As the 162nd employee at Justworks, Douglas Nelson, Director of Revenue Marketing, joined a scaling company with big dreams for the marketing team. The demand generation team only had two employees, which gave Nelson the space to tailor scale his organization.
In two years, the demand gen arm has grown to 15 employees, with the company reaching 400 in total. Luckily for Nelson, the leadership and board of Justworks is fully invested in all things marketing. So, they have a healthy, envy-inducing budget for marketing activities. From leveraging two channels to leveraging 22 channels, they don’t shy away from using both digital and, what Nelson calls, vintage marketing (or retro marketing according to Dave Dabbah).
On this episode of the ScaleUp Valley podcast, Nelson shares how Justworks is scaling up their marketing team. In this conversation we had Dave Dabbah, VP of Marketing at Ag0ra.io, as our moderator and Ryan Foland as our host. Discussing marketing structures, channels, verticals and the Super Bowl, this is an episode not to miss!
Scaling up the Justworks marketing organization
As a professional employer organization, Justworks is targeting businesses with between two and 100 employees that are looking for assistance with HR, payroll and compliance needs. The big question is: how does Justworks not just scale up their organization but moreover their brand experience?
According to Nelson, when an organization starts scaling, you have to tinker with the structure to see what feels best. With five core teams at Justworks, they’ve consistently been shifting and restructuring with their growth. For example, revenue and brand marketing used to be separate entities. Later they found bringing them together is what resonated best with their team.
Probably the most useful structural choice that they’ve added to their roster over the two years is a dedicated market response team. This team is solely committed to qualifying marketing qualified leads before handing them over to sales.
This has been crucial for Justworks because of their complex qualifying system, which includes about 15 criteria indicators for being considered a suitable lead. With the help of this dedicated market response team, they’ve made the process of converting customers that much more streamlined.
The second big question that Dabbah had for Nelson…
Will we be seeing Justworks at the Super Bowl?
The marketing team is lucky to have the Justworks leadership on their side, especially when it comes to budget. So, with all of that designated cash, who wouldn’t be considering the Super Bowl?
With a new fiscal year about to start, Nelson confirmed that the Super Bowl had been part of the discussion. However, it’s up for debate how well spent those funds would really be. For now, they don’t have any concrete plans for a Super Bowl ad – but never say never.
There are a lot more interesting points about growing Justworks, that you can hear by listening to the whole episode. Then, keep listening and keep scaling. And if you want to know more about ScaleUp Valley initiatives, calendar and purpose, join our community by subscribing to the ScaleUp Valley newsletter.