Head of Growth & Customer Marketing

Overview

You're the growth architect for Clever's two-sided education marketplace—schools on one side, application partners on the other. You're not running demand gen campaigns; you're building the entire growth infrastructure from first touch through advocacy, connecting marketing activity directly to revenue outcomes. This is systems, attribution, lifecycle design, and strategic GTM ownership wrapped into one role.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Later-stage (338 employees, established identity platform)

Size: 338 employees

Growth: Mature product, next evolution phase - need systems and process maturity

Market Position: Established player in education identity/SSO space with network effects from two-sided marketplace

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• ~30% Inbound - Schools searching for SSO/identity solutions, referrals from existing districts
• ~20% Product-Led - Application partners driving school adoption, schools drawn in by partner ecosystem
• ~30% Partner Motion - EdTech partners bringing their school customers to Clever
• ~20% Direct Outreach - Sales team working target district lists

Current State: Attribution is fragmented. You can't cleanly connect marketing touch to revenue outcome across this complex ecosystem. That's the problem you're solving.

Cross-Functional Reality: You'll spend significant time with Product (PLG initiatives), PMM (positioning), Sales (pipeline quality), and RevOps (data infrastructure). Lots of alignment meetings.

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: ClassLink, other education SSO/rostering platforms, homegrown school district solutions

How They Differentiate: Network effects from two-sided marketplace, data privacy focus, breadth of partner integrations

Common Objections: "We already have a solution," procurement complexity, data security concerns, change management with teachers

Win Themes: Ecosystem scale, ease of partner integrations, teacher/student experience

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Strategy & Planning (25%) | Systems & Analytics (30%) | Team Leadership (25%) | Cross-Functional (20%)

Key Activities

• Build Attribution Infrastructure: Partner with RevOps to create the data model that tracks a school from first website visit through application partner referral through sales close through expansion. Currently this doesn't exist in a unified way.
• Design Lifecycle Programs: Map out how schools and partners move through awareness → activation → adoption → advocacy, then build the campaigns, content, and automation to move them along. Customer marketing currently exists but isn't a "commercial lever."
• Own GTM Sequencing: Work with Product and PMM to prioritize which initiatives launch when across a complex roadmap. You're the one saying "we do partner co-marketing in Q2, PLG activation improvements in Q3."
• Manage & Develop Team: Inherit existing growth/customer marketing team members. Coach them, elevate their work, fill capability gaps through hiring. You're responsible for their output and development.
• Report on Marketing Efficiency: Build the dashboards and models that show leadership how marketing spend connects to pipeline and revenue. Currently it's murky—you're bringing clarity.
• Elevate Customer Marketing: Turn case studies, references, and advocacy programs from nice-to-haves into measurable pipeline and expansion drivers. This means thinking about how a happy district superintendent becomes a reference that closes 3 more deals.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Two-sided attribution is messy: Did that school come from your content, the partner who mentioned Clever, or the sales team's outreach? All three? Building clean attribution across this ecosystem is complex and will require compromise.
• Education sales cycles are long and bureaucratic: Schools move slowly. Procurement involves committees, budget cycles, and IT reviews. Your marketing programs show results in quarters, not weeks.
• You're building, not optimizing: There's no proven playbook here. You're designing systems from scratch. If you need clear processes already in place, you'll be frustrated.
• Complex stakeholder management: You need buy-in from Product, Sales, PMM, and Operations for everything. Lots of alignment work, lots of meetings where you're selling your approach internally.
• Team inherited, not built: You're getting existing people with existing ways of working. You need to level them up and potentially reshape the team, which is delicate.

What Success Looks Like

• In 6 months: Clear attribution model connecting marketing activities to pipeline, documented customer journey maps for both sides of marketplace
• In 12 months: Marketing-sourced pipeline is measurable and growing, customer advocacy program drives 20%+ of new opportunities
• In 18 months: Your team is producing consistent marketing-influenced revenue, leadership has clear ROI visibility, customer lifecycle programs drive measurable retention lift

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers (School Side):

• District IT Directors and CTOs
• Curriculum & Instruction leaders
• Sometimes Superintendents for larger deals

Primary Stakeholders (Partner Side):

• EdTech company partnership/BD teams
• Product teams at application partners

What They Care About:

• Schools: Data security/privacy (this is education), ease of teacher adoption, integration with existing systems, total cost
• Partners: Ease of integration, reach into school districts, competitive advantage from being in Clever's ecosystem
• Your Internal Stakeholders: Clear ROI, systems that scale, data they can trust

Requirements

• 8+ years in growth, demand gen, or customer marketing with measurable revenue impact
• Experience building attribution models and marketing operations infrastructure—you've done the Salesforce + marketing automation + analytics integration work before
• Track record in complex B2B ecosystems (marketplace, platform, or multi-sided business models)
• Strong in both systems/analytics and storytelling—you can build a data model and write a compelling case study
• Leadership experience managing and developing marketing teams
• Comfort with ambiguity and building from scratch—this isn't a "run the proven playbook" role
• Ability to influence without authority across Product, Sales, and Operations
• Education sector experience is probably helpful but not explicitly required—understanding long procurement cycles and risk-averse buyers matters more