Career lessons from Kadijat Okeowo – Growth and Product Marketer, Moniepoint
What do you do when you’re unsure which career direction to take? From teaching in classrooms to shaping growth strategies for a cross-border fintech product, Kadijat Okeowo’s career is proof that the marketing path can be unconventional for most but always full of lessons.
In this edition of our Career Lesson series, Kadijat’s drive for marketing and her detail-oriented, performance-focused approach shine through as she shares how she transitioned from uncertainty to impact, the framework that reshaped her growth mindset, and how she blends creativity with data, empathy with performance.
Whether you’re charting your own marketing journey or simply curious about her role at Moniepoint Group, her story offers practical wisdom you can apply.
Let’s dive in!
Tell us about Kadijat. How did your marketing journey begin?
My name is Kadijat Okeowo. I’m a Computer Science graduate. After I finished from Uni, I dabbled in a lot of things, including teaching in schools for about two to three years because I finished school pretty young at 21 and didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do yet.
Left to right: (1) Kadijat’s early days as an undergraduate. (2) A group picture of Kadijat’s students during her brief stint as a teacher. (3) Kadijat at her first marketing job.
Even though I studied Computer Science, my marketing journey started from an online bootcamp I joined which was run by Hotels.ng. It’s mostly for developers but they also had a growth track, which I joined. Initially, I wanted to learn front-end development, but I couldn’t continue with that, so I started focusing on marketing.
After the program, I did about three months internship with Hotels.ng before moving on. Then, I did a program called Digify, that really gave me a foundation in marketing. It focuses on entry-level digital marketing, mostly from an agency perspective. The program lasted about two to three months and is sponsored by Facebook.
So, after Digify, I worked in a marketing role for Skooleeo, an edtech company for about seven to eight months, and later joined a cross-border fintech brand. Since then, I’ve had opportunities to work with companies within and outside Africa.
It’s been quite a journey, a lot of learning. I’ve grown a lot, but there’s still so much to learn and many opportunities to grow professionally.
You've held diverse roles in your career so far, from a digital marketer to product marketer to growth marketer. How have these roles been similar or different?
Marketing has quite a number of roles. But for you to lead teams, I would say you really need to understand digital marketing.
Left to right: (1) Kadijat at a marketing event with friends. (2) Kadijat in an office lounge
I've worked as a digital marketer and a product marketer. As a growth marketer, those roles have made me see marketing in different lights. As a digital marketer, I had to work on different online channels which shaped how I thought about marketing. It also helped me to be more performance-focused because I needed to know how many people we reached, what the impression was, what the conversion rate was, and how we could improve the conversion rate, things like that.
As a product marketer, I was able to focus more figuring out what the right messaging is, and positioning the products in the minds of people. If someone thinks about the product, what do would I want them to think? What message would I want to pop up in their mind?
And as a growth marketer now, I work full funnel. In digital marketing, you only work on the online channels, but with growth, you have to work with every channel available. So whether it's paid marketing, whether it's online channels, or the offline channels or activation channels like CRM, offline channels like maybe billboards, event marketing, video marketing, and things like that.
Having gotten the opportunity to work across all of these roles has shaped and rounded my experience, and that's helped me to become someone that can bring value into the roles that I take on. So, I would say the roles have been similar but yet different because with each product you work on, the kind of channels that you're going to need to help the product scale and grow will differ.
What does a day in your life look like as a growth and product marketing manager?
I currently work as the CRM and lifecycle marketing manager here with MonieWorld, a cross-border payment product by Moniepoint. Right now, my day-to-day involves looking at our CRM platform. We currently use Customer.io to communicate with our customers. To do this, we leverage multiple CRM channels, whether it's push, SMS, email, or in-app, to communicate timely messages to our customers to drive activation, even acquisition through referrals, as well as revenue, ensuring that our customers keep transacting.
My day starts with me logging into my laptop, looking at the current campaigns I’ve got going on and upcoming ones. I also create creative briefs to work with designers and copy briefs to work with copywriters, then review and launch the different campaigns across our different channels.
At the intersection of product marketing and growth, how do you balance creative ideas with hard data to make decisions?
