How to Build a Marketing Team

Building a marketing team is one of the trickiest (and most important) decisions early-stage founders face. You’re juggling limited resources, big growth goals, and constant pressure to deliver results. Hiring the right marketer at the right time can unlock traction.

Hiring the wrong one can waste months and burn precious runway.

It’s not always obvious what kind of marketing help you need. Some founders think, “We need a senior marketer to run our launch next month.” A few days later, they’re asking, “What if we just hire an intern?” Or, “Should we outsource marketing?”

This back-and-forth is common. And totally understandable!

The stakes are high. Marketing touches every part of your growth engine: positioning, messaging, demand generation, product launches, content, community, and more. But the wrong team structure or wrong hire can stall momentum and cost you hard-earned credibility.

This guide will help you navigate those decisions with confidence.

What We’ll Cover

Key Takeaways

• The right marketing hire is an inflection point. It’s not just about campaigns. It’s about building a growth engine that compounds over time.
• Don’t wait too long to make your first marketing hire. Once you have product traction and clear growth goals, bringing in a dedicated marketer is critical to scale.
• Start with what your startup truly needs. Focus on solving your biggest marketing bottleneck, whether that’s messaging, lead generation, or launch execution.
• Match the role to the stage. Early-stage companies often need a full-stack generalist or a Head of Marketing. CMOs are better suited for Series B and beyond.
• Hire someone who can both strategize and execute. Startups need “player-coaches” who can think big but also ship work.
• Avoid chasing unicorns. No one can do everything well. Prioritize the 1–2 marketing capabilities that will drive the most growth right now.
• Agencies can help, but can’t own the function. Use external partners for specific projects, but hire in-house when marketing becomes core to growth.
• Great onboarding matters. Set clear goals, share full context, and give your new marketing hire the support they need to succeed early.
• Building a remote team presents its own challenges. Check out How to Build Successful Remote Marketing Teams.

Marketing Team Models

Before you make your first marketing hire, you need to decide how the function will be resourced. That choice comes down to three basic models: hire in-house, work with an agency, or take a hybrid approach. Each one has tradeoffs, and the best choice depends on your stage, goals, and growth strategy.

The In-House Model

Hiring marketers as employees gives you the most control and alignment. Your in-house team works closely with product, sales, and leadership. They understand your customers deeply and are focused solely on your company’s success.

That tight integration pays off, especially over time. But it comes at a cost. Salaries add up quickly, and building a team takes time. In-house hires only make sense when you have ongoing marketing needs that justify a full-time role.

Every early hire matters. If you make the wrong call, it can set your growth back by months. So move carefully. Only hire in-house when you’re confident about what you need and you’re ready to invest in long-term marketing capacity.

The Agency Model

Agencies offer instant access to specialists: growth marketers, PR pros, brand strategists, designers, and more. They’re especially useful for short-term needs, like launching a product, running ads, or getting press coverage.

The upside: you skip the hiring process and get to market fast. The downside: agencies have other clients. They won’t live and breathe your product the way an internal teammate would. And while you avoid full-time salaries, monthly retainers can add up fast.

Just as importantly, you’ll still need to manage the agency. Without internal leadership, external help can drift or miss the mark. Agencies are best used when you have a clear project or skill gap and someone in-house to steer the work.

The Hybrid Model

Most early-stage startups end up with a hybrid setup: one marketer in-house and a few specialists on contract. It’s a smart way to balance cost, flexibility, and execution.

For example, your in-house marketer might focus on messaging, customer research, and email campaigns, while an agency handles paid acquisition or design. This model lets you move quickly while keeping key marketing knowledge inside the company.

The challenge is coordination. Without clear roles, hybrid setups can get messy. Some consequences of that potential mess include: duplicated efforts, missed deadlines, inconsistent messaging. You need someone to own the strategy and make sure all moving parts stay aligned.

Over time, you’ll likely shift toward more in-house talent as needs grow and budgets expand. But in the early days, a hybrid approach often makes the most sense.

Key Marketing Roles: Who to Hire (and Who to Wait On)

Once you’ve decided how to structure your marketing team—whether in-house, outsourced, or hybrid—the next step is deciding who to hire.

This is where many founders get stuck. Do you need a scrappy generalist who can “just get stuff done”? A Head of Marketing to own strategy? A CMO who can build the whole department?

The answer depends on your stage, your go-to-market motion, and your biggest pain points.

Marketing Manager

At the seed stage, many startups hire a Marketing Manager. This person is a mid-level generalist who can run campaigns, write basic copy, manage social, coordinate events, and track results. This is a hands-on role focused on execution. Think of them as your marketing utility player.

It’s a great fit when you already have a clear direction and just need help executing. A Marketing Manager can take the day-to-day work off your plate so you can focus on product, customers, or fundraising.

