By: Ayodele Ogunkunle
When I joined forces with Entrova, a then-emerging global hiring and payments platform based in Africa, the mission was bold and urgent: scale fast but build trust faster. In a competitive space full of promises but lacking reliability, our edge wasn’t just the product, it had to be how people experienced the brand at every touchpoint.
1. Positioning the Brand Around Empathy, Not Features
My first strategic move was to redefine Entrova’s positioning. Instead of leaning into generic product messaging like “We help you pay global workers,” we reframed the narrative around the real pain:
“You should never lose top talent because of compliance confusion.”
That shift from product-first to problem-first changed how people interacted with us. It created emotional resonance and gave our audience — especially HR leaders and founders — language for the friction they were already feeling. Engagement and demo requests more than doubled in just weeks.
2. Rebranding the Face of the Company
Entrova needed a face people could relate to. I led a full rebranding effort, revamping our tone, voice, and visual identity to reflect credibility, clarity, and compassion. We moved from transactional design to storytelling-led design. Our updated brand deck, public-facing materials, and website reflected real customer stories, not just features.
I also helped position our founder and executive team as thought leaders — with visible results. Our founder’s posts and interviews began gaining traction across LinkedIn and newsletters in the HRTech and remote work space.
3. Redesigning the User Journey and Onboarding Experience
We quickly realized that growth wasn’t just about acquisition — it was about activation and trust. I led a revamp of our user journey, starting from the demo request all the way to first payroll execution.
- We built a frictionless onboarding flow with personalized guides and automation triggers.
- Introduced a compliance checklist generator that became a viral tool in Slack groups and WhatsApp HR communities.
- Embedded contextual help and in-app tutorials to shorten the learning curve.
These changes helped us increase demo-to-activation conversion by 4.7x in under 5 months.
4. Rebuilding the Growth Funnel
To support long-term scale, I developed a layered growth strategy:
- Top of Funnel: Led thought-leadership campaigns powered by real customer case studies. We published insights across LinkedIn, HR communities, and newsletters, which positioned us as trusted voices in the global hiring ecosystem.
- Middle of Funnel: We launched value-based onboarding webinars, compliance deep-dives, and educational PDFs that generated qualified leads organically — especially from regions like Europe and North America.
- Bottom of Funnel: Activated testimonials, built localized landing pages, and launched a high-touch retargeting campaign focused on renewals, upgrades, and referrals.
5. Retraining the Team for Storytelling at Scale
Growth isn’t a department, it’s a culture. I organized internal bootcamps to retrain the team across marketing, customer success, and product on storytelling: how to frame narratives that connected with our users’ deepest anxieties and aspirations.
This cultural reset ensured that from emails to product tours, every interaction told a consistent, clear, and human story.
📊 What We Achieved in 6 Months
- 🚀 User Base Growth: +230% increase in active users
- 📈 Demo-to-Activation Rate: Improved by 4.7x
- 🌍 Global Partnerships: Secured collaborations with HR firms across 3 continents
- 📣 Viral Tool Launch: Compliance checklist tool reached over 7,000 downloads
- 💬 Brand Mentions: 3x increase in LinkedIn mentions from HR influencers
- 💡 Founder Thought Leadership: 10x increase in average post reach and engagement
Today, Entrova is more than a platform, it’s a movement for frictionless, compliant global hiring.
And behind the scenes, the growth engine we built wasn’t powered by ads or algorithms, it was driven by empathy, clarity, and relentless execution.
The results may live in numbers, but the impact? That lives in the stories our customers tell about how we made global hiring just a little less hard.
About the writer of the article:
Ayodele Ogunkunle is a Digital Marketing Lead with a reputation for driving business growth through strategic campaigns and innovative marketing solutions. With multiple years of experience in the tech and fintech sectors, he has led successful digital initiatives for brands like ALAT by Wema and Bumpa, resulting in increased revenue, user growth, and investor funding
