Viktoria Gusyeva is a VP of Marketing at Vue Storefront.
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Many SaaS founders and marketing leaders wonder what the best structure is for their marketing teams. Although establishing well-defined marketing teams can be challenging, with the right team businesses can scale faster and achieve desired pipeline targets.
There is no one-size-fits-all structure for SaaS-based marketing teams. But in this article, I have created a list of five best practices that can help you form your marketing team in the right way.
1. Create a hiring plan early on.
While your company size may now look different, it’s worth considering early on what your ideal 1-year prospective team might look like. It’s also important to find people who will truly fit with your values rather than just anyone. This may mean the hiring process will take a bit more effort and patience—but this can be well worth it.
In some situations, especially for managerial positions, it may take two to four months to find the right candidate, so not having a team hiring plan can get costly. This is especially essential when the marketing function needs to grow fast.
Start hiring plan conversations with the leadership early on so you'll all be on the same page and able to move fast when it's time to hire.
2. Hire with existing leverage points in mind.
Hiring plans should be crafted with early business wins in focus, so the number one goal for the whole company should always be your guiding light.
When thinking of how to generate new demand, don’t forget to leverage channels that capture the existing demand. Enhance what already generates value and think of how to strengthen your appeal to these low-hanging fruits even further, whether by hiring the right leaders or specialists.
For example, if you’ve seen early success with your content efforts, consider strengthening your marketing team with a good content strategist and additionally leverage SEO and conversion optimization specialists to take your content and lead generation to the next level.
Hiring people with your existing leverage points in mind will make your marketing team more efficient and results will follow faster.
3. Balance in-house and outsourced talent wisely.
Young companies tend to struggle with identifying the right balance between generalists and specialists, as well as underestimating the power of hiring the right marketing contractor.
What you need to know before starting to hire external contractors is that balance is key. Your first marketing hires should be generalists—who can experiment with tactics and channels and also manage external suppliers.
Agencies or contractors at early stages should normally replace specialists, providing you with valuable expertise to test and scale fast. It’s also crucial to figure out the core competency of the agency, so you don’t waste your money and time expecting what they cannot deliver with quality.
Once early stage tests prove what yields results, the in-house team will get bigger and you can start layering in specialists for key channels, potentially replacing outsourced contractors.
At later stages your marketing function should get more diverse and require a different set of skills as well as have a better defined leadership structure. Experts will truly own their domain, meaning you, as a leader, can focus on strategic initiatives and leading the team, rather than assigning tasks.
4. Prioritize hiring functions based on growth stage.
While time to value for each marketing function is different, balancing your team structure to achieve both short-term and long term results is crucial. Not all channels work equally, and you need to define your priorities based on that.
For example, SEO is usually a long-term investment. It has good traffic and lead generation potential, but it does take longer to see results. If you know that SEO is going to be a big part of your strategy, it may be best to bring a specialist on early.
Prioritizing specific hires for each growth stage also makes a lot of sense if you can diversify both long-term and short-term goals. For example, when you’re mapping your marketing foundations, your front-runners will be demand generation and content functions.
Once the basics of capturing existing demand are in place, it’s worth prioritizing hiring a conversion optimization specialist to maximize your impact and prove marketing's value to the business.
At later stages you will be looking to strengthen your brand perspective, so hiring brand and PR specialists will become a priority. Building a brand takes a lot of time, so hiring this function early on may prevent you from getting internal buy-in and budget for marketing.
5. Create structure based on alignment with sales.
If your company is aiming to align functions on the sales pipeline goals, it will make a lot of sense to place a business development representative (BDR) team into marketing. Obviously, there are pros and cons to this approach, as BDRs can also be placed into the sales teams.
Among the benefits of this approach is an improved accountability for marketing owning a pipeline number. Marketing teams also tend to better align with sales on feedback loops on message resonance.
What’s essential in this approach is to have the right comp plans around meaningful metrics (such as qualified pipeline) and put in place well-understood growth paths for the reps to keep them motivated.
It’s also crucial to have a dedicated BDR leader, who has enough time and energy for the BDR team. As this role is getting more and more complex, we can't afford to have someone doing it part time.
Assemble—and manage—your team carefully.
Hiring presents a huge challenge both for SaaS founders and marketing leaders who have a wide range of responsibilities and need to plan for a future that can be hard to predict. Creating a team from scratch may seem like a huge challenge, but starting small and growing at the same pace as your brand is key.
As the business evolves, the marketing function will get bigger and better structured. No matter which size or model you choose, don’t forget to hire the right talent and manage them the best way possible.
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