11 || December || 2024
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Issue #80
From engineering
to growth
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Greetings ET people 
In an interview with Joshua Udonne, this week’s Entering Tech guest, we asked a simple icebreaker question, “If you got stranded on an island for one week, what three items would you bring along with you?”
“A knife, something to purify water with, and a strong rope,” he responded.
“Why do you need a strong rope, Joshua?”
“I grew up on a farm. There’s this tent-like structure I learned to build as a kid using banana leaves. It would come in handy on the island when I need to build tents with whatever is available, or even make rafts, for example, so a search and rescue party can find me.”
We won’t judge you if you’d have immediately screamed, “My phone and Starlink” in that situation. But Joshua’s answer showed his survival instincts—skills he describes as very useful in his role as a growth marketer at Interswitch.
“As a growth marketer, much of your job is just adapting.”
Here’s the story of Joshua and how he climbed the career ladder in tech.
Emmanuel Nwosu & Timi Odueso
Why Growth, anyway?
There have been misconceptions about what “growth marketing” truly means for businesses. We are a little confused too by the different shades of marketing functions. Naturally, this was the first question we asked.
“Explaining growth to a five-year-old, it’s like owning a zobo stand at Onike, Yaba. You are looking for ways to sell that zobo drink to Kamoru. And then Kamoru tells his friend, Basira, that you have the best zobo stand in Onike. That way, more kids begin to discover your zobo stand. You’ll sell more, make more money, and expand from Onike to Eko Hotel,” explained Joshua.
“That’s what I do at Interswitch. I find ways to scale the business—everything about revenue and numbers that move the business forward.”
Joshua, with over eight years of experience in marketing, has worked across marketing agencies, social media, entertainment, and fintech industries.
But he wasn’t always pro-marketing.
Back in 2015, he embodied everything you’ve read about classic engineers—he wanted to get paid for practising a career he thought could make a difference in the world.
At the time, Joshua had just graduated from the Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO), where he studied Polymer and Textile Engineering.
In 2018, he got an opportunity to work on the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF), a talent development programme initiated by former governor Akinwunmi Ambode. He calls it the opportunity that changed his life.
“I was working with a senior marketing manager on the team and we’d been tasked to bring in 60 people, particularly artisans, to take the courses and improve their skills. We were running a lot of ads on a small budget, and I remember thinking, ‘these people we’re looking for are not on the internet—at least not in 2018.’”
“So we went into the streets, sports-betting centres, the game houses, markets, and art exhibition centres. We filled the 60 seats in one day.”
That experience strengthened Joshua’s resolve to pursue marketing fully. And today, he says combining traditional marketing and digital marketing methods is his idealistic approach to growth.
*Newsletter continues after break
Flipping the switch at Interswitch
Before LSETF, Joshua’s first role was a social media specialist role for a vocational training school in 2016. He was later promoted within the company to manage social media and oversee all content for an interior design firm. It was a role he said frustrated him.
“The company had like eight subsidiaries, with more products than customers. They’d just brought me in—somebody that just finished NYSC—as their social media manager to push all their brands. I had no training for it, and I remember I was learning on the job. It was just chaotic.”
Working on the LSETF product provided Joshua with a pathway to pursue something in growth marketing. So, he quit his social media role at the interior design firm and went to learn digital marketing.
Between 2020 and 2022, he worked for different marketing agencies, including Ads & Web, Piston and Fusion Limited, and Red Lantern, where he learnt more about digital marketing, strategy, and paid media.
But Paga was the turning point in Joshua’s career. Though he had applied for a digital marketing role at Paga in late 2021, he didn’t get the job.
“They stopped recruiting; that was the communication we got. But then they reached out to me. I think they saw the campaign I was doing with Red Lantern and liked that project. That was how I got into Paga.”
Joshua juggled digital marketing and later, growth responsibilities, at Paga for over a year. This was a time he fondly remembers as the experience that helped him stand out to recruiters.
His next role was Interswitch, where he is currently driving growth marketing initiatives. He’s been with the company since 2023.
Adapt to survive
As a growth marketer at Interswitch, Joshua says a typical busy day involves a lot of strategising, collaborating with cross-functional teams like marketing, product, and operations teams, and executing on those strategies.
“The most challenging thing about my work is managing the constant need for experimenting. I’m a growth marketer, that’s all I do. [In experimenting], you’re trying to balance short-term results with long-term strategy.”
“You’re trying different things, and you’re tracking every single thing. The tiring thing is the constant documentation process.”
Yet, Joshua says the work has its perks. He and his team at Quickteller—an Interswitch subsidiary where he works—recently pulled off a growth activation campaign, City Tour with Vervelife, where they travelled to five cities across Nigeria to attract new customers and reward current active Quickteller users.
“We went to Uyo, Abuja, Ibadan, Enugu, and had a grand finale in Lagos. The people were really happy to see us. I’m incredibly proud of the work I’ve done at [Quickteller].”
Joshua’s day-to-day tools include Google Analytics for analysing customer acquisition data; Microsoft Clarity for customer behaviour; Amplitude to track retention; Zapier for automation; and HubSpot for emails and CRM.
Joshua’s recipe for success in his growth marketing career is two-fold: first, understand yourself. Then understand people.
“While it is important, Growth isn’t all about revenue, retention, and managing churn. Your biggest struggle on the job will likely be managing stakeholders.”
If you’re new in your tech career, Joshua advises that you find greater success in qualities you naturally gravitate towards; then find a way to apply it in your role. He says that’s how he has adapted over the years.
And in the next five years, Joshua says he wants to pursue leadership roles in growth marketing.
“I’m very extroverted. I don’t even think I will survive remote work where I’m staying in the house 9–5; I like seeing people—my co-workers—everyday. Because I know I’m extroverted, I typically put my energy toward activations, so I can be closer to people, and learn more about our customers who drive business forward for us.”
Joshua is also putting together a personal mentoring programme soon for recent school-leavers. To learn more about it, you can message him on LinkedIn.
P.S: Did you like this edition of Entering Tech? Would you like more like this or less? Share your thoughts by responding to this newsletter or sending an email to newsletter@techcabal.com.
Jobs
- PressOne Africa – Growth and Sales Operations Manager – Lagos, Nigeria
- Condia – Sales and Partnership Associate – Remote (Nigeria)
- Moniepoint – Growth Product Partner – Lagos, Nigeria
- 54 Collective (Radease) – Growth Manager – Hybrid (Lagos, Nigeria)
- Renmoney – Chief of Staff – Lagos, Nigeria
- Interswitch Group – Data Engineer, Mobile App Developer – Hybrid (Lagos, Nigeria)
- Fairmoney – Data Engineer – Remote (Lagos, Nigeria)
- Duplo – Senior Product Manager, SaaS, Risk & Compliance Manager – Hybrid (Lagos, Nigeria)
- Reliance Health – Content Strategist – Remote (Lagos, Nigeria)
- Darey.io – Quality Assurance Specialist – Lagos, Nigeria
There are more jobs on TechCabal’s job board. If you have job opportunities to share, please submit them at bit.ly/tcxjobs.
Disclaimer: TechCabal is not affiliated with or associated with jobs and opportunities listed on all its job boards and newsletters. All applicants bear the responsibility of researching about the roles and companies they apply to.
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I am the CEO of 9JAGISTLAND.My name is Adedeji Timothy and my co-owner is Oyekola Damilare.This blog is born out of our passion to educating to people in all aspect of internet life.We are enthusiastic about writing posts and articles online.
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