In August 2020, Growth Channel joined Sputnik ATX’s Summer 2020 cohort where she grew her userbase 20% weekly on average.
We all know what happened in March of 2020. Austin, Texas was no exception. SXSW was canceled, leaving scores of commuters frustrated as the travel ban took effect. In that group of newly trapped travelers were Maryna Burushkina, her husband, and young son. They had no choice but to stay.
Although it was unexpected, Burushkina was no stranger to new environments. Originally from Ukraine, she spent seven years in Russia. Afterwards she chased her degree to the Netherlands where she kicked off a successful career. Her accomplishments led her from the tulip-lined canals of Western Europe all the way to Spain and even Germany in the span of 12 years.
Boasting over a decade of marketing experience from agencies, corporations, Fortune 500 companies, and most recently, tech startups, Maryna Burushkina is at the forefront of marketing automation through her innovative use of AI.
Solving The Marketer’s Great Time Suck
Most Marketing Managers will agree on the pain points of strategic planning. It relentlessly sucks time, energy, and resources. As a Manager herself, Burushkina first-handedly experienced each meticulous minute.
“When you do this for 10 years every single month, there is a time when you think to yourself, ‘Ok, there must be a way to automate all of this,’” she said.
Months of research and conversations with fellow marketing colleagues and IT professionals gave Burushkina the assurance that she wasn’t alone. It’s no wonder that, in recent years, automation has surged in the marketing technology industry.
Development started in 2018. Burushkina and her team built a platform that generates personalized growth marketing plans with clear personas, customer journey mapping, and a data-driven growth strategy which is aptly called “Growth Channel”.
A year later she joined YCombinator Startup School where she learned how to launch fast. On top of that, she gained more user feedback from small business owners and startup founders.
“The problem was bigger than I thought,” Burushkina said. “I discovered that startup founders actually don’t know what to do with marketing or how to get started.”
With that in mind, she pivoted to serve a larger clientele of founders in need of expert marketing. The platform officially launched in July 2020 with a prototype that gained 20 initial users in the first week.
In August 2020, Growth Channel joined Sputnik ATX’s Summer 2020 cohort where she grew her userbase 20% weekly on average. By the end of the program in mid-November, the B2B SaaS platform had 104 qualified leads in their pipeline; in January, that pipeline grew to 27K and now it stands at 40K with over 1000 paid users.
What’s next for Growth Channel?
Recently, Burushkina identified that her users were using the platform once a month to refresh their marketing plans. And from her interactions with potential customers online, she realized that founders wanted more support.
“People love our product, but they use it only when they need to re-think their marketing plans. We want to be there for them weekly, daily basis,” Burushkina said.
Growth Channel is expanding on the experience part of their platform so that in addition to planning their marketing with AI, users can also activate and optimize campaigns efficiently through the platform.
By the end of 2021, users can expect to find a library within Growth Channel including marketing podcasts, tools, resources, experts, and execution help curated for founders and marketers.
To generate your digital marketing plan with clear personas, customer journey mapping, and data-driven growth strategy now, visit https://growthchannel.io/.
Originally published at https://www.sputnikatx.com on March 5, 2021.
Channeling Growth in 2021 was originally published in Austin Startups on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
