Starting a business is a journey filled with critical decisions, and one of the most important is to build a marketing team that can turn your vision into a resonant brand.
How do you create a team that’s skilled, cohesive, creative, and aligned with your startup’s unique needs?
Let’s start with several questions first:
- How large is the organization to date – 5 people, 50, 500, 5000?
- Is it a bootstrapped startup, an SMB, or an established organization?
- Do you sell locally, on traditional media (newspapers and radio), or internationally?
- Do you aim for B2B or B2C clients?
- Are paid ads a better starting point or you’d rather shoot for inbound marketing?
- Do you sell products or services? Physical or digital?
- How long does a traditional sales cycle take?
It is important to try to work solo and figure out marketing by yourself first or try to hire an assistant until you reach the million mark.
Selling candies locally to kids in a cornerstone shop is quite different from organizing events and webinars, and creating complex funnels for B2B deals.
With that in mind, you need to define your marketing strategy. This entails the SWOT analysis, your buyer personas, the buyer’s journey, mediums you’re about to start with, strategic activities to engage with, and the corresponding roles you need for the job.
Small businesses traditionally start with a single, T-shaped marketer handling different activities and experimenting with 3–4 channels at a time. Once one of them picks traction, they hire a marketing assistant who handles this activity.
The first (more experienced) marketer invests in training, continuous experimentation, refining the workflow, and exploring the next activity eligible for a full-time hire.
This creates a cycle of growth and specialization within the marketing team. As the business scales, this model can be replicated across various marketing functions, leading to the development of a well-rounded team with experts in specific areas such as SEO, content marketing, social media, and paid advertising.
This approach not only ensures efficient utilization of resources but also fosters a culture of learning and experimentation within the organization. By constantly testing and refining their marketing strategies, small businesses can stay ahead of the curve.
Needless to say, this requires sufficient marketing expertise – figuring out where your audience is, what works for them, how to boost conversion rates, and designing effective marketing funnels.
How Most Companies Structure Their Own Marketing Team
In my experience, 80% of the businesses out there start in one of the following ways:
- One of the founders wears the marketing hat over the first months/a year, identifying potential venues worth investing in.
- A marketing assistant is hired to sift through the data and play around with different techniques studied at the university (and read across the forums).
- Accidentally finding a successful source (through referrals, a marketplace, an on-site venue) that requires a full-time person to handle logistics.
- Hiring a marketing agency on a retainer for at least a year, in which they build the entire marketing strategy from scratch, defining the complete workflow and tackling certain actions.
We usually work with businesses generating anywhere between $5M and $100M, with some enterprise exceptions with revenue exceeding $10B.
In case we take on a client making under $5M, we usually advise on hiring one or two marketing assistants on-site. They can handle the day-to-day management and data analytics, as well as time-consuming tasks that:
- Take a lot of time and research, thus costing more if we handle them.
- Require internal know-how – newsworthy activities for PR or detailed product updates to be gathered by the product/tech/creative teams.
Larger businesses prefer to put us in touch with team leaders since it’s more efficient. From a financial standpoint, smaller brands see the rationale behind hiring someone to manage the process internally (while strategy and high-end activities are tackled here).
There are different ways to build a marketing team. You can start with an agency and slowly build the team in-house. Or hire a marketing director/VP of Marketing to build your team internally.
The remaining 20% of the businesses mentioned above start by outsourcing specific activities to different agencies – SEO, content, creative, strategy.
More often than not, they decide to bring this in-house or outsource to one agency (reducing the communication overhead and lack of sync between vendors).
Building a Marketing Team: A Startup’s Guide
I have recorded this video to help startups build their own marketing teams. Watch this video and be guided accordingly.
You may also go over the transcript below if you prefer to read it instead.
Transcript:
A lot of people have asked me what’s the best way to build a marketing team. I’ve also been talking to a bunch of small businesses and some startups that don’t have marketing teams on site.
