Think of an uncut pizza.
There are a number of ways you can go about slicing it. If it’s small — like a frozen pizza you make at home — you can cut perpendicular lines down the middle into four wide slices. If it’s a bigger pizza, you can rotate it 45 degrees and cut perpendicular lines until you have eight longer, skinner triangular slices. You can cut parallel lines across the pizza, with one line perpendicular down the middle to make long rectangular pieces. Add a few more parallel lines to either side, and you have bite-sized square slices. How you cut the pizza depends on factors like size and the number of people it's serving.
As a startup, structuring your marketing department is like cutting a pizza — there is a number of ‘correct’ ways to go about it, but there’s an optimal way depending on the stage, size, and various other factors. Oftentimes, startup founders struggle with where to start when it comes down to actually hiring personnel. Leadership is faced with deciding which marketing roles are most important for the current stage of the business, whom to bring on full-time, what to outsource, and a number of other major decisions that can affect how the marketing department — and the business itself — succeed long-term.
First and foremost, this conversation needs to happen early — almost immediately. A huge mistake startups make is pushing off building out a marketing department until a few months out from product launch or pitching investors. It forces businesses to scramble and make impulsive decisions on marketing department structure, leaving little-to-no time for trial and error. When realized too late, startup founders scramble to hire a high-level marketer to help organize and build out the department. It’s a rush job and gives little for the business or the marketer to deep-dive into the crucial foundational questions about the industry, competitive advantage, and target customer persona, among others. Efforts are rushed, and resources are wasted — which all could have been avoided if there was enough of an emphasis on marketing from the get-go.
Startups must start the marketing conversation early.
In most cases, early means immediately.
It’s crucial to bring on an experienced marketing leader from the jump to ensure the best path forward. This could be a Fractional CMO (FCMO), marketing manager, or advisor — so long as it’s someone with senior-level experience (bonus point if they’re seasoned in your industry).
It might feel counterintuitive to spend more for a senior or c-level marketer right away. But from 15+ years as a marketing leader and CMO, spending early on marketing leadership will save you money, time, and resources in the long run. What’s truly counterintuitive, is putting the responsibility of building out a marketing department on decision-makers who have little to no experience managing marketing professionals or full marketing departments. And it happens more often than most realize.
Below are names and descriptions of marketing department roles, types, and make-ups. In general, these five scenarios act as a framework for how the average startup or early-stage company can approach building an effective marketing department that will last.
First, it’s crucial to understand the four primary marketing department structures: (1.) fully outsourced; (2) single lead; (3) multi-person or mixed team; (4) end-to-end internal team.
When a marketing department is fully outsourced, both strategic and tactical marketing efforts are outsourced, with one internal marketer serving as the go-between between agencies or consultants, and the business. Single-lead marketing departments have an internal leader, like a fractional CMO, who works with the company founders or CEO on strategy, while outsourcing tactical execution. A multi-person or mixed team is exactly what it sounds like: When a marketing department has a handful of key internal marketers — usually a marketing leader, and a number of junior associates or representatives — and might outsource certain aspects of marketing (like SEO, for example). And finally, end-to-end internal marketing teams are when all strategy and tactical execution is done in-house. This usually only happens when an organization has enough capital to build out a massive marketing team of executives, senior leaders, specialists, and junior associates.
Now that we’ve established the general marketing department structure types, it’s important to understand which stage your company is in, and what marketing department functions or features are most important based on your current situation in order to build out your marketing department the right way.
Level 1: You’re a startup with a minimal marketing budget (sub $50,000).
With a budget too small to hire anyone full-time, you might wonder why scouting for a senior-level marketer is the right move.
At this stage, the most common practice I see is hiring an entry-level marketer who handles various tactical functions for the business. The issue, however, is that their direction is coming from non-marketing leadership. This often leads to wasted time and resources as the entry-level marketer is expected to carry out tasks that might not actually be necessary for the business at this stage (or at all). Not to mention, entry-level talent is meant to execute specific tactical functions — you’re not going to give them the autonomy to make major decisions.
