So, the product has shipped and you’ve landed a few customers a month. Is it time to hire a marketer? Here are the key considerations for bringing on your first marketing hire;

• You’ve achieved product-market fit. The CEO should do the hard work of winning the first few customers (outside of friends and family). A good marketer can then create momentum. Be patient. I remember advising a pre-revenue founder to hold off on his first demand-gen hire – the fellow was still brought in with much fanfare and quit after two weeks. 

• Marketing is consuming your time. I spoke to a CEO recently who spent 6 hours writing his own press release and to another who designed his own home page in figma. After winning the first few customers, spending lots of time on marketing is not the CEO’s highest and best use of time. 

• You’ve set aside a marketing budget. Although you may have an earned media strategy, a marketer must spend on site design, email, collateral, conferences etc. They’re accountable for ROI of course. 

• You’ve defined success and KPIs. I attended a dinner where the client Marketing VP and Sales VP were not on speaking terms. We’d generated hundreds of leads a month for the client but Sales couldn’t handle the volume and the Marketing budget was cut. Your team must align on KPIs and not simply peg marketers to lead numbers. If the marketer focuses on strategic deliverables and there’s product-market fit, a good lead pipeline will follow. 

• There’s a Sales person. I had a client who was eager to start marketing and committed to running Sales himself. This leader also ran operations, customer service and tech. We generated leads but of course, the Sales follow up never happened. Marketers can create awareness and generate leads but a Salesperson must do further qualification and conversion.  

 A good marketer can create brand awareness and Sales momentum, but hired at the wrong time or managed poorly they might be set up to fail. The work of the founder / CEO doesn’t end with the job req or the onboarding. Collaboration and clear goals are needed to ensure that the marketer tells the right story to the right audience and builds rather than destroys the brand in the market.