Summary
All key points in the summary, are here. Followed by a lot more info on all of these points in the detailed description that follows.
- Company = Organic Growth Marketing (OGM), technically an “SEO agency”, but not a typical one. More on us later.
- We work with fast-growing, world-class companies like Miro, Hotjar, Intercom, and more to scale nonpaid user acquisition.
- Tech-enabled (aka, building our own tools to automate boring stuff)
- Small tight team of ~12 (including you)
- Job Title = SEO Growth Specialist
- Junior, roll-up-your-sleeves and do stuff, with big upward mobility potential
- Job role: a primary focus will be on content strategy and optimization that drives acquisition (one big output will be content outlines), but a lot more: reporting, analysis, optimizing web pages, executing weird promotional strategies — the list goes on.
- Experience required = Know your way around SEO, but don’t need to be world-class (yet) . . . the right person who is a hybrid writer/storyteller and numbers/analytics person. Beyond that, confidence and self-motivation matter more than anything.
- Location = anywhere in North America (and maybe even Europe)! Preferably US timezones, but we’re a fully remote company that will be flexible for the right person.
- Founder is in Europe
- Most other people are on the West Coast in the US
- Compensation depends on experience, but is very competitive.
- Remote stipend
- Actual, encouraged unlimited vacation policy
- You will have big upward mobility to grow your role/comp over time.
- Home office budget
- Remote work stipend
- Monthly “eating out” stipend
About the role & team
We have a pretty simple team structure.
Senior leadership focuses on owning the complete success of a few clients each, including running the strategy, working with them to get stuff done, and managing all the work that goes into it.
Manager and Growth Specialist levels (this job) are the workhorse function that supports the senior members.
You’ll be doing stuff like:
- Creating detailed content outlines that combine topical research, a client’s brand positioning, our evolving editorial/storytelling guidelines, and our secret sauce of SEO best practices.
- Going into CMSs and following our playbook to optimize existing pages and improve search rankings and increase conversions.
- Supporting our “outbound” program, where we help clients’ get seen across the web and acquire links along the way.
- Creating client-facing reports that detail the performance of our efforts, and diagnose issues that we find.
- Forming content strategies to dominate all stages of a funnel.
- Performing basic technical audits to identify and resolve website issues.
We don’t call our junior-level role “Associate” or some other euphemism for “almost intern”, because we want it to convey the reality: you’ll be in a position to own a lot, and have a huge impact.
About the Team
Here’s how the team is structured – and where you’ll fit.
Growth Advisors focus on owning the complete success of a few clients each, including running the strategy, working with them to get stuff done, and managing all the work that goes into it.
Manager level is the workhorse function that supports the Senior Growth members. Three super talented people with different backgrounds and specializations. They are hungry to learn from you, while also bringing their own unique skills and experiences. Not just saying it: they are a joy to work with.
Specialist is a new role at OGM that has a lot of overlap with Manager. After you master the Specialist role, you’ll grow into the Manager role and take on more strategic responsibility.
Product and analytics is our one-person R&D department, helping us build and scale for the future. You’ll be a “customer”, with the ability to contribute as much as you want.
Chief of Staff is like a mix of PM, Ops, Admin, and the kitchen sink — **********a one-person shop that makes everything work. The solver of problems and enabler of things.
CEO (Nigel) manages a couple of clients, runs “sales”, and helps drive our direction as a unit. You’ll work directly with him.
Beyond roles and what we do at OGM . . . everyone has their own interests, quirks, and areas where they are super knowledgable – completely outside the purview of marketing. It’s the kind of place where you can be yourself and not have to put on a “work face”.
What’s important to us
- Having a life
- You’ll see the words “ownership” and “accountability” here a lot, but we also extend that to taking care of yourself. Burnout is ultimately not in anyone’s self interests. This is reflected in the vacation policy (pretty generous), workday (choose your own), and an internal set of checks and balances to make sure that everyone has a reasonable workload — and can communicate if that ever gets out of whack.
- Growing first as people, and (the byproduct) as a company
- Doing the same thing every day gets boring for most people.
- Companies that keep doing the same thing become obsolete
- Therefore, it’s in everyone’s best interests to keep work fresh, while making sure our processes and mindset evolves with the times.
