Ready to hire your first marketer?

A Guide for Early-Stage Founders

Want something quick to go? Download our Are You Ready For Your First Full-Time Marketing Hire? Decision Tree

As an agency owner and consultant, I often hear from founders about their hopes for hiring their first full-time marketer. The first thing I usually say is “Congratulations!”

It’s a milestone. Your business needs are evolving and that’s exciting. With that out of the way, here are a few critical things I wish every founder would consider first before posting that job.

Can you afford it?

This one seems obvious, but it is worth stating. This isn’t just about how much runway the bank has left.

Marketing is a part of your business that helps it grow. It works together with other parts of your business. Additionally, solo marketers will need support to augment their skill set, in the form of contractors or agencies.

If you see marketing as a cost that needs clear returns within 30 days, you may not be ready to make it a full-time team function. And by the way, that’s totally OK! You need more market signals and evidence of traction, like increased revenue, to see how this function can grow your business.

If you have not found product market fit, you and your team are essentially running an experiment. You are trying to answer a larger question: Do we have a business here? Hiring a marketer at this point often does not have a good outcome.

Your focus in this stage should be on creating the right solution for the right audience. Fractional marketing specialists can provide marketing support to run tests and answer your questions. However, you may not be ready to hire someone full-time to build a strategy. This is because you might not have the right product yet.

Do you really need one now or can you wait a little?

No matter the state of the market, the talent churn for startup marketers is just incredible. Misalignment of expectations often drives this issue for both parties.

I encourage founders to think about how much further they can go without a full-time marketing hire. When founders choose to let go of their first hire because of misalignment, they often go back to running their business without this support.

This leads to my next thought

Do you understand what problems you are actually trying to solve?

Something I’ve heard from some founders looking to hire their first marketer is the belief they have a ‘brand awareness’ problem. This is a big red flag for me.

The actual problem is usually that, you do not have enough paying customers. It’s important to name the issue plainly. This is rarely a function of brand awareness alone.

First things first, what’s “enough”? You may need to rethink if your goals match your current business stage and resources. Look at every part of your business to find problems. Is what you are offering right now – not your mission – but the actual product solving a real need in the market?

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What evidence of organic traction do I have? Of the people who know about my offering and seem like good targets, have any of them converted? Have I asked them why they haven’t converted? What are they telling me?

• What are my current customers telling me about their experience with my product?

• How are people finding my business today?

• Where are my customers getting “stuck” today? (either not converting to begin with, not trialing, not renewing, or some combination of all three)

• What do I want my customers to say about their experience with my business? About how my brand makes them feel?

With these inputs, you can start creating a story that focuses on the customer's needs. You can also explore how a marketing hire might help solve these problems. You can do this together with your other important business functions.

Does your job description match the skillsets in the market?

This is something that founders may not want to hear: Most great marketers will not reply to a bad job description.

With a job description that includes every marketing function, you might attract qualities in candidates you won’t like. For instance, hiring someone inexperienced who overpromises or, worse, ignores important details.

You may also turn away strong candidates who are interested in your mission. These candidates might hope to shape the role once they join. However, they will not promise to do the work of five people for the price of one.

As a startup advisor, I help create the job description for the full-time hire. This often means removing many bullet points from the first draft.

I've noticed for the founders that undo my edits, the job sits unfilled for months. If someone fills the position, they often leave it vacant again before the year ends. This happens when the person leaves out of frustration or the employer lets them go for underperformance.

If you create the narrative problem statement mentioned above, you can use it as a starting point. This will help you identify the skills you need right now.

Marketing is a field of specialists. Think of developers - they don’t all do the same things. You would not ask a mobile app developer to build you a website and then evaluate their performance based on that.

Have you pictured what success looks like in the first 90 days?

Start imagining what you believe the impact of this hire will be in their first 90 days. What does success in these early days look like to you? Then take that and fact-check it.

Talk to folks experienced startup marketers, and consult other founders who have gone through this process before. Does this sound reasonable? Does this make sense for our size and stage? How does it compare to your expectations for other first hires?

OK, so now - are you ready?

You have evidence of organic traction (ie product marketing fit) ✔️, a clear problem set defined ✔️, core skills narrowed ✔️,  a validated 90-day outlook ✔️, and the resources/resilience to invest and building the function within your org ✔️, congratulations! Happy hiring!

If not, that’s OK. You’re in the right place. Fractional marketing leads and teams can be instrumental in learning and continuing to develop and grow your vision. Contact us to get started.