Inside the Hub: Our 2025 community recap
When I think about Smarketers Hub as a community member, one word stands out for me- access. And when I think about it as a team member, three words stand out: ownership, systems, and excellent execution.
Out of curiosity, I asked our community members what Smarketers Hub means to them, and these were some goofy & interesting responses I got.
“Community.” “Exchange.” “Magic.”
A Slack thread that got members expressing what the Smarketers Hub community means to them
A continuation of the Slack thread
Smarketers Hub is a growing team of four: Aisha Owolabi, our founder; Anthonia Abati, our content manager; Jude Oguzo, our social media manager & newest addition; and I, resource development & community lead.
Every day, we pour into Smarketers Hub with the hope of making an impact on the lives of more African marketers. As a small team with limited resources, this means we rely on each other’s strengths to produce high-quality work that matters and ship it quickly.
With the strength of four, here’s a recap of what we birthed in 2025.
A quick shout-out from the team to Etashe Okpola, our previous Community Lead who led gracefully and set up systems that made work easily repeatable and accessible.
Let’s get the recap rolling.
1. Platform growth
In the past 12 months, our community has increased to over 5000 members across the following platforms:
65.40% increase on Slack
31.26% on LinkedIn
28.73% on Instagram
22.83% on X
50% in our newsletter
To us, these aren’t just numbers, but represent people who desire community and a space to improve their craft, and that’s what we’re committed to doing. Let’s dive into some impact work we did.
2. Community impact
1. Volunteer program
Over 60% of our community members are in the early stages of their careers. And from them come requests to provide resources and opportunities to help them grow their skills, gain hands-on experience, and secure employment.
This knowledge informed the launch of our volunteer program, which has become one of our most successful mentoring programs at the hub.
Two cohorts later, we’ve trained over 12 marketers across content writing, social media & events, resource and community management. Since part of our mission is to create job opportunities for participants, we’ve hired two volunteers from cohorts 1 and 2 as content and social media managers.
Two hires from cohorts 1 and 2 of the Smarketers Hub volunteer program
Graduation picture of the six members of cohort 2 volunteer program
The bigger goal is to place each trainee who completes our volunteer program in an internship or entry-level role. Read here for more details, if you’d like to support us as we train early-stage marketers and create more opportunities for market-ready talents.
2. Events
As a career development hub, we create events that bring together professionals in the marketing industry to educate, inspire, and help community members level up in their career pursuits.
In 2025, our top events were ‘The Live Pitch Teardown’ and ‘The Marketing Playbook 2026: Positioning, Profiting & Growth’, with 300+ registrations at both events.
The Live Pitch Teardown event was a practical session that allowed five marketers to have their cold pitch samples reviewed by content marketing professionals in real-time. At the end of the event, attendees and the marketers who sent in their pitches gained clarity on what makes a great pitch.
Our live pitch teadown event
On the other hand, the Marketing Playbook 2026 event focused on timely conversations about the future of marketing in 2026.
Our 2025 end of the year virtual event held in November
This event informed and educated attendees on valuable skills to improve upon or acquire in 2026. Areas like learning how to build AI content workflows, AI automations for growth and revenue teams and breaking into the creator economy.
💡 Read also: 2026 marketing trends: 6 expert marketers share what to expect
3. Marketing analytics masterclass
In 2025, we hosted our first Masterclass on Marketing Analytics, a topic highly relevant and requested by our community and across the marketing space.
Our first masterclass on marketing analytics in 2025
We had tutors like Lade Falobi, the founder of Marketing for Geeks; Veruska Anconitano, an international SEO and Globalisation expert; Lydia C. George, Head of Social & Media at Selar; and Aisha Owolabi, founder of Smarketers Hub.
To ensure maximum impact on our community, we awarded scholarships to four community members and onboarded 25 other marketers to our course to teach them how to implement marketing analytics. We also received amazing feedback from community members who took the course.
Four beneficiaries of our masterclass scholarship
💡 Read also: SEO myths vs truths: Lessons from our first marketing analytics masterclass
We’ve created other resources, both free and paid, with 175 downloads in 2025. These numbers and the continuous resource requests we get show us the need to continue creating helpful marketing resources and make them accessible.
4. AI in Marketing report
Conversations about AI are everywhere. While some teams have yet to incorporate it into their daily workflows, other marketers are already building AI-powered marketing workflows—making work easier and creating repeatable systems.
We collaborated with Column Content to explore how marketers are using AI in their work. This revealed critical skill gaps that every marketer needs to understand to upskill where necessary.
3. Strategic brand partnerships
In the past, we’ve partnered with brands like;
Cleva to give easy global payment access to our community
Propel to help community members apply and secure roles
Column Content for creation of the AI in Marketing report, to identify AI usage amongst marketers and create awareness for marketers to know the opportunity gaps and target areas to scale up
Earna for payment access
Talentpoel to help our members join a talentpool where they can get hired from.
Treford to make marketing courses affordable and accessible to our community members
This year, we aim to strengthen our impact by partnering with brands that align with our community values, and bring more access to African marketers. For us, access means opportunities to upskill through courses and hands-on experience, internships and employment opportunities and access to industry events.
Here are some shout-outs we got on social media from beneficiaries of some of our initiatives.
Source: LinkedIn
Source: LinkedIn
Our key initiatives for 2026
Our mantra for this year is building intentionally and consistently. Let’s share a sneak peek of key initiatives we’re planning for 2026
1. Connect and converse (C&C) event
Our annual program, which happens in real life (IRL) and virtually. In April, we’ll be hosting our IRL C&C experience where Smarketers meet in person, network, and share talks over drinks and snacks. The goal is to help marketers connect deeply, inspire through shared stories, and have a relaxing time off work.
2. Volunteer program cohort 3
Again, our volunteer program is a training program where early-stage marketers gain hands-on experience to grow their skills, build a portfolio and become more employable.
Here’s what a volunteer had to say about the impact:
“This is what Smarketers Hub does to you as a beginner. They transform you from being a naive marketer to a confident one who is not afraid to take up roles independently.
The community they create, the resources, online events and workshops are not only impactful, but provide a very solid foundation for new marketers”
Patricia has gone on to land two more roles as a result of her training at Smarketers Hub.
💡 Read Patricia’s impact story: How volunteering with Smarketers Hub helped Patricia find confidence in her marketing journey
3. Masterclasses
This year, our goal is to organize three masterclasses across vital topics in the marketing space right now, and we’re excited about creating this resource that allows our community members to learn from top career professionals in this field.
Besides our major initiatives, we’ll continue to host community sessions, meetups, and create mini resources to help the Smarketers Hub community advance in their careers.
If you’d like to support us, here are ways to do so:
Donate financially
Give access to a marketing tool or software to help our members do better work
Partner with us to create marketing events and educate our community further
Sponsor our events
Wrapping up
The Smarketers Hub community is free, but it costs us to create both free and paid resources and give them out at an affordable rate. So, if you’d like to support us, whether as a community member or brand, reach out to us via hello@smarketershub.com.
If you’re a marketer and looking for a tribe of like-minded professionals, join the Marketers Room.