- Aligned incentives
- Everyone’s compensation is tied to company performance, so you have skin in the game
- We try to align the company incentives to clients, so we are working towards big long-term goals
Who we’re looking for (skills)
- Strong writer and storyteller
- This doesn’t mean you’ve won multiple Pulitzer prizes; rather, writing just comes naturally to you and you can learn a story framework and then apply it in different situations.
- Know your way around Excel/Google Sheets
- If you experience a sinking feeling while reading this bullet due to lack of hardcore expertise here, it’s not a deal-breaker at all; more important than your current skills, you should have the capacity to think in spreadsheets and can learn specifics. Everyone’s gotta start somewhere.
- Analytics-minded
- Practically speaking, it means experience in Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and any other analytics platforms
- …..but we can teach you how to be a beast in all of those.
- More importantly, you have to be genuinely interested in quantifying everything, learning to think in numbers, and be open to picking up new tools
- Process-oriented
- We are big on building processes. You’ll have a bunch of processes and onboarding materials that will guide you to do your job, and then be in a position to contribute to those very processes yourself.
- This is more of a mindset than an experience thing (but if you have experience with process, definitely share!)
Experience that will really help you get you noticed, but isn’t required across the board:
- Content marketing & editorial: writing, editing, or strategy.
- Digital marketing, email marketing, SEO
- Basic knowledge of HTML & CSS
Is this a good fit for me?
Obviously we’re biased, but here is our honest (as can be) assessment of the pros/cons of working with OGM — in this role.
Benefits to you and your career
- Work with very cool companies
- It’s hard to learn and get valuable experience without working with companies that do big things, and that lots of people know. ****We work exclusively with high-growth startups and you will get very strong professional narratives about the growth you’ll drive with them.
- See the immediate and long term impact of your work
- Marketing is often this abstract exercise in doing something to please a stakeholder. With the work we do, you’ll see immediate results, be able to quantify them, and see how they impact the bottom line.
- We’ve worked with some clients for 2+ years and have witnessed the transformational impact of their organic growth programs on the company’s overall success. It’s pretty cool.
- Have a framework to do your job — and then contribute to it
- For the aquaphobes out there: you won’t get thrown into the deep end with a brick.
- We have a system to show you how we do everything and what we expect.
- You’ll be supported by everyone: senior team, fellow managers, and our amazing ops
person team.
- Not a one-way street: you’ll be able to identify improvements in the way we do everything, and make changes that can immediately have a YUGE impact — for us, and clients. Some of our best innovations have come from early-stage team members who spotted a blindspot and then helped us improve it.
- Supercharge your career growth and grow into a big role
- Combining the noteworthy companies we work with, hands-on responsibility you’ll have from Day 1, and business success you’ll be able to attribute to your work….you will grow fast.
- You could end up running an internal function, be client-facing with companies valued at $1B+, or really any role you can carve for yourself
- We also have a very entrepreneurial spirit: many people are doing their own “side hustles” – something we do NOT discourage.
Why you would NOT want to take this role
A good match for any role requires a great fit between team members and the company. There are amazing people who aren’t in the right time/space in their careers to thrive and appreciate every role. . . and that’s totally ok! Just trying to keep it real here.
It might not be a good fit for you, IF:
- You want a work environment where people don’t share how they feel
- One staple of OGM is that every week, people give presentations on something non-work-related. Multiple people have presented on the benefits of veganism. Someone else presented on the benefits of eating meat. We’re all still friends (last I checked . . .).
- We have very clear guidelines around being respectful in discourse, so this doesn’t mean it’s the wild west at all. ****But part of our environment is that people can be themselves and share who they are within the bounds of respect and inclusion.
Examples of backgrounds/experiences that may be a great fit
This is NOT some definitive list; more so, to show examples that different types of people could kill it in this role. For example:
- You have worked in a generic marketing role — or a completely different marketing function (e.g. paid search) — and want to learn how to be a world-class organic lead generator. Though you have marketing experience, you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and learn how we do SEO/organic from the ground up.
- Similarly, you have worked in a content role, but want to go over to the dark side and understand how content drives traffic and revenue
- You have limited professional experience but have done some type of marketing, and are very strong in the core skills required (writing/process-driven/open to learning)
- You’ll really need to sell us on your intangibles but wanted to throw it out there.
Apply