But here’s the catch: they need guidance. Don’t expect a junior or mid-level hire to define your positioning or build a full growth strategy. If you hand them the keys without a map, they’ll likely stall.

This role works best when paired with a founder who understands marketing or an advisor or fractional CMO who can provide direction.

Head of Marketing

When you’re ready to go from “trying things” to “scaling what works,” it’s time to hire a Head of Marketing. Some startups may list this role as a Director of Marketing, which typically implies a similar level of responsibility. It’s someone who leads the function but is still hands-on.This person owns the marketing function, even if they’re a team of one at first.

Unlike a Marketing Manager, this role blends strategy and execution. They’ll define your messaging, build campaigns, test acquisition channels, and eventually grow the team. They can own real goals like lead volume, signups, or revenue contribution and drive results independently.

This is the hire to make once you have product-market fit (or clear signs of it) and want to scale with intent. For sales-led startups, a good rule of thumb is if you’ve hired two sales reps, it’s time to hire a marketing leader. For product-led or consumer startups, you might hire them even earlier.

The best Heads of Marketing are player-coaches. They can set direction, but they’re not above writing landing page copy or jumping into Google Ads.

CMO

Hiring a Chief Marketing Officer sounds impressive. But for most early-stage companies, it’s the wrong hire.

CMOs are best suited for later stages (Series B and beyond), when you have a full marketing team, multiple channels to manage, and cross-functional complexity. They lead at the executive level, align with product, sales, and finance, and represent marketing in the boardroom.

Hire a CMO too early, and you risk bringing in someone who expects a team and budget that doesn’t exist. They may struggle in a scrappy environment or resist rolling up their sleeves.

Early on, you’re better off with a great Head of Marketing. This is someone who can grow into the CMO role later or pave the way for one when the time is right.

Fractional CMO

If you need senior marketing leadership but aren’t ready for a full-time executive, hiring a fractional CMO can be a smart bridge.

A fractional CMO is a part-time marketing leader who brings high-level strategy and experience without the cost of a full-time hire. They’ve often worked with multiple startups and can quickly assess your needs, clarify your positioning, and shape a go-to-market strategy. Many also have deep networks of freelancers and agencies to tap into.

This role works well in a few specific situations:

• You need strategic clarity but can’t afford (or don’t need) a full-time CMO.
• You’re preparing for a product launch and want expert guidance on messaging and channel mix.
• You’re stuck between agency churn and junior execution and need someone to own the big picture.
• You plan to hire a full-time marketing leader later, but want to build the foundation now.

In these cases, working with a marketing strategy consultant can be a cost-effective way to get senior-level guidance without the full-time commitment.

Think of a fractional CMO as your marketing architect. They won’t write every blog post or run every ad, but they’ll help you build the blueprint for sustainable growth and make sure your early marketing investments actually move the needle.

Just make sure to give them access and authority. A good fractional CMO isn’t a consultant on the sidelines. They’re part of your leadership team, even if only for a few hours a week.

Agencies

While not a formal “role,” agencies and freelancers are part of many early marketing teams. They can fill in gaps, especially in areas like design, performance marketing, or PR, before you’re ready to hire full-time.

Just remember: agencies execute, but they don’t own strategy. You still need someone inside the company to connect the dots, define priorities, and make sure all the pieces work together.

A common mistake is overloading on contractors without any in-house leadership. If your agency relationships feel scattered or expensive, it might be time to hire someone internally to own the function.

If you decide to go this route, check out our guide on how to choose a marketing agency.

When to Hire

Knowing who to hire is only half the battle. The other half is knowing when to hire them.

Hire too early, and you risk wasting time and budget. Hire too late, and you leave growth on the table. The key is to match each role to your actual stage—not just your ambition.

Let’s walk through how hiring decisions typically align with startup growth.

Pre-Seed

At the very beginning, marketing is founder-led. You’re writing landing page copy, posting on Twitter, sending cold emails, and talking to early users. That’s exactly how it should be.

You’re not just “doing marketing”—you’re learning what resonates. This is when you develop your positioning, test early messaging, and start building an audience. Don’t outsource that too early. The feedback loop is gold.

You might bring on a contractor for a specific project (logo design, a launch video, a landing page), but you don’t need a full-time marketer yet—unless marketing is your core product.

Seed Stage

Once you have a working product, a few early customers, and some traction, it’s time to bring in your first marketer. This usually happens around the time your team hits 8–15 people.

Who that first hire should be depends on your go-to-market model and your own marketing strengths.

• If you have a clear strategy but need help executing, hire a Marketing Manager.
• If you’re unsure what levers to pull, and growth is a top priority, hire a Head of Marketing.

Don’t hire someone too junior if you need strategy. Don’t hire someone too senior if you only need execution and have no budget or team. Match the person to the work.

