Staggering hires helped us do marketing properly

The problem

Forecasting business Futrli found it hard to coordinate marketing with no dedicated team and little budget. It attended industry events but didn’t have the resource for content marketing, social media or email campaigns. The existing team “mucked in” and did things here and there, but it wasn’t a concentrated effort.

The solution

Rather than making a quick hire to fill the resource gap, Futrli carefully chose which positions to recruit for. After a lot of research and some trial and error, the management team decided to concentrate on getting the brand out there and increasing the leads coming through the website.

Futrli chose to hire a digital marketer with social media expertise and strong writing skills, and then a full-time copywriter. The hires helped Futrli to focus the marketing strategy, but the process still needed work – it had a small sales team in Australia and the different time zone made communication “jarring”.

After two years of centralised marketing, Futrli fixed communication issues by hiring several marketers for the Brighton and Sydney offices. It set up a weekly video conference call between teams to discuss the current strategy and how to progress. According to founder Hannah Dawson, regular communication helped to make marketing cohesive and gave the company a “24-hour marketing effort”.

The results

By slowly evolving core teams, Futrli grew to 100 staff without any external funding – though the company recently raised a private funding round. Dawson believes global marketing presence helped drive a “huge increase” in lead generation, with Futrli now supporting 40,000 businesses in 130 countries.

“We’ve had the chance to see what works and what doesn’t,” Dawson said. “We’re still working on curating the perfect marketing team and getting our brand and tone of voice right. But, when you’re growing, look at where you can get quick wins – and then plan out long-term goals carefully.”