Caught In the Crossfire: How Growth Managers Meet Departments in the Middle

According to Studio X’s growth manager, it’s a role that requires wearing a lot of hats to make the greatest impact.
Written by Tyler Holmes
November 16, 2021Updated: November 28, 2021

When a company’s product and marketing departments collide, their earthquake of ideas and rollouts may not be as cataclysmic as the earth’s tectonic plates meeting under the surface. But making it out unscathed requires strategic guidance through the metaphorical smoke to pick up the pieces and turn what they’ve created into something even greater.

That’s when a growth manager enters the picture.

Growth managers handle exactly what the name entails: growth. But growth is subjective, and every company approaches the term differently. For some, it means worldwide expansion with offices around the globe; for others, it’s trending on social media platforms to reach a wider audience. And while there is no one-size-fits-all method for succeeding, one thing remains universal: Growth requires the seamless collaboration and skill sets of many internal teams.

For Senior Marketing Strategist Christie Post, this collaboration means not only coordinating subject matter experts and engineers across departments to produce a well-informed product, but also identifying exactly who the customer base at Studio X is and building marketing campaigns that make an impact.

“Since Studio X is a newly formed company, we have to start from scratch,” Post said. “I could be crafting the social media schedule for the month, launching a campaign to attract new users to projects or even engaging with users through our customer service channels.”

Regardless of how growth is defined, expanding the possibilities of what an organization’s products can accomplish is an exciting endeavor. That’s why Built In Austin caught up with Post to learn more about the typical day-to-day schedule of a growth manager and the latest projects peaking her interest.

 

A group of Studio X employees together in the office.
STUDIO X
Christie Post
Senior Marketing Strategist • Studio X

 

Tell us a little bit about the work you do as a growth manager. What does a typical day look like for you?

I’m responsible for developing and executing a growth marketing strategy for the company. I take an integrated marketing communications approach, which means I’m in charge of unifying marketing communications — such as public relations, social media, audience analytics, business development and advertising — into a brand identity that remains consistent across all channels.

At the same time, I’m growing all those channels online and offline. My main goal is to grow our community that helps develop innovative solutions for the energy industry. Every day is different for me. I could be crafting the social media schedule for the month, launching a campaign to attract current and new users to projects or challenges, or even engaging with users through our customer service channels. As you can imagine, working for a startup means we move fast and I subsequently wear a lot of hats to grow the company.

 

How do you determine where to focus your efforts for maximum impact?

Knowing your customer is key to marketing, especially in a world where they have the power of technology to inform their decision making. We have changed from a browse culture to a search culture. The audience is infinite online.

Focusing on where your audience is can be the first step to prioritizing growth efforts. We use Hubspot for reporting and have learned that most of our website traffic comes from Google. I’ve focused my effort on increasing our domain authority, which is the relevance your website ranks for a specific subject area or industry. The higher a website’s score, the stronger and more authoritative it is. That means more people will likely find it.

Since Studio X is a newly formed company, we have to start from scratch. That takes a lot of coordination from each department. I need subject matter experts like our geologists to help write articles, I need to conduct keyword research and I need engineers to help with page loading on our website. These tactics are all working together to increase our SEO and domain authority. This is just one of the many different growth strategies we’re working on as a team.

We have changed from a browse culture to a search culture — the audience is infinite online.”

 

What is a project or campaign you’re working on right now that you're particularly excited about, and why?

At Studio X, we’re crowdsourcing ideas from our community to launch products that reimagine the future of work in energy exploration. I’m very excited to launch our “Go With the Flow” tool in Beta. This tool stemmed from a data science challenge on our platform Xeek. The final model from the competition was then enhanced to build a robust, user-friendly tool.

Right now, I’m working on a campaign to grow usage of the tool through public relations, search, advertising, email and more. Keep an eye out. As we scale as a company, I’m inspired by what the future could look like when energy and technology continue to come together. Amplifying that mission is a challenge I’m ready to tackle through growth marketing.

 

Jobs at Studio X

Austin startup guides

LOCAL GUIDE
Best Companies to Work for in Austin
LOCAL GUIDE
Coolest Tech Offices in Austin
LOCAL GUIDE
Best Perks at Austin Tech Companies
LOCAL GUIDE
Women in Austin Tech