Series A

By Series A, your startup has traction and the pressure to scale. If you haven’t brought in a senior marketer yet, now’s the time. A strong Head of Marketing can create the foundation for sustainable, repeatable growth.

This is also when you may start layering in specialists. Maybe you add a content marketer, a growth marketer, or a coordinator to help the Head of Marketing focus on strategy. You might still use agencies for specific channels, but there should be a clear owner in-house.

Your marketing function needs to be tightly aligned with sales, product, and customer success. At this stage, marketing becomes a growth engine, not an afterthought.

Series B and Beyond

At Series B, your company is maturing, and your marketing team should too. This is often when startups bring in a CMO or elevate a Head of Marketing into that role.

You now have a budget, a growing team, and more complex challenges: entering new markets, launching new products, managing the brand, and supporting multiple revenue streams.

Expect to build out specialized roles such as product marketing, demand gen, comms, partner marketing, lifecycle. Your org chart starts to resemble a real marketing department.

This is no longer about doing more with less. It’s about building an engine that delivers results at scale.

Common Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

Building a marketing team is not just about hiring smart people. It’s about hiring the right people at the right time, for the right reasons. And that’s where a lot of startups slip up.

Here are the most common mistakes founders make when hiring for marketing—and how you can avoid them.

1. Waiting Too Long to Hire

One of the biggest mistakes founders make is holding off on marketing until growth slows or sales stall. By then, you’re already behind.

You don’t need a 10-person team, but you do need someone focused on telling your story, driving awareness, and generating pipeline before your product launch falls flat or your sales reps run out of leads.

If you’ve got early traction, and marketing isn’t someone’s clear job, it’s time.

2. Hiring Too Junior

Startups love to be scrappy. And that’s a good thing! But too many make the mistake of hiring a junior marketer and expecting senior-level impact.

A marketing coordinator or fresh grad can’t set your messaging, define your strategy, or own pipeline goals. If they don’t know what to do next without constant input, they’ll stall. Worse, you won’t get the results you need, and you’ll blame “marketing” instead of the mismatch.

If marketing is central to your growth, invest in someone who’s done it before.

3. Hiring Too Senior

The opposite mistake? Bringing in a CMO too early.

A veteran executive who’s used to managing a 20-person team and a $5M budget might not be the right fit for your 10-person startup and $5K ad spend. They may expect to delegate work you actually need them to do and grow frustrated when there’s no team in place to execute.

4. Chasing Unicorns

It’s tempting to search for a marketer who can do everything—run paid ads, write content, manage PR, build your brand, run growth experiments, and define your entire strategy.

That person doesn’t exist.

Focus on what matters most right now. Do you need demand generation? Great positioning? Customer research? Pick the 1–2 biggest needs and find someone excellent at those. You can fill the gaps later.

5. Over-Relying on Agencies

Agencies and freelancers are great for execution. But they’re not a replacement for in-house leadership.

Without someone inside the company to define priorities, set goals, and own the big picture, agency work tends to drift. You end up managing too many vendors, spending too much money, and getting work that doesn’t quite align.

Use agencies tactically. But build internal ownership as soon as you can.

6. Ignoring Culture and Fit

Marketing touches every part of the company. Your first marketing hire needs to work closely with sales, product, founders, and even customers. If they can’t collaborate, communicate, or adapt to startup chaos, it won’t matter how talented they are.

Confidence is great. Ego isn’t. Look for someone humble, curious, and comfortable with ambiguity.

7. Failing to Set Clear Goals

Even strong marketers can struggle if you don’t define what success looks like. If your guidance is “we just need growth,” don’t be surprised when results are vague or misaligned.

Be specific. Do you want more signups? More demo requests? A clearer narrative? Set a few sharp goals and give your hire the tools and context to hit them.

Time to Grow

Hiring your first marketer isn’t just a box to check. It’s a turning point.

It signals that growth is no longer something you hope will happen. It’s something you’re going to drive, deliberately and consistently.

But getting it right requires more than a gut feeling or a LinkedIn search. It takes clarity.

Clarity about why you’re hiring. Clarity about what you need. And clarity about who will thrive in your stage and your culture.

Start with what matters most for your business right now. Do you need to define your positioning? Generate leads? Launch a product? Support a growing sales team? That need—not a title—should shape the role.

Then be honest about what kind of person fits the work. Not just their skillset, but their mindset. Are they ready to build from scratch? Can they move fast without a playbook? Can they both think and do?

Finally, set your new hire up to succeed. Give them real ownership, clear goals, full context, and a seat at the table. Marketing can’t be effective if it’s siloed or kept out of strategic conversations.

As your company grows, so will your team. The first hire becomes the foundation. Make it count.

About Roy Harmon

Roy Harmon is a marketing leader who helps SaaS businesses grow. He has worked with multiple startups to drive revenue to seven figures, secure eight-figure funding rounds, and position them for acquisition.

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