Lade Falobi: How Early Career Experiments Shaped a Product Marketer
Lade Falobi: How Early Career Experiments Shaped a Product Marketer
Lade’s 5-year marketing career spans contributions to Motherboard, Disha, Flutterwave, and Wicrypt. She writes Marketing For Geeks, the second-best marketing newsletter in Nigeria.
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?
When I had to choose a course to study at university, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I ended up getting into the University of Ibadan to study Communication and Language Arts (CLA), and that defined my career path to a large extent. In CLA, there are multiple majors to choose from—journalism, broadcast media, book publishing, public relations, marketing, advertising, creative writing, etc. By my 200 level, I’d decided on marketing and advertising.
The greatest service I ever did for my career was starting early. I tested out different things early, which helped me see what I liked or didn’t like. During a holiday in my 100 level, I got an internship at the Daily Independent newspaper. It wasn’t very hard to get that because my father was a mildly-known journalist, and so were a few other people in my extended family. I just informed an uncle that I wanted to do an internship, and he got me an interview with the Editor-In-Chief, who decided to hire me.
It was a great experience. I got to publish stories, attend press conferences, and do some photojournalism. But the experience made me certain I didn’t want to do journalism as a career. I just didn’t enjoy the job, and I didn’t believe in doing things that didn’t excite me.
After I took my first marketing course in my 200 level, I knew it was what I wanted to do. So, when we had conferences and invited alumni as speakers, I made sure to do some networking and collect their contact details. That was what helped me land my first marketing job—as an intern at an experiential marketing agency. After that, it was easier to get jobs by simply applying (rather than via networking & connections like with my first two jobs).
I worked almost every holiday that I had, and by the time I finished school, I already had 2+ years of experience and didn’t need to apply to intern-level roles again. And because I’d tried different jobs, I knew what I liked or didn’t like. It’s difficult to find that out when you’ve got more pressures weighing on you (i.e., you can’t just quit), so I’m really grateful I started early and could test out things.
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How do you define growth marketing?
Data-driven marketing specifically for growing a company’s most important long-term numbers. I specify long-term because I don’t believe growth hacking is the same as growth marketing. A growth marketer needs to think of the long-term impact of tactics; thinking of how to minimize the risks of fraud or low-quality users if a referral program was launched.
What are your key areas of expertise within marketing?
Core specialties: In general, organic marketing and growth loops
User research
Content marketing
Community marketing
Email marketing
Conversion optimisation
Lifecycle marketing (Activation & retention strategies)
Messaging & value prop definition
Product marketing
Product-led growth
Which marketing channels do you prioritize, and have you found to be effective?
SEO
Inbound marketing
Email marketing
Communities
Events
Direct Sales/Cold Outreach
I started my career in content marketing, so my initial roles were content-related (copywriter, content specialist, comms lead, etc.). Then, I transitioned into product marketing in 2022 and was promoted to Product Marketer.
In 2023, I became Product Growth Manager at Motherboard, where I combined growth marketing, product marketing, and product management.
Earlier this year, I also served as Fractional Head of Content. Currently, I hold a General Manager position.
Which companies have you worked with?
I spent part of my career working on the agency side before I moved into the client side, so I’ll explain specific companies I worked on while on the agency side. I’ll skip out on some of the earlier companies I worked at.
Marketing For Geeks: My personal product marketing newsletter that I’ve grown to 1k+ subscribers.
ReleaseLog: Changelog tool for Product Managers and Product Marketing Managers at PLG B2B SaaS companies. I’m the General Manager at ReleaseLog, and we’re still in build mode. ReleaseLog is part of a holding company - EarlyNode.
EarlyNode.com: Media company (newsletter, podcast, blog) providing everything SaaS professionals need to know to scale their MRR. I was the fractional Head of Content at EarlyNode.
Motherboard: Employee benefits platform allowing employers to provide flexible benefits to employees at no extra cost. Motherboard used a mixture of the SaaS model (for employers to manage employee benefits) and the marketplace model (connecting employers and employees to benefit vendors).
Enterscale: Growth studio for startups targeting the African market. Specifically, I worked on and/or implemented growth strategies for these startups:
Wicrypt: Blockchain-based smart WiFi network. Wicrypt lets people get paid for sharing WiFi with people around them.
InvestNaija: Investment platform for Nigerians. InvestNaija is the retail app for Chapel Hill Denham.
Disha: Disha was a B2C creator SaaS product that let people create mini-websites and sell digital products.
Flutterwave: Flutterwave is a B2B fintech that provides payment infrastructure for businesses.
Enterscale also had 2-3 portfolio products (all SaaS MarTech products) in build:
Mooyi: Mooyi is a customer insight and engagement SaaS platform that lets businesses conduct audience research at scale and reward participants easily.
Crowdero: Crowdero was a social listening tool to track, keywords, sentiments, and influencers on Twitter.
Corefans: Corefans is a B2C crowdfunding tool for creators (primarily musicians); letting them raise money for their projects by providing perks to contributors.
Can you share a fun or interesting fact about yourself that most people don’t know?
I used to do more creative work (poetry, photography) and I have a few published poems and photographs out there. In fact, my final year project was an anthology of poetry and photography – probably the creative project I am most proud of so far.
What do you enjoy doing outside of work?
I skate 🛹 most days. Either before I start work, in between tasks, or after work.
I also play Candy Crush (almost at level 16,000) when I can, as well as other games (FIFA, Asphalt, Solitaire).
Can you share a resource or template that has been particularly valuable in your work?
Competitor research template - My personal template that I use at work.
Resource library - My library of various resources, from playbooks to newsletters, and communities.
Reforge Artifacts: Great resource library with strategy documents used by professionals at real companies. I’ve shared a few resources there as well.
What advice would you give to someone starting their career in growth marketing?
Join as many communities as you can. Build a portfolio for yourself by helping friends out with projects or doing spec (unsolicited) work.
Where can we connect with you?
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ladefalobi/
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 🙂).
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