Some reach out to us for marketing services and more often than not, I’m saying: “Look you’re not ready for our services” or, “this is not the best time to do that”, or “this is not the best model to do that for your specific business.”.
Some of them say, “Hey I’m going to just hire a couple of people and let them do the heavy lifting for the business”- to which I respond, “OK, so do you have any idea what you’re about to do with your business and your marketing services accordingly?”.
You may have a business, some form of a channel that’s working, and a business model that appears to be converting-for the time being-that you want to scale. But who’s to say that those new channels are going to work? How are you going to set those expectations, and how to keep attracting people to your business?
Some startups have marketing co-founders, or a founder who is well-versed in marketing, or a team who knows how the marketing funnel works, and so forth. This is fine. But for those businesses that don’t really have any experience with marketing, it’s a bit tricky.
They hear a lot about advertising, PPC, Inbound Marketing, Press Releases, branding, and other marketing strategies, but they don’t know how to put them to use.
They don’t know how to invest in them. So, here are a few thoughts from me.
First off, we do offer marketing retainers as a part of our HubSpot inbound marketing partnership. But, we’re not really as efficient for small businesses and we can’t really provide value for a business that is just starting out unless they already have some traction and some strategy for a very good reason.
Our standard marketing retainers are about $5,000 a month which is about $60,000 a year. It is fit for a small business that has just started out and generates $100k to $150k in revenue.
We take almost half of their entire revenue. We can’t really reduce the prices of our services if we’re about to offer some actionable advice, and some strategy, as well as content and campaign management.
We also work with HubSpot. We expect our clients to sign up with HubSpot in order for us to leverage their dashboard and create some smart content. They can either pick the $250 a month plan or about $3,000 a year, or the $800 pro plan which has a bunch of other features for $10,000 a year.
So it adds up to about $70,000 a year which is almost over 50% of the entire business’ revenue for the year. We are not even talking about profits and we are not even including our founder’s salary, other employees, software tools or hardware, and whatever they actually use to run their business.
We generally try not to work with businesses that generate under $3M of revenue. We work with some to generate between $5M to $100M of revenue and then it makes a bit more sense if we can even sell our larger packages which are about $10,000 a month.
But I have read a bunch of studies on Entrepreneur, Forbes, and Inc., and I have compiled some data that marketing freelancers generally charge between $50 to $100 per hour. That adds up to 50-100 hours of billable work if they’re about to charge that very same amount. That is what the market dictates, which is similar to what we are offering.
So think about one single person. If you are moving from an agency to a freelancer as an alternative, hiring one single person who’s working half time, about 80 hours a month, on your business, what should they do for it?
They have to start creating a marketing strategy, analyzing the audience, and running a bunch of tests. They have to plan the content marketing strategy. They probably have to invest a bunch in ads and testing different funnels. Then, they start creating different steps of the funnel, the email list, and do some affiliate marketing.
There’s a lot of work for every single business that could be put in. And more often than not, that time simply has to be spent. So again, we spoke about an agency and the agency’s expenses. We also spoke about freelancers. Because again, 80 hours a month for a freelance consultant, or freelance marketing consultant, roughly is going to cost about that much.
And they don’t necessarily know how to adapt the strategy because with an agency, at least you’re getting a bunch of people to do creative work, content marketing, SEO or PPC, or whatever it is. At least, they have to do it well or so they say you know agencies like mine. And the other option, of course, is just hiring a couple of people on your team.
But then again, they’re going to be general marketers, marketing assistants, or just marketing in different divisions, like content marketing, affiliates, or whatever it is. They can execute and they can do stuff but they don’t really have the concept or strategy.
You can hire strategists. But those are not the people who really enjoy doing any work whatsoever. The best possible model and the best thing that you can do is just either find a marketing co-founder who’s going to run marketing for you and then hire their own team or VP of marketing or a marketing director who can hire a bunch of people for different purposes.
