Product Marketing Associate, Catalyst Fund at BFA (Bankable Frontier Associates)

About the role

We are looking for a Product Marketing Associate who can support early-stage tech startups across a range of marketing and growth areas, such as brand and persona development, customer segmentation and value prop, go-to market strategies, and digital marketing strategies to move them closer to product-market fit and drive product adoption. 

At Catalyst Fund, we run bespoke and hands-on venture building projects with our startups and become extensions of their team. In this role, you will get a chance to work with a number of innovative founders across several business models and sectors, and build the next generation of solutions for underserved consumers living in low-data, low-trust and low-bandwidth environments in emerging markets. 

What You’ll Do

As a Product Marketing Associate, your responsibilities will include:

• Provide expert marketing advice and support venture building engagements with inclusive tech startups, working together with other Catalyst Fund experts such as growth hackers, UX designers and researchers and data analysts. Marketing support areas include but are not limited to brand revamp, messaging and product positioning, value prop analysis, customer segmentation, digital marketing 
• Run marketing diagnostics exercises with startups, to identify challenges and barriers to traction and growth faced by them
• Based on diagnostic findings, design a support plan to support startups to reach product-market fit
• Design and run experiments to validate hypotheses in a cost-effective manner and help drive an experimentation mindset with the startups
• Co-lead marketing sprints with startups to understand their funnel from acquisition to referral and optimize with a data-driven approach 
• Help upskill startup marketing teams where the team is lean and needs additional talent support on marketing 
• Additional tasks will depend on project requirements determined by our client-driven work

Qualifications & Requirements:

• 4+ years of experience working as a marketer at a tech company, an accelerator, investment fund,  or as part of a startup team
• Strong experience supporting startups across emerging markets globally in developing products and analyzing marketing data to understand performance
• Expertise in product marketing, including design sprints, value proposition design, hypothesis-driven experimentation
• Must demonstrate the ability to think on your feetAbility to work in a fast-paced, startup environment, with strong attention to detail for all tasks, even virtually
• Ability to complete tasks in a timely manner while balancing several assignments with inputs from multiple team members
• Strong analytical skills to perform data deep-dives on startups’ data
• Ability to run trials and MVPs, set up experiments, develop and deliver go-to-market launch plans

Any of the following will be considered a plus:

• Experience with fintech products and services, or climate tech 
• Familiarity with financial inclusion and digital financial services innovation for low-income populations, economic development or social business sector
• Familiarity working globally across timezones with colleagues who have different cultural and language backgrounds
• Experience with supporting businesses aimed at low-income populations and/or in low-connectivity environments (i.e USSD or SMS based products)
• Fluency in English
• Spoken and written language proficiency in French, Swahili, Akan, Hausa, Igbo or Yoruba an advantage 

Soft Skills:

• Applicants need to succeed in technical or financial skills, but you also need to build a strong portfolio of soft skills to achieve long-term success at BFA Global
• Emotional intelligence, Communication & Empathy – You need to have a strong ability to collaborate effectively with others and work in teams, build relationships, share ideas and manage conflict.
• Creativity & Problem-Solving Skills – You are required to have analytical and critical thinking skills that can help them find creative solutions to problems.
• Adaptability & Flexibility – You need to be agile and adaptable to effectively deal with the rapid changes (both financial and technological) occurring in the industry.