Prepia: Building the Marketing
for Serbia’s Fastest-Growing Startup
Introduction
Prepia is a Serbian EdTech startup that raised one of the country’s largest startup investments in 2025.
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I joined as the company’s first marketing hire, initially as Marketing Manager and later as Marketing Lead. My role was to build the marketing function from the ground up while the company was rapidly expanding its team, product portfolio, and user base. At the time, Prepia already had strong product traction but no established marketing department, processes, or scalable system for supporting more than 100 exam-preparation apps.
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I developed the strategy, messaging, content systems, creator program, paid creative processes, lifecycle campaigns, public relations, and internal workflows needed to support that growth.
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During my time there, Prepia grew from approximately 100,000 to more than 500,000 users. My contribution was creating the marketing foundation that allowed a small team to communicate consistently across many different products, audiences, and stages of the customer journey.
Challenge
Prepia served a wide range of users, from nursing students and healthcare professionals to IT specialists, teachers, social workers, and project managers. Although every audience was preparing for a different exam, they shared similar emotional challenges: feeling overwhelmed, struggling to stay consistent, worrying about failure, and questioning whether they were ready.
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We needed to communicate with each audience in a way that felt specific while maintaining a recognizable brand and consistent marketing approach across the wider product portfolio.
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The main challenges were:
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Marketing more than 100 apps with a small team
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Creating relevant content for very different audiences
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Building trust in a high-stakes education category
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Coordinating organic, paid, creator, and lifecycle marketing
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Improving communication across the customer journey
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Creating workflows for new product and campaign launches
Strategy
As Prepia’s first marketing hire, my priority was to build a marketing system that could support rapid growth across more than 100 exam-preparation apps without treating every product as a completely separate business.
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I structured the strategy around three levels:
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The Prepia brand
At company level, the goal was to build trust, communicate growth, and position Prepia as a credible global EdTech company. This included company content, funding and PR communication, product milestones, user results, and employer-brand activity.
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Individual exam audiences
Each app targeted a different group, from nurses and healthcare professionals to IT specialists, teachers, social workers, and project managers. I created repeatable research and messaging frameworks that could be adapted to each exam based on the audience’s goals, pain points, preparation timeline, and purchase motivation.
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The customer journey
Marketing activity was then organized around four stages:
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Awareness: social media, creators, UGC, Reddit, educational content, and public relations
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Acquisition: paid campaigns, ASO, lead magnets, and landing-page communication
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Conversion: exam-specific messaging, testimonials, product education, promotional offers
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Retention: email communication, support content, product guidance, and ongoing engagement
The strategy was based on a simple principle: users wanted to feel prepared, pass an important exam, and move forward in their careers.
This positioning shaped the content, paid creative, creator briefs, App Store copy, and email campaigns. Instead of leading only with features, we communicated around confidence, readiness, time pressure, fear of failure, and the career outcome attached to passing the exam.
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To make the system scalable, I also developed reusable templates for audience research, campaign briefs, creator scripts, content production, app launches, and performance tracking. These frameworks gave the team a consistent process while still allowing each exam product to feel specific to its audience.
Branding & Messaging
Prepia needed to feel credible, supportive, and easy to trust. Users were preparing for exams that could directly affect their careers, education, income, or professional licenses, so the brand could not rely on generic motivational language or product features alone.
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I developed messaging around the outcome users cared about most: feeling prepared, passing an important exam, and moving forward in their careers. The communication addressed common concerns such as fear of failure, limited time, information overload, lack of confidence, and uncertainty about what to study.
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At the same time, the brand had to remain consistent across more than 100 exam-preparation apps. I created a shared messaging foundation for Prepia, then adapted it to the specific language, priorities, and motivations of each audience, from healthcare professionals and nurses to IT specialists, teachers, and project managers.
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Content, Social Media & Community
I introduced a centralized content calendar and clearer workflows for content ideation, production, approval, and publishing. The strategy covered both Prepia’s company brand and its individual exam audiences across LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and other relevant channels.
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Content included:
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Exam preparation and study advice
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Motivational and confidence-building content
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User stories, results, and testimonials
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Product features and practical use cases
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Exam-specific pain points
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Career and certification outcomes
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Company announcements
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Education and industry insights
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This structure made publishing more consistent, reduced reactive work, and allowed the team to adapt successful formats across different exam categories.
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Creator & UGC Program
Creator content became an important part of Prepia’s acquisition and paid creative strategy. I helped build and manage a network of approximately 15 creators across different exam categories. The aim was to produce content that reflected the real experiences of people preparing for professional and academic exams.
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My work included creator research and outreach, negotiating rates and usage rights, developing briefs and scripts, coordinating revisions, organizing content delivery, and maintaining communication with creators. I also developed more than 20 hook variations for each video, based on different user motivations, pain points, and stages of exam preparation.
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By securing extended usage rights, the team could repurpose stronger creator assets across paid and organic channels instead of producing every piece of content for a single use.
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Paid Creative
I supported paid acquisition across Meta, Google, and TikTok. My role focused on campaign concepts, creative angles, ad copy, creator briefs, asset coordination, and identifying new testing opportunities.
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The creative strategy was built around real user concerns such as exam anxiety, limited preparation time, low confidence, and uncertainty about readiness. We tested different approaches across the funnel, including emotional, educational, product-led, and promotional messaging. Campaigns were aligned with relevant offers, landing pages, and individual exam products.
Campaigns
Lead Magnet
To attract users before they were ready to purchase, I developed a lead magnet offering 100 free practice questions tailored to their specific exam.
The campaign provided immediate value while introducing users to the quality and structure of Prepia’s preparation content. After downloading the questions, users entered an email sequence that delivered the resource, presented the relevant app, addressed common objections, and offered a 25% discount.
This created a clearer path from initial interest to conversion and gave potential users a low-risk way to experience the product before subscribing.
Scrubs & Apps Giveaway
To build awareness among healthcare exam candidates, we launched the Scrubs & Apps Giveaway, combining Prepia’s premium exam-preparation access with a prize that was directly relevant to the audience. Participants could win two premium subscriptions every Monday, with a larger giveaway of FIGS scrubs. The campaign connected exam preparation with the professional identity users were working toward, making the promotion more meaningful.
The giveaway helped introduce Prepia’s healthcare apps, encouraged social media participation, and created a stronger connection between the brand and future healthcare professionals.
Results
During my time at Prepia, the company grew from approximately 100,000 to more than 500,000 users and expanded its portfolio to more than 100 exam-preparation apps.
This growth happened during a major product and brand transition. The existing white-label apps continued to operate and gradually adopted Prepia branding, while the technology team developed a unified master app that would eventually bring the different exam products into one platform.
As Prepia’s first marketing hire, I built the marketing foundation needed to support both sides of that transition. I launched the company’s brand channels, introduced more consistent messaging across the existing apps, and created campaigns, content systems, creator workflows, and internal processes that could later support the master product.