It can be very challenging because first, you need to hire the best guy possible and trust them with the entire marketing strategy. You can hire another five people or more to deal with different things. You may hire content writers or SEO strategists, experts on PPC, email marketing, and a lot of other specialties.
What we normally try to suggest to companies that are reaching out to us for marketing advice is to work solo on marketing until you reach approximately the first $1M. This means that it is important to try to figure out marketing by yourself first or try to hire an assistant.
Allocate at least 10 hours a week to just put your assistants on assignments or work with a marketing consultant who can advise you on strategy so that you can at least experiment in a cheaper way. You can also hire a freelancer for part-time work. Try to at least get to $1 million in revenue. That is the first step.
In other words, until the first million, try to find cost-effective solutions for your business. Bigger agencies and marketing consultants are usually effective for high-scale businesses. If you do $10 million in revenue and a consultant can basically grow your business by 20% next year, there is going to be a $12-million business. So, you earn $2 million dollars in revenue thanks to that consultant. You can even pay them $100k, $200k, $500k for growing your revenue by $2 million. Businesses with $100 million dollars in revenue can convert at 5% and that’s still $5 million dollars in revenue.
So, you get the gist of it. For smaller businesses, this is not the case. Hustle until the first million or work with an assistant and hope that you’re not going to burn the money and then work with an agency.
Again, my suggestion, and this is the best case starting scenario, is to work with an agency for a certain number of hours like 80 hours and they hire one or two marketing assistants. And, when you grow past say $3-5 million, if you have some marketing expertise already, then you can hire someone who will be in charge of marketing and who can play the role of a marketing director or VP of marketing.
And they hired the people on your team. Until then, try the different combinations. Try not to invest a lot of money into expensive endeavors that are suitable for larger businesses.
But also try to be smart about what sort of things you’re investing in because again, you can spend both your time and the time of your assistants and the money or both on activities that are not really productive.
This is where a marketing consultant may be a good fit-Just helping with direction and with experimentation until you pick up some traction and can afford to reinvest further.
Evaluating Your Marketing Team After an Acquisition
Everything above applies when you are building a marketing team from scratch. But what happens when you acquire a startup that already has marketers in place? The calculus changes significantly. You inherit people, processes, and campaigns mid-flight, and your job shifts from construction to assessment.
Whether you are a private equity firm conducting marketing due diligence before close or a strategic buyer integrating a new portfolio company, you need a structured way to evaluate the existing marketing function. The goal is not to tear everything down but to understand what works, what does not, and where the gaps are relative to your growth thesis.
Why Marketing Team Assessment Differs from Building Fresh
When you build a team organically, you control every hire, every tool choice, every campaign from day one. Acquisition flips that dynamic. You are walking into an organization with established habits, relationships, and institutional knowledge that may or may not align with how you operate.
The marketing team you inherit might be perfectly suited for the company’s current stage but inadequate for your planned growth trajectory. Or the opposite: you might find underutilized talent that previous leadership never fully deployed. Either way, you need a systematic approach to figure out what you actually have before making changes.
This assessment work typically happens in two phases. The first phase occurs during GTM due diligence before the deal closes, when access is limited but you can still gather meaningful signals. The second phase happens post-close, when you have full access to systems, conversations, and performance data.
The GTM Assessment Framework for Inherited Marketing Teams
A proper GTM assessment looks at marketing through four lenses: people, process, technology, and performance. Each reveals something different about the team’s capacity and limitations.
People means understanding who does what, how long they have been in their roles, and whether the org structure matches the company’s actual needs. A five-person marketing team might have three content writers and no demand generation specialist, which tells you something about where leadership historically placed its bets.
Process covers how work actually gets done. Are campaigns planned quarterly or launched reactively? Is there a documented handoff between marketing and sales? Do marketers operate from playbooks or reinvent the wheel each time?
Technology examines the tools in place and how well they are used. A company paying for enterprise-tier marketing automation but using it only to send batch emails represents both a cost optimization opportunity and a capability gap.
