First Marketing Hire for B2B SaaS Startups
Try before you “buy” your first marketing executive
Do you need to bring on your first marketing leader, but don’t know who? Or are you concerned about hiring the wrong first marketer? They might have the right marketing skills, but if they are not a personality fit, you cause unneeded drama and cost yourself irreplaceable time. A great first marketing leader can set you on the course for success. The wrong early marketing leader squanders your time, attention, and precious seed capital. A contract-based first marketing executive for your B2B SaaS startup is a great way to get early results while ensuring a personality fit.
Seed funded and Series A companies have unique marketing needs. A first marketing hire is key to inspire confidence, uplevel your presence, and build a sales pipeline engine.
As an early stage company you might have a great sales strategy but your sales funnel is nearly running on empty. Or perhaps your sales team is held back by an amateurish website and collateral. The messaging at many startups reflects the engineering mindset of the CTO—heavy emphasis on product specifications rather than “what’s in it for me” benefits that buyers care about. Your first marketing hire can and should make your company look and sound more authoritative and more crisp in the value you provide. They can also make precedent-setting decisions on your martech stack, marketing-to-sales processes, forecasts, goals, budgets, and even junior staff hires. This is not a time to skimp on marketing talent. But you don’t necessarily need to fully commit to full-time marketing exec salaries. A been-there-done-that contract CMO or fractional CMO is a great alternative that balances high B2B marketing talent with constrained startup budgets.
Marketing first hires Do’s and Don’ts
Don’t do this
We recommend you not hire someone early just because they’re cheap or easy to find; instead look for someone that can come in right away and start executing on what matters most to your B2B SaaS startup. Cheap is dear. It’s also counterproductive. Settling on a “warm body” to handle early marketing is a recipe for disaster–wrong messaging aimed at the wrong prospects in the wrong markets with lousy marketing systems causes longer sales cycles, higher customer acquisition costs, and more revenue churn. Ouch.
Do this instead
Think clearly about times when your marketing has held you back. Are your sales people complaining about their sales deck, sales collateral, or the website? Do your sales prospects make the same objections repeatedly? Or worse, do they visit and then disappear forever? Are investors saying “thanks but no thanks”? Here are some ways a contract-hire first marketer can help you:
- Make key decisions on marketing processes, campaigns, go-to-market strategies, buyer journeys, budgets, martech software and more.
Why? These decisions set the course for your company and are the ongoing source for future sales success. As former marketing M&A integration execs, we can also tell you that your martech stack and marketing processes determine your eventual exit success. Hard truth alert: funky marketing software choices and marketing systems limit your universe of possible acquirers, make you a less attractive acquisition target, and cost you millions.
- Clarify your messaging so your prospects get it the first time.
Why? Only 3% of your prospects want to talk to your sales people. They first want to understand what you do for them, how your solution works, how it is better, and how to impress (or at least not look foolish in front of) their colleagues and their own boss. You have one chance to make that first impression on them.
- Upgrade your branding just barely enough to inspire confidence in your target prospects.
Why? Your paying customers are taking a financial and reputational risk on you, often comparing you to established players or to “free” do-it-yourself in-house projects. If your solution is valuable, your brand needs to dress the part. But brand is only a means to an end–the goal is to use polished branding to lower your customer acquisition cost, not to win creativity awards! An experienced contract-based first marketing hire knows the 20% brand upgrade that achieves the 80% improvement in business.
Conclusion
If you’re ready for your first marketing hire to take your startup to the next level, you need to balance marketing experience versus compensation cost. Winging it today with graphic artists, copywriters, and engineering-led messaging costs you revenue today and paydays tomorrow. Equistrat provides veteran B2B SaaS marketing execs on a flexible contract basis with retainer and project models to meet your unique needs: all the benefits of great marketing, none of the risks.
We can help you. Let’s talk.
Whether you need to bring on your first CMO, find an interim CMO, or if you temporarily need help with a big campaign or launch, contact us today.