass marketers I know to date. He provided the needed guidance. I will always cherish that help and access. He jumped on Google meet call with me and indulged my request to travel down to where he was days later.

What are the top three areas (marketing or otherwise) you have the most expertise?

- Performance Marketing (anything paid ads).
- Digital Strategy.
- Interpersonal skills.

How early in your life can you tie interests or experiences back to these 3 things you’re great at?

From a very young age, I have always had a thing for writing. I literally had a note I do write quotes and all (quotes dey hot that year). I’ve also been inquisitive since childhood, I ask a lot of questions.

How do you fill the gaps when you’re not doing the various day and night jobs?

Surfing the internet, reading a book, catching trends on Twitter, and sleeping.

What’s one hot take you have that can double as career advice?

Your colleagues (office people) can actually be family depending on how you understand it… Wait, don’t stone me yet, hear me out. I know there are different conversations around, “your colleagues aren’t your friends or family, do your job, get paid and go home”, I agree. There’s also “the company will always look out for themselves when the times are down, they might not think twice before laying you off, so look out for yourself too”, this is also valid and I agree.

But, the way I approach it is based on a line of thought Ized shared a few years ago, “the three things you gain working in a corporate organization are network (people), experience, and money. You only lose money when you leave”.

Relationships are currencies…build quality ones, you will need them now or later. To create a balance to this, I know some have worked with not-so-reasonable people, in that case, you will need to act accordingly. Like I once told a friend, leaving a workplace sometimes is not the issue but how you do it. I don’t want to work in a place I can’t visit after I leave, hence I leave well except the employer just wants to be unreasonable. Before my hot take gets burnt on the cooker, let me stop here.

Thanks, Chief. Name two products you can’t do without and tell me why.

1. My phone: I can carry out most of my activities on it. From work, music, bible studying, etc.

2. My Laptop: Of course, there are some things the phone won’t do efficiently, that's where the PC comes in.

Pick a random video and tell me about it.

In a report released by the World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa remains the most expensive region to send money to where sending $200 costs an average of 8.2%. It’s outrageous, the charges people pay to send money within Africa are quite high and this is one of the solutions Bitnob solves. Why send $200 while the recipient gets $180 when you can do this at a lower fee?

With the newly introduced transfer feature on the Bitnob app, you can send money within 8 African countries at little to no cost. The interesting thing is that both the sender and receiver don’t need to touch bitcoin when sending or receiving the money. You can send money from your Bitnob wallet here in Nigeria straight to the recipient’s mobile money wallet in Ghana and vice-versa, money from the sender enters directly into the recipient's local bank account or mobile wallet. This applies to all the African countries available on the app.

We also launched our virtual MasterCard recently, you can now pay for your subscriptions and shop online without limit using Bitnob.

What do you read/listen to/watch to stay fresh on news, trends, etc, about your industry?

Podcasts:
1. Lenny’s Podcast
2. Afrobility: Africa Tech & Business

Newsletters:
1. Demand Curve
2. Notadeepdive

Blogs:
1. CXL
2. Ladder

What's one thing that has shortened your learning curve?

Community and Mentorship.

There is no way I'm going to talk about my career journey without mentioning DigicClan. DigiClan is one of the largest communities of digital professionals in Africa. Joining DigiClan shortened my learning curve, it’s a community where knowledge is shared and networking is made easy.

It’s also in the community I met people who have guided my journey, most of them don’t agree or like to answer “my mentor”, well it is not by nomenclature but by the undeniable impact. It’s a good time to give a shout-out to Oluwapelumi Oyetimein, Bukayo Ewuoso, Damola Oyekunle, Innocent Uchenna, and more recently, Lekan Akinyemi.

Thanks, bosses!

Your thoughts on networking?

I believe networking is one of the important parts of career growth. In life generally by design, no one can thrive in isolation, so you will always need people. Learn to connect with people and ensure it’s not a parasitic relationship, let it be symbiotic. Don’t be that person that only takes and never gives. Even in mentorship, learn to serve, everyone needs help, the areas just differ from person to person.

What advice do you have for someone who wants to get into growth marketing?

Pay attention to learning (for important, never stop learning), find a community, and always seek clarity. When you land an opportunity to execute (job), ensure to test and experiment, you can’t be too sure what will work. Experiment, iterate, learn from your data, scale what’s working and discard what’s not.

Talking about execution, you might want to engage the principle I call “the blessedness of free work”, try and get free work if you can’t get a paid job or internship, so you can practice what you are learning, it’s the “proof of work” that will make someone take a risk and chance on you for a paid job and ensure to proof you worth the risk after employment.

What question should I be asking you or do you feel is missing from this interview that you really feel obliged to answer?

Errrm, that will be the myth I love to always debunk when I have the opportunity to talk about marketing, marketing doesn’t equate to advertising. It’s just an aspect of marketing, there are other parts. It used to be 4Ps of marketing, but now it is 7Ps; Product, Price, Place, Promotion (advertising), physical evidence, people, and processes.

Ensure all these boxes are ticked for effective marketing results. Remember, advertising won’t fix all your marketing problems!

Before I remove the shackles, tell me where people can find you online.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Hydromanoel
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmanuelomiwole/

Talking about finding on LinkedIn, I wrote an article when I left Cerebre Media for Webcoupers LLC in 2021, I titled it: Three (3) Things You Gain From Working in a Corporate Organisation, where I extensively discussed what I mentioned the “hot take” part of this interview. You can read it here.

Thank you for your time. Appreciated.

The pleasure is my Lolade. thanks for having me. Kudos to you and the Noticing team, you are doing great work!

That’s all for this edition! What do you think about this edition? We wouldn't mind you replying to this email to also tell us how you've been doing.

Noticing.

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