Performance is the hardest to assess accurately because it depends on getting reliable data and understanding context. A team generating 200 leads per month might be crushing it or underperforming badly, depending on market size, spend levels, and sales cycle dynamics.
Marketing Team Assessment Checklist
Use this checklist during due diligence and again in your first 100 days when you have deeper access. Items marked with an asterisk can typically be assessed before close with limited information requests.
| Assessment Area | Key Questions | Pre-Close Access |
|---|---|---|
| Team Structure | How many FTEs? What functions are covered in-house versus outsourced? Who reports to whom? | Yes* |
| Tenure and Stability | Average tenure of marketing team members? Any recent departures? Key person dependencies? | Yes* |
| Role Clarity | Do job descriptions match actual responsibilities? Are there overlapping roles or uncovered gaps? | Limited |
| Budget Allocation | How is marketing spend distributed across channels, tools, and headcount? | Yes* |
| Channel Performance | Which channels generate qualified pipeline? What is the cost per acquisition by channel? | Yes* |
| Sales Alignment | How does marketing define a qualified lead? Does sales agree? What is the lead-to-opportunity conversion rate? | Limited |
| Tech Stack Utilization | What tools are licensed versus actively used? Integration quality between systems? | Limited |
| Content and Brand Assets | What proprietary content exists? Is the brand consistent across touchpoints? Any IP considerations? | Yes* |
| Agency and Contractor Relationships | Who are the external partners? Contract terms? Institutional knowledge held outside the company? | Yes* |
| Documentation | Are processes documented? Campaign playbooks? Onboarding materials for new marketers? | Limited |
Red Flags and Green Lights
Certain patterns in marketing team assessment tend to predict post-acquisition success or struggle. These are not guarantees, but they should calibrate your expectations and inform your integration planning.
Red flags to watch for:
- Marketing leadership departed within the last six months without a clear successor
- Heavy reliance on a single channel that represents more than 70% of lead generation
- No attribution model or wildly inconsistent reporting across time periods
- Marketing and sales using different definitions of pipeline stages
- Critical marketing functions outsourced to agencies with month-to-month contracts
- Brand assets scattered across personal drives, former employee accounts, or unknown locations
Green lights that suggest stability:
- Marketing leader has been in role for two or more years with a clear succession plan
- Diversified channel mix with documented performance by channel
- Regular reporting cadence with metrics that tie to revenue, not just activity
- Established SLAs between marketing and sales with mutual accountability
- In-house ownership of core competencies with agencies used for scale, not strategy
- Centralized brand and asset management with clear ownership
Deciding What to Keep, Change, or Add
After completing your assessment, you will face decisions about team structure. Resist the urge to make sweeping changes in the first weeks. Marketing results compound over time, and disrupting campaigns mid-cycle often destroys value you cannot easily see in spreadsheets.
A more measured approach is to categorize your findings into three buckets:
Keep and protect: These are people, processes, or programs that clearly work and align with your growth plans. Your job is to not break them while you fix other things.
Change deliberately: These are areas with clear problems but also established workflows that people depend on. Plan the change, communicate it, and execute with enough buffer time to course-correct if something goes wrong.
Add to fill gaps: These are capabilities missing entirely that your growth thesis requires. New hires, new tools, or new agency relationships fall here. Adding is often easier than changing because you are not disrupting existing work.
The worst outcome is making changes that feel decisive but actually just create churn. A marketing team that spends three months rebuilding dashboards, migrating tools, and rewriting processes is a marketing team that is not generating pipeline. Be surgical about what actually needs to change in the near term versus what can wait until the team has stabilized under new ownership.
This assessment work feeds directly into your broader integration planning. The marketing function does not exist in isolation; it connects to sales, product, and customer success in ways that your GTM assessment should have mapped. Changes to marketing structure will ripple outward, so plan accordingly.