Your money is best spent on hiring a marketing specialist or advisor part-time for the experience-based insights they can bring. Even though this person won’t be full-time at this stage, they bring the guidance necessary to make the right decisions for the future of your department and business as a whole.
Level 2: You’re a startup with more room in the budget ($75,000-$100,000)
Companies still in the startup phase with more of a budget to work with will most often benefit from a single-lead approach. At this stage, your business should have proven sales or secured investments to afford both an experienced marketing lead part-time, and a general marketing manager to focus on tactical marketing efforts.
Outsourcing to an experienced marketer will look a lot like Level 1, wherein an FCMO or marketing specialist will function as a strategic advisor. Ideally, this would be the same person you outsourced to in an earlier stage and you can now use more of their time. As for tactical execution, you’ll want to hire a general marketing manager during this stage.
Breaking down the budget, you’ll want to set aside 10-20% for the part-time FCMO or marketing lead, and the remaining 80-90% for your marketing manager and whomever they decide to outsource other tactical efforts. Your general marketing manager will handle all day-to-day tactical efforts, and hire or outsource to freelancers or copywriters at the direction of the FCMO.
Level 3: Startup or running business with $150,000-$250,000 in invest.
With more of a budget to work with, you want to start building out your team from a tactical standpoint. Your FCMO will roll up their sleeves, and increase their engagement with the company equivalent to a part-time role. Digital and content marketing strategies will be fleshed out, and you will need to hire a marketing manager for each. You will also need to outsource to various talents for tactical execution. Your digital marketing and content marketing managers will be responsible for finding copywriters, freelancers, graphic designers, and web developers to work with on a project-by-project basis.
Level 4: Startup or running business with $500,000 to $1,000,000 invested.
Here is when you can really start to build out a team internally. At this stage, startups should have an FCMO fully engaged with their business or seek to hire a full-time CMO immediately. The most ideal situation would be to continue working with the same person who knows the business from being involved at an earlier stage. However, should you look for a full-time CMO, ensure a smooth transition between leadership to avoid setbacks.
Startups at this stage should absolutely have a digital marketing manager and content marketing manager full-time. These managers should be responsible for high-level execution and decision-making, along with delegating roles and responsibilities to independent contractors, agencies, and freelancers necessary for tactical execution. These might include but aren’t limited to copywriters, graphic designers, video producers, web developers, and SEO experts. Startups also need to work on marketing the business itself and should prioritize hiring a PR agency at this stage.
Another important yet overlooked role startups at this stage need to consider is hiring a full-time CRM and marketing automation manager. As you grow, it’s crucial to ensure synchronization across teams and to provide not only the best customer experience but a seamless experience internally for employees, too.
Level 5: Startup or running business with $1,000,000+ invest
Startups with over $1M to work with should have a number of boxes checked for certain. These include:
- A full-time CMO or fully engaged FCMO to handle strategy, major decision-making, hiring managers and other leadership roles, and more.
- A marketing director to manage the digital marketing manager, content manager, CRM, and marketing automation manager, and their teams, as well as a PR, SEO, or paid media agency.
- A digital marketing team led by a digital marketing manager, with a combination of full-time employees and freelancers acting on tactical execution.
- A content marketing team led by a content marketing manager, with a combination of full-time employees and freelancers acting on tactical execution.
- A CRM and marketing automation team led by a manager, with a combination of full-time employees and freelancers acting on tactical execution.
- Agencies to handle PR, SEO, and paid media.
- A contract or full-time graphic designer / creative lead
Startups at this level should have all of their bases covered in regard to developing a plan and delegating tactical responsibilities for long-term success. Any leftover marketing budget should either be put toward tools to help teams function more seamlessly or toward tools to gather more data about your customers and your industry.
While there is no bulletproof or ‘one size fits all’ approach to building out your marketing department, there are methods to make sure you put your best foot forward. It may mean investing in areas or in talent you might have thought to reserve for later down the line, but hopefully, this article proves investing in decision-makers and leadership early on will be a straight course for the long haul.