Dolapo Balogun: From Communications Intern to Chief Marketing Officer
Dolapo Balogun: From Communications Intern to Chief Marketing Officer
Dolapo Balogun specializes in growth engineering, mobile marketing, and partnerships to drive results for both B2B and consumer-focused tech companies.
This is the African Growth Marketers Spotlight series for the Marketing In Action Newsletter where we interview diverse marketing practitioners who are putting marketing into action. Share it with your network! ~James
Can you tell us a bit about your background, education, and how you got into marketing?
Growing up, I was always sketching ideas, building sandcastles, and reading anything I laid my eyes on. I was encouraged to pursue sciences in high school, but I switched to Advertising and Public Relations later on, as I knew I wanted to practice marketing. I studied at the University of Lagos, and during my penultimate year, I started an internship at a branding and communications agency.
The experience at the agency helped me better understand the importance of marketing professionals to the bottom line of every organization. For me, it was straightforward: I must help organizations do at least two of these things—generate revenue, reduce costs, and increase market share.
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How do you define growth marketing?
I would prefer to define it as an approach or mindset to getting the results of goals predetermined by both the leadership and the marketing team. A large part is experimentation and these days I prefer growth engineering as it covers not just marketing but also product and operations. All growth engineers have had situations where they cooked up a hot campaign, only to be let down by either operations or any other department.
What are your key areas of expertise within marketing?
Base knowledge - Behavioural Psychology, Branding, Positioning & Storytelling, and Data & Analytics.
Marketing Foundation - Copywriting, Customer Experience, CRO, Funnel Marketing
Channel Expertise - Growth Engineering, Mobile Marketing, Partnerships & Sales, Community
Which marketing channels do you prioritize, and have you found to be effective?
It really depends on the product and the target market. I like to start by defining my audience, and these tasks help determine the best channels for reaching them. Channels identified through this exercise have worked best for me, rather than using a fire brigade approach.
What roles have you held in your growth and marketing career?
I’m having quite the adventure. I started my career in door-to-door sales, then moved on to a role as a brand and communication intern, followed by a promotion to executive. I served as a digital marketing executive with an e-commerce company, led digital marketing for an educational consulting firm, worked in growth marketing for a SaaS company, and am the head of growth and chief marketing officer of a fintech startup.
Which companies have you worked with?
Ohgee Consulting: A branding and marketing communications firm that caters to B2B companies.
Credit Direct: A non-secured lending organization that provides loans to both businesses and consumers.
DigitalBoomNg: A digital marketing agency helping business owners with growth and public relations.
GOS Software: A SaaS startup building HRM, CRM, and Accounting solutions for Enterprise companies.
Byte: Fintech startup building the operating system for MSMEs to manage, and grow their businesses.
Can you share a fun or interesting fact about yourself that most people don’t know?
I am a productivity junkie as I am always looking for ways to systemize, optimize and simplify things from my work, workouts, relationships, finances, etc.
What do you enjoy doing outside of work?
I love watching sports documentaries, catching up on football and basketball highlights, reading books, and listening to podcasts.
Can you share a resource or template that has been particularly valuable in your work?
Noah Kagan has a template I used in the past called “The Quant-Based Framework”. I also recommend reading Copywriter by Neville Medhorra.
What advice would you give to someone starting their career in growth marketing?
I would recommend approaching growth marketing with a mindset of finding something to grow. Look for a product, create campaigns that will push it, and develop and share content around it. Then, consider taking a course in growth engineering—I recommend Algorithm by Bili Sule, as she’s one of the best minds in growth engineering. This approach of building something and then learning how to improve it pushes you both practically and theoretically.
Where can we connect with you?
Give us two marketers that you would like us to interview in this newsletter.
If you have a recommendation for who we should be speaking to, or who you would like to see in this interview series, reply with their names, marketing specialty, and how we can reach them (LinkedIn, Email, Phone, Home address 🙂).