Michael Epps Utley {kind=image/jpg}
Startup businesses often believe they are losing a competitive advantage to their more established competitors if they don’t hire a marketing team early on. Members could include a chief marketing officer (CMO), a content manager, developers, a brand strategist, a social media manager, digital experts, and more, which can get costly for new companies.
The truth: In the early days, you don’t necessarily need a full marketing team. Instead, you need the right support, a clear direction, and a plan to scale when needed. Marketing for new organizations isn’t about doing everything. It’s about doing the right things at the appropriate time with the right people.
Many employees at start-ups feel overwhelmed by handling marketing along with their everyday work responsibilities and immediately turn to agencies and freelancers for support. The issue is that this turns marketing into a random tactical exercise, not governed by any strategy.
This startup hiring guide examines the factors you must consider when deciding when to hire or when to outsource marketing services for your startup.
Start With a Strategy
Agencies and freelancers are typically great at execution, but they often are unable to define a strategy aligned with your business goals. They are typically order takers. If you don’t have someone governing and guiding outsourced services, the work will turn into a scattershot and costly mess.
That’s why, before hiring an agency or freelance support, it is smart to have a strategic marketing lead who can define promotional priorities, align efforts with business objectives, and ensure that every external partner is working to develop things that deliver measurable success.
We aren’t suggesting that you immediately hire a full-time CMO or senior marketing consultant. Instead, consider a fractional CMO or interim director to provide strategic direction, oversee efforts, and ensure marketing delivers the results you intend.
Fractional CMO Versus Interim CMO Versus Marketing Consultant
Let’s start by defining these different core function roles so you can figure out which is right for you.
Fractional CMO
A fractional CMO is an experienced marketing leader. They work part-time on a long-term basis. They provide the business with ongoing strategic direction without the full-time salary cost. They guide your overall marketing approach, ensuring alignment with business goals, and oversee the execution of marketing efforts, whether they are outsourced or handled in-house. They can also help you with the interview and hiring process.
Interim CMO
An interim CMO is typically employed for a fixed period. They provide functions similar to those of a fractional CMO. An interim CMO is a good option for businesses in transition, such as post-funding, pre-launch, or before hiring a full-time team.
Marketing Consultant
Marketing consultants are less experienced than CMOs. They typically provide advice on specific areas such as branding, content, social media, or go-to-market strategy. They don’t work as deeply within your business as a Fractional or Interim CMO, but can provide valuable higher-level services.
Getting marketing support from a Fractional or Interim CMO or consultant can help you answer critical questions to ensure you appropriately and efficiently approach a range of marketing efforts. Some examples include:
What are you trying to accomplish (e.g., brand awareness, lead generation, or improved social media presence)? Each requires bringing in talent with different knowledge and skills.
What do you actually need help doing? For example, if you want to improve your social media presence, do you need support creating post content and graphics, handling actual posting, or managing promoted posts?
What is your timeframe? Are you looking for a quick marketing boost or longer-term support? This will help you decide whether to bring on someone long-term, engage an agency, or hire a temp.
When does it make sense to outsource?
How do you measure success? Without defined key performance indicators (KPIs), it’s not possible to identify the right level of support you need and whether an agency or contractor is delivering value.
Hiring marketing help without answering these questions and running your answers past an experienced marketing strategist could result in wasted budget, missed goals, and frustration. These can be critical issues for a business that is just getting off the ground.
Consider Scalability
You may feel pressure to do everything, all at once, including social media, events, search engine optimization (SEO), public relations, paid ads, and marketing campaigns. However, doing so is unsustainable for most start-ups. Instead, it is critical to pick your battles. It’s far more effective to focus on the marketing channels that move the needle for your business. It’s not necessary to go viral. What’s critical is to reach the right people and move them to do business with you.
The best way to do that is by understanding those you are targeting.
Where do they go for information?
What problems are they actively trying to solve that your business can help with?
What information do they need to trust you?
Once you understand these things, marketing is less like shouting into the void and more like having the right conversations with the right people at the right times and in the most opportune ways. Then you can secure the right support to get the job done.
Strategy vs. Agility: What Startups Must Consider
It might sound like we are completely advocating bringing in an expert, having them develop a strategy, and absolutely sticking with it. In many cases, this is the best approach. A solid strategy and approach to marketing will prevent it from becoming a chaotic, reactive, ineffective mess.
However, by their nature, startups evolve quickly. What worked six months ago (or even six days ago) might not work right now.
What’s critical is to build flexibility into your marketing approach. Sure, you need a longer-term plan, but review it regularly to ensure it is still valid. What should the focus be for the next six to eight weeks? What experiments can you run to test what works? What are you learning from customers that might change what you are doing?
A startup’s greatest strength is its ability to move fast and be nimble. Marketing shouldn’t slow you down; it should support where the business is going, not hold it back.
And that is where hiring for (or outsourcing) the right functions at the right time comes in.
To Hire or Outsource: What’s Right for You?
Most startups start by outsourcing most marketing functions. It allows them to slowly try new marketing tactics and figure out which ones work best, while maintaining focus on product development. Once you achieve success and experience growth, you can hire full-time employees.
Some common marketing functions startups outsource include:
Website Design and Development. Your website is central to your marketing efforts. It is the primary place where prospective customers learn about your business. Getting one created by a professional developer should be one of the first efforts you outsource.
Brand Creation. Your brand is the primary way you communicate to the world what your business is about. It is worth hiring a branding agency or expert to develop yours. It is a project that can take a couple of months to complete and typically does not need to be refreshed for a few years, making it a perfect candidate for outsourcing.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Generative/Answer Engine Optimization (GEO/AEO). This is a relatively complex initiative, especially in the evolving world of artificial intelligence (AI). It is worth outsourcing to a part-time freelancer or an agency with up-to-date knowledge of best practices and the resources to consistently produce high-quality content, analysis, and improvements.
Social Media. Effective social media is complex, especially when you use promoted posts or multiple social media channels. Still, for most startups, it doesn’t require a full-time employee. It is definitely a function worth outsourcing.
Content and Collateral. Most startup founders aren’t experts at writing, design, or video development (nor do they have the time to regularly produce it all). And the need in these areas is initially limited. That’s why most businesses hire a temporary agency or freelancer to do the work.
Customer Experience. Some early-stage startups temporarily hire someone to build out an end-to-end customer experience because, in today’s digital world, consumers are unlikely to purchase if they encounter disconnects or breakdowns.
Once your business becomes established, you may want to hire one or more people to fill these roles.
When to Hire vs. When to Outsource: The Final Word
Most marketing functions can and probably should be outsourced by growing startups. It is the ideal way to access the experts needed to get critical work done. What’s important is to first invest in a fractional or interim CMO or marketing professional to help create a flexible overall marketing strategy and advise you on how to access the right people to execute on it. It is the ideal formula for promoting your new venture and positioning it for long-term success.
