I Have a New Job Title: Organic Growth Marketer

Last week, I started my new role at Stello AI as their first marketing hire.

Honestly? It felt like standing in an empty room with nothing but a laptop and a lot of questions. No content backlog to inherit. No campaigns to optimize. No previous marketer's playbook to follow. Just me, a product I needed to understand deeply, and the challenge of building an organic growth engine from absolute zero.

If you've ever been the first marketing hire anywhere, you know that specific mix of excitement and mild panic. There's freedom in the blank slate, sure — but there's also the weight of knowing that every decision you make now becomes the foundation for everything that follows.

So I did what any reasonable person would do: I got to work learning, listening, and laying groundwork.

Here's exactly what my first week looked like, the tools I chose to start with, and why I made the decisions I did. If you're stepping into a similar role — or just curious about how organic growth actually gets built from scratch — this one's for you.

The Foundation: Learning Everything, All at Once

You can't market what you don't understand. So before I touched a single piece of content or set up any campaigns, I committed to going deep on three things: the product, the competition, and the customers.

Talking to Everyone Who Knows More Than Me

I made it a point to talk to our CEO regularly throughout the week — asking questions as they came up, clarifying positioning, and understanding the vision. I also spoke with the engineering team to start understanding what makes our product work. These weren't marathon sessions, just focused conversations whenever I needed clarity.

Sales is on deck for next week, and I'm looking forward to those calls. They'll tell me where deals stall, what objections come up, and what messaging actually moves people from "interested" to "let's do this."

Gathering the Docs

I also hunted down every piece of existing documentation — product specs, pitch decks, customer case studies, whatever existed. It wasn't much, but it was something. I read it all, highlighted the good bits, and started building my own understanding of how we talk about what we do.

Studying the Competition and Customers

Then I went outside. I looked at competitors — not just what they're saying, but how they're saying it. What channels are they dominating? What content is performing? Where are the gaps we can exploit?

And customers — both ours and theirs. What problems are they posting about on Reddit, LinkedIn, forums? What language do they use? What do they care about that no one's addressing yet?

This part isn't glamorous, but it's essential. You can't build organic growth without knowing the terrain.

Setting Up the Necessities

Once I had a decent grasp on the product and industry, it was time to set up the backbone of everything we'd be doing.

Analytics and Tracking

First things first: Google Analytics and Google Search Console. You can't improve what you don't measure, and I needed to establish baseline data from day one. Even if traffic is minimal now, having clean tracking in place means we'll have historical data to work with as we scale.

I also set up Ahrefs for SEO monitoring and competitive intelligence. It's not cheap, but it's non-negotiable for organic growth. I need to see where we stand, track keyword rankings, spy on what's working for competitors, and identify content opportunities.

The Marketing Tool Stack

Here's the thing about tools when you're starting from zero: you don't need everything. You need the essentials that let you move fast without getting bogged down.

My starting stack:

• Ahrefs – SEO research and competitive analysis
• Canva – Quick, clean visuals without needing a designer for every little thing
• Surfer SEO – Content optimization to make sure what we publish actually has a chance to rank

That's it for now. I've seen too many early-stage marketing teams waste time and budget on tools they don't use. We can add more as we grow and as specific needs emerge, but this gets us moving.

Picking Our Channels

This is where a lot of first marketing hires get it wrong. They try to be everywhere at once—SEO, paid ads, social, email, community, podcasts, you name it. But when you're a team of one building from scratch, spread too thin means nothing gets done well.

So I made some deliberate choices about where we're going to focus, based on three things: what our customer data tells us, what's working for competitors, and honestly, what we can actually execute with our current bandwidth.

I'm not sharing the specific channels here (maybe in a future edition), but the framework was simple: where are our customers already spending time? Where are competitors seeing traction? And which channels align with organic growth that compounds over time?

The goal isn't to win everywhere. It's to own a few channels really well.

Preparing the Content Calendar

With channels selected, I put together a rough content calendar. And I mean rough — this isn't some beautifully color-coded spreadsheet with three months mapped out in perfect detail.

It's more like: here are the core topics we need to cover, here's the customer pain points we're addressing, here's the keyword opportunities we're targeting, and here's a realistic publishing cadence we can actually maintain.

The calendar will evolve as I learn more from sales conversations, customer feedback, and what actually performs. But having even a rough plan means I'm not starting each week wondering what to create. I've got direction.

What's Next: Building the Engine

Here's the thing about week one — it was all about foundation. But I'm not sitting around waiting for some perfect master plan to materialize before I start moving.

Content is Already Flowing

I've already started creating content. Because here's what I've learned: you can plan forever, or you can start publishing, learn what works, and adjust as you go. I'm doing both.

While I'm still formalizing everything, I'd rather have real content out there getting real feedback than a pristine strategy document that never leaves Google Docs.

The 90-Day Plan

That said, I am building out a proper 90-day roadmap. Not just "we'll publish some blog posts and see what happens," but a structured plan that includes:

• SEO audit - It's a new website but still there's going to be technical SEO issues and we need to tackle those.
• Content channels and format mix – What we're publishing and where, based on what actually reaches our audience
• Week-by-week activities – So we're not scrambling or guessing what comes next
• Success metrics – Traffic, rankings, engagement, conversions—the stuff that actually matters, not vanity metrics
• Tool integrations and workflows – Making sure our stack actually works together efficiently
• Milestones and checkpoints – Clear markers that show we're making progress, not just staying busy

This isn't about rigid perfection. It's about having a plan we can execute against and measure, so we know what's working and what needs to change.

Building a Distribution Plan

And here's the part most people skip: distribution. You can write the best content in the world, but if no one sees it, it doesn't matter.

The distribution channels I'm focusing on aren't random—they're based on what I've learned working in B2B SaaS over the years. I'm looking at where our customers actually spend their time, how our ticket size influences their buying behavior, and their browsing patterns. A $50/month tool gets discovered differently than a $50k enterprise solution, and the distribution strategy needs to reflect that.

So I'm mapping out how we're going to get our content in front of the right people, in the right places, at the right time. Not just "post it and pray," but intentional, repeatable distribution across the channels where our audience actually lives and makes decisions.

More on the specific tactics and channels in future editions as the plan solidifies.

Building Without a Net (And Why That’s the Point)

Week one didn’t come with big wins or flashy metrics — and that’s exactly how it should be. This stage is about restraint, not speed. About understanding before executing. About choosing foundations that won’t crack once growth actually starts.

Being the first marketing hire isn’t about “doing marketing.” It’s about deciding how marketing gets done here — what gets prioritized, what gets ignored, and what compounds over time.

There’s still a lot to build. A lot to test. A lot that will inevitably change. But the groundwork is in motion, content is shipping, and the engine is starting to take shape.

From here on, it’s less about guessing — and more about learning fast, doubling down on what works, and building something that lasts.