The Front Lines
SubscribeContent Studio
Verena Gerhardus.
Director of Growth · Nelly Solutions
Verena Gerhardus is the Director of Growth at Nelly, a leading Nordic e-commerce platform. With a strong background in digital marketing and growth strategies, Verena is dedicated to driving customer acquisition, retention, and overall business growth. Her expertise lies in leveraging data-driven insights to optimize marketing efforts and enhance the customer experience.
Guest
Verena Gerhardus
Director of Growth
Company:
Nelly Solutions
Location:
Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Loading episode...
Listen onApple PodcastsSpotify

In this episode of The Marketing Front Lines, we speak with Verena Gerhardus, Director of Growth at Nelly, a B2B health tech company revolutionizing the patient journey for medical practices. Since joining pre-Series A, Verena has helped scale Nelly from 30 to 100 employees while building a high-performing marketing organization focused on efficient growth. Through their digital platform that streamlines everything from patient intake to billing, Nelly is helping medical practices reduce bureaucracy, improve patient experience, and generate more revenue.

Topics Discussed:

Five takeaways from this conversation.

Actionable for Healthcare Tech founders

  1. Optimize Channel Strategy Through Rapid Testing and Focus
    Unlike conventional wisdom about multi-channel marketing, Nelly found success by quickly identifying and doubling down on their most effective channels - Meta ads and referrals. Rather than maintaining underperforming channels for the sake of diversity, they reallocated resources to proven winners. This approach led to hitting revenue targets ahead of schedule and maintaining efficient customer acquisition costs.
  2. Build Trust Through Technical Partnerships and Integration
    Nelly discovered that their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) was heavily influenced by technical integration capabilities with existing practice management systems. Rather than focusing solely on demographic or firmographic data, they prioritized partnerships and customer targeting based on technical compatibility. This insight transformed their partnership strategy from a supplementary channel into a core growth driver.
  3. Leverage Competitive Intelligence for Rapid Campaign Execution
    When receiving intelligence about competitor pricing and customer service issues, Nelly's team demonstrated exceptional agility by quickly developing and deploying targeted campaign creative through Canva and Figma. This rapid response approach, combined with their existing Meta ads infrastructure, allowed them to capitalize on market opportunities in real-time and achieve monthly targets ahead of schedule.
  4. Structure Growth Teams for Scale
    Nelly's marketing organization evolved into three distinct departments: core marketing, presales, and partnerships. This structure enables specialized focus while maintaining alignment across the customer journey. Their emphasis on adding dedicated performance marketing and social media resources shows a clear understanding of where additional scale can drive growth.
  5. Implement Product-Led Growth Strategically
    Rather than forcing PLG across their entire product line, Nelly is strategically implementing it for their basic subscription package. Their approach focuses on removing friction from the signup process while maintaining high security standards - crucial for their healthcare audience. This targeted PLG strategy allows them to experiment with self-serve motion while maintaining their high-touch sales approach for complex deployments.

More episodes

Nitesh Shroff
CEO & Co-Founder · Arintra
Colin Lawlor
CEO & Founder · Sleep ai
Ari Ashkenas
SVP Customer Success and Experience · Apploi
Scott Chetham
CEO & Co-Founder