Building a team from the ground up is hopefully something you do just once during the lifespan of your business. That’s why we asked 13 entrepreneurs from Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) the following question:
“When you are building a marketing division, what are the most important roles to start with and why?”
Most Important Marketing Roles
Here’s what YEC community members had to say:
1. A Fractional CMO
“Working with an outside expert allows you to dive deep into a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis with an unbiased viewpoint. In addition, she will ask you the right questions to guide you to what is urgent versus the long-term opportunities. While this slows down the process at first and could be expensive, in the long run, it will speed things up and make you more money.” ~ David Schnurman, Lawline
2. A Strategy-Focused Marketer
“Brand Strategist who are user, revenue, and metric focused are your most valuable hires. The growth hack is what attracts most initial hires to early-stage companies, but the ability to build a transformative brand is what makes them most valuable. Hire strategy-focused marketers who can understand the consumer and deliver a solution that engages them in the most impactful way.” ~ Ryan Stoner, Phenomenon
3. Specific Experts
“Hiring general dilutes results. If you know what you need (sales, lead gen., community growth), then hire an expert who knows exactly how to achieve what you want quickly. Don’t hire and commit to an employee right away. Hire specialists as independent contractors. Most of the time you don’t need someone full-time, all the time in one seat. This allows you to save money and be much more effective.” ~ Alexander Mendeluk, The Disruptive
4. A Highly-Experienced Marketing Manager
“You want your marketing division led by someone who is highly skilled and has deep experience in creating, managing, and improving on a comprehensive marketing strategy. You want consistency between all of your marketing channels, and you need someone experienced to manage that process. Their oversight helps ensure your marketing strategies are well-managed.” ~ Nicole Munoz, Start Ranking Now
5. A Solid Writer
“You need to start with someone who can deliver great writing from the very beginning of the marketing department’s development so everything that comes out of there delivers a good impression to build and grow from. This person can also help with idea generation and further content strategy development.” ~ Peter Daisyme, Due
6. An Interactive Content Marketer
“Customers don’t want to be sold to anymore. They are looking for interactive content that adds value. Thus, you must have someone in your marketing team who knows how to create these experiences, promote them and generate qualified leads. This can be anyone (a digital marketer, writer or data scientist) who has the experience of working with interactive content.” ~ Pratham Mittal, Outgrow
7. A Strategist
“The foundation of marketing is a strategy. A strategy should precede all content creation and outgoing media. A strategist can create a plan that either a freelancer or additional hires can execute.” ~ Andrew Namminga, Andesign
8. A Marketing Generalist
“To start, you need a fantastic, hard-working generalist. Often, leaders don’t know what they don’t know, so beginning with someone who can cover a bit of everything is a good way to sort things out. This person will look at the big picture and then gravitate toward specific tools and projects, becoming a specialist in the process. You then know which other specialists to hire to build out the team.” ~ David Ciccarelli, Voices.com
9. Tacticians
“Once you have a leader in place responsible for strategy, make sure you add tacticians. While many marketing teams will need to rely on agencies as they start out, it’s also important to have internal staff who understand the platforms, tools and have experience doing the work. This prevents a top heavy department and ensures quality data for leaders to use for decision making.” ~ Dan Golden, BFO (Be Found Online)
10. Someone Who Understands Sales
“The problem with many marketing teams is that they don’t talk to sales. The reason this is a problem is because lead hand-off doesn’t happen at the right time. Everyone becomes confused and frustrated. Ideally, you should find someone who understands the many roles that exist in a company – not just their own!” ~ Ismael Wrixen, FE International
11. Junior Marketing Strategists
“Junior Marketing Strategists will have a wide enough net of knowledge to be able to make educated decisions that will affect all branches of marketing. Although they may not have the hard skill experience, they make up for it in soft skills, which allows them to learn the hard skills as they go and give you a good idea of which roles should come next.” ~ Christopher Swenor, East Coast Product
12. A Lead Strategist With Data Expertise
“Before committing significant resources to marketing, you need to understand your customers, how they behave, and where your current marketing efforts are falling short. A strategist will help knock your data into shape and provide insights about where you need invest your marketing dollars — which will, in turn, inform who else you need to hire.” ~ Justin Blanchard, ServerMania Inc.
13. A Growth Expert
“This is someone who understands your product and service intimately. A growth expert understands the fundamentals for growth on every platform, how to build out a strategy and test environment to dial up or down energy on different platforms depending on effectiveness. All other services such as creative, content, copywriting etc. can be outsourced until you hit a critical mass.” ~ Chris Van Dusen, Parcon Media
Business Team Photo via Shutterstock
