First Marketing Hire Planning Guide
(For Scale-Ups Hiring Their First or Early Marketing Roles)
Hiring your first marketing role can make or break your next stage of growth.
Move too early, too junior, or too unfocused, and you risk burning time and budget without results.
Move too late, or too senior, and you risk misaligned expectations and wasted salaries.
This guide will help you match the right marketing hire to your current company stage, so you can scale smart, not slow.
Stage 1: Early Scaling (35–75 Employees)
Common Reality:
Sales-led growth has brought you to this point.
Marketing efforts so far are ad hoc: founders posting on LinkedIn, maybe basic paid ads.
No formalized marketing system in place.
What You Need Now:
Create repeatable demand generation
Establish baseline brand awareness
Support the sales team with better materials and inbound leads
Best Hire:
→ Marketing Generalist (Title examples: Marketing Manager, Growth Marketer)
Profile:
Hands-on doer who can handle multiple channels
Strong in execution: email, basic paid ads, landing pages, content creation
Analytical enough to track what works without needing heavy infrastructure
Red Flags to Avoid:
Pure strategists (too early for just “thinking”)
Overly specialized marketers (e.g., pure SEO or pure brand)
Main KPIs:
Lead volume growth
Cost per lead acquisition
Website traffic and engagement
Stage 2: Early Go-To-Market Maturity (75–150 Employees)
Common Reality:
Some brand awareness exists.
Marketing and sales activities still operate somewhat separately.
Need to start layering sophistication into the funnel.
What You Need Now:
Build predictable, scalable demand generation
Start segmenting and optimizing audiences
Formalize messaging and positioning across channels
Best Hire:
→ Demand Generation Specialist or Content Marketer
Profile:
Demand Gen: Strong in campaign execution, A/B testing, paid channels, CRM/email workflows
Content Marketer: Strong writer and strategist who can turn messaging into revenue-driving content
Optional Addition:
Hire a Freelance Designer if visual brand work is becoming a bottleneck.
Red Flags to Avoid:
"Brand-only" marketers (still too early to focus 90% on top-funnel brand building)
Heavy reliance on agency outsourcing without internal accountability
Main KPIs:
Marketing-sourced pipeline
Conversion rates through the funnel
Cost per acquisition (customer and lead)
Stage 3: Growth Engine Building (150–300 Employees)
Common Reality:
Product-market fit is solid.
Scaling plans are aggressive.
You need channel ownership and specialization.
What You Need Now:
Deepen marketing specialization (e.g., SEO, Paid, Product Marketing)
Align tighter with revenue and customer success teams
Move toward marketing as a revenue engine, not just lead gen
Best Hires:
→ Marketing Operations Manager
→ Product Marketing Manager
→ Performance Marketer (Paid ads, analytics-driven)
Profile:
Deep expertise in at least one key channel or function
Understands marketing-sales alignment (e.g., supports Account Based Marketing, Sales Enablement)
Comfort with data-driven marketing and tooling (HubSpot, Salesforce, marketing analytics dashboards)
Red Flags to Avoid:
Hiring “for brand” before nailing down revenue-driving systems
Overbuilding team without clear role definitions and ownership areas
Main KPIs:
Contribution to revenue targets
Retention/churn rates influenced by marketing messaging
CAC vs. LTV metrics
Bonus: Mistakes to Avoid When Hiring Early Marketing
Mistake 1:
Hiring a CMO too early.
You don’t need a 200k/year strategist when you’re still figuring out channels. You need execution.
Mistake 2:
Expecting one person to master every marketing channel.
Nobody can flawlessly run SEO, paid ads, email nurture, PR, branding, content marketing alone. Hire realistic generalists early, then specialize.
Mistake 3:
Underestimating the need for content.
Even if you are outbound-heavy now, long-term brand and inbound content strategies will save your CAC. Make sure your early marketer can write or manage writing.
Mistake 4:
Not aligning sales and marketing early enough.
Marketing cannot work in isolation.
Your first marketer should be tied into sales team feedback loops immediately.
Final Thought
Your first few marketing hires will define how fast and efficiently you scale.
Be deliberate. Match the role to your growth stage, not your vanity dreams of a big "VPMarketing" title.
Hire builders, thinkers, and doers, in that order.
Or, to put it even simpler:
Don’t hire for where you want to be in 5 years.
Hire for where you need to be 6 months from now.