Like you said, balance is the word. Because while you're trying to use data to make decisions, you also don't want to lose the brand aspect because that's where creativity comes into play. You can be so data-focused that people sort of lose the emotional touch they ought to have with your brand.
The key is striking a balance. But of course, you always have to start with the data. What is the data saying? Having access to data improves your creative ideas For example, say you designed one creative, and when you sent it out to 1,000 people, maybe 500 of them engaged with the email you sent because of the beautiful creative you have attached. Now you start to think, "Okay, if 500 people could engage with this creative, how can I make that creative maybe much better so that in my next campaign I should get a similar result or something slightly better?”
So, data is like the foundation, and every other thing comes on top of it. But your creativity alongside data can make you a superpower.
💡 Curious about how to use data to back creative marketing decisions? Get our analytics masterclass video to learn from marketing leaders
What essential marketing framework do you wish you had known early on in your career? And what difference would it have made?
It's the AARRR Pirate Metrics, which are acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue.
Kadijat’s personalized AARRR framework chart
Initially, my approach to growth was just like, "This is our market segment. Let’s run ads, and that's all." But when you look at the AARRR metrics, you get to discover that before you can get to revenue or before you can generate business results, your customers are go through a funnel. You've got to guide them through all of those different paths. Now, when I run ads, I don't just do so to get customers to sign up. I need to activate them after they sign up by leveraging a CRM platform and do a follow-up on them.
I also need to come up with an offer such that even if my initial offer on the ad does not appeal to them, if I have a follow-up offer at my activation level, it can make them more curious to want to take an attempt or perform a key action within my product. Then I also have to think about retaining them. "Yes, they joined me in January. Are they back in March or April?" If they are not back, what offer can I come up with to bring them back and maximize their lifetime value?
Also for referral, now that I've brought this customer in, how can this customer bring me one, two, or three more customers such that my role now becomes organic and I don't have to pay a whole lot of money to bring in new customers?
This has been an essential framework that has guided my work and continues to guide my work, and it has made a difference in how I approach my marketing campaigns.
💡 Read also: Career lessons — Lani Sodunke, Founder of BaxAnalytics
What are your best tips for working effectively with product, design, and leadership teams to drive aligned growth strategies?
One tip is to speak their language. For product, you have to communicate clearly and let them understand how the XYZ you want to ship relates to customers’ needs.
Though product teams vary in every company and product you work on, figure out how to speak with them in the language they prefer, not just the one you feel is right. Find a middle ground because remember, you also need the product team. If they don't do whatever you need to ship the product, whatever communications you are sending probably won’t have much effect.
With design, I don't have too many issues with them as long as I have a brief that communicates what needs to be done, such that it guides whatever output I'm expecting from them.
With leadership, you also have to speak their language, which is, "How is what you’re doing tied to a business goal?" For example, if I'm sending a marketing campaign, I have to tie it to a particular goal. Maybe it's to get us 100 or 300 or 500 new customers, and to get them to perform XYZ action. Now, that’s leadership's biggest language: how your work, no matter how minute you think it is, is driving business value.
A second tip is to provide clarity and context. I always ensure that even I communicate with other teams verbally, I still create a brief they can go over again. The advantage of creating a framework is that you’re ensuring that when requests come, there's actually a solid brief— an essential document that ties everything together. That way, if anything happens, you can refer back to it like, "Okay, I shared this brief with you, you went through it and we both agreed that this is what should happen."
A third tip is to celebrate your wins, especially cross-functional results, with other teams. Acknowledge their impact on your work: How have they helped you? How did whatever feature that's created impact your campaign? What were the results you generated?
For example, if product asks you to launch, they might own the product, but you’re the one that launched it. So you have to communicate the results since you’re both a cross-functional and a collaborative team. As much as you want to take individual glory, it's also good to have a good relationship with cross-functional teams.
Share positive feedback with them so that they know that, whenever you ask them to do something, there are always results. That way, they can always trust you and it also gives them wins that they can speak about.
