| I was the first Head of Marketing for a high growth tech company (we raised USD $71 million last year). I've been here almost 3 years, growing leads by 11x and revenue by millions with a tiny team and budget. My advice to those hiring HoM for a B2B startup: 1. Hire a performance marketer (i.e. leads, revenue focused), not a brand marketer. Your sales team needs leads to grow, not "brand awareness". Once you've got a nice flow of leads, that's when the softer side of marketing becomes important. 2. If they are focused on how big of a budget they'll get, that's a major red flag. The first channels should not be paid. Budget needs to be small to start -- once you prove ROI/traction, it's now a conversation about scaling quickly, and not about blindly throwing money away. 3. A quick look at their resume or LinkedIn should tell you everything you need to know... is it full of numbers/data, or is it a list of tasks & buzzword bingo? 4. Hire someone who can do everything themselves. Make sure they won't need to rely on agencies. Edit: Regarding the article's recommendation about hiring ICs to perform smaller tasks. I personally would find this unappealing because it means I can't build my own initial team, and I'll need to investigate what those ICs have done so far -- have they made poor decisions I'll need to undo? |
To expand a bit for those outside of this space, a performance marketer is often called a direct response marketer. They measure the direct response to everything they do. The alternative is often called an awareness marketer. They tend to focus on creative that can create awareness.
2.) A b2b startup just turning on revenue and looking to show a profit typically needs to validate a really high return from marketing efforts. The salary of a marketing head isn’t free. Do the math off what it cost to acquire revenues and profits off that salary. (e.g. $120k/year to a contractor for this role is $10k/month to the company, that should buy you at least a 2X in profit (you really want to be at 4x in profit) if you are in b2b). Once you have something working you need budget to pour fuel on the fire and get it going.
3.) Disagree here. Plenty of information can be considered confidential by employers and may not be published.
4.) Initially true but Agencies add value as you increase spending. They likely have negotiated better ad rates than your single startup can manage so you’ll save on spend by going through them. Also, don’t discount the creative they can do. Nearly all big companies have struck a working partnership with an agency over creative works the agency designed. There is value here but don’t expect them to figure out your initial strategy. Also, avoid agencies that don’t have good ad spend like the plague. Recently spoke to one that bragged about an average 1.2X return on Capital to their customers in top line revenue from advertising. For every dollar we would spend they would likely bring us $1.20 in revenue. That’s horrible. I can do better with direct mail.