In sum, these are key points for working effectively with product, design, and other teams:
Speak their language
Always provide clarity and context
Let others share in the wins
💡 Read also: Career lessons — Lade Falobi, General Manager, EarlyNode
In your role at Moniepoint, what insights can you share on building high-performing marketing teams that support rapid product growth?
Right now, I don't yet need to lead a team because the product I'm working on is fairly new. It's a cross-border product, and the team is still pretty young.
But from what I've seen, you always want to be sure about is the goal you are working towards. That’s important for building a high-performing team. Also, don’t try to do everything, let everyone on your team know the goals they are pursuing. Once they do, it becomes easier to tailor their efforts to achieving it. At the end of the quarter, you've got these results to show that you are actually high-performing and, of course, get rewarded and appreciated when necessary.
Another thing is empowered ownership. At Moniepoint, you are encouraged to own your ideas, and to always focus on outcomes. Whether it's in numbers or even in other things.
For example, if you’re collaborating with a team on something, at the end of the day, you must have an outcome. Say it’s CRM-related. Maybe you need to be able to reach customers. And to do that, you’ve got to employ different channels, which may require technical integration. Now you have to collaborate with the product team to you can get the outcome, which in this case, is to integrate your CRM channels that allow you to reach your goal.
You've worked with several international companies remotely. How do you position yourself to hiring managers?
I only apply to companies that match my role or industries I've worked with because with every job role, there are always things they're looking for. So, I always try to read through the different requirements and ensure that at least I can do maybe 60 to 70% of it, then I give it a shot. That largely helps me to be successful. Then during my application, I always try to tie impact to things that are done. If I'm sending my CV, for instance to the previous businesses I've worked in, I always try to attach the results I've generated. Instead of saying "I can run campaigns," I share specific campaigns I've worked on and the results that I generated.
Then also show that you are adaptable and your communication skills are also important. So I try to prepare, I try to research as well. If I know people that work at the company, I try to reach out to them and ask questions, which can also help your preparation.
I also leverage LinkedIn, ensuring my profile is up-to-date with whatever new certification or skills I've gotten.
What part of your job do you enjoy the most and what parts do you not enjoy so much?
Generally, I enjoy everything from brainstorming ideas to creating strategies, planning, getting insights from data analytics, and experimenting on creative ideas. I like almost every part of marketing because to become a growth marketer, you've got to know as many channels as possible. That makes your work easier.
Starting off as a generalist really helped me, which is there's almost no part of marketing that I can't really do. However, one part I don't really enjoy is the posting aspect of social media marketing. I think that that kind of work can become monotonous, especially because some companies don't even understand social media.
Let’s say you need resources to bring a company’s social media channels to life. Outside of paid ads, some companies may not allocate budgets for it. Suppose a social media manager has a creative idea and wants to do something on the streets, maybe interview random people or something different. How many companies will sponsor that and say, "Okay, our social media team wants to go into the streets and try something new, let’s throw money at that. Most Nigerian companies do not support such ideas.
What's a life hack you'd like to share?
Stay adaptable; work on your character; and keep learning. You can never learn or know too much. So keep evolving, adapting and learning, because that mindset has helped me to get to where I am. I'm always trying to improve myself, mostly through learning.
Left to right: (1-2) Kadijat on fun outings with friends
What advice would you give to the marketer reading this piece?
Don't just chase trends. Master the fundamentals because you’ll always go back to them. Try to pick one to three top channels that you really want to grow at because that will form a foundation for your growth. Tools and platforms will change, but the fundamentals never really change.
Looking ahead, are there any exciting projects or goals you're currently working on that you'd like to share with us?
At Moniepoint, like I said, I'm working on one of the products under MoneyWorld. It's currently launched in the UK. My goal is to ensure that the product continues to grow in the UK.
Also, I'm excited about all the different new locations that the product is also launching across the world. We've also got new features coming up— for example, we'll be introducing cards. So if you're a marketer living in the UK, you may want to check out MoneyWorld and use it to send money home. That’s an upcoming project I'm excited to be a part of and also just seeing the company scale and grow over the next coming months.
Enjoyed Kadijat’s story? Connect with her on LinkedIn.
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