The 3 key hiring phases for your eComm marketing team

If you are an early-stage founder and thinking of hiring a Head of Performance Marketing / Head of Growth.

Stop. Right. There.

I wanted to give some advice, as someone who worked as an in-house marketer at various sized businesses for most of my career, and who now gets to see how all my clients are doing it. 

I've been in that role of ‘Head of Marketing/ Digital’ for a startup, and honestly - it's a waste of your budget and a waste of their talent if you are still in the early stages. 

You'll still need an agency because they won't have the skills to be on the tools in every channel. 

So their job will be, what? To check up on the agency? That isn't a full-time job. 

And if you get a good agency that you trust as a growth partner, then you, the founder, can keep an even sharper eye on the agency than they can. 

This is how I think your marketing hiring should look as an early-stage founder: 

Phase One: Pre-Profit

Hire a mentor, coach or fractional CMO and learn the channels yourself (we can help with that - just reply to this message). 

It’s so important you understand these growth channels well, and you can only really learn by doing. 

As soon as you can afford to, hire a 'doer' - someone keen to learn who can blog, email, check numbers, help you get all the things done in the ad accounts and report on how things are going. 

You - with the help from your mentor - can set the strategy and stay under the skin of these growth channels that will make or break you.

Phase Two - Scaling Up

Here is where you hire a small, niche and nimble agency that knows your business and this channel better than anyone. Better yet, they should be hungry for growth. Yours, not theirs. 

Keep the doer on to keep the agency in check. Keep the mentor involved from time-to-time to help guide your doer, who will still be doing all the things your agency can’t do.

Phase Three - Getting Ready to IPO/Sell

Now you can finally hire your Head of Performance Marketing - and get them to fire the agency and grow a team of specialists under them! An email specialist, a paid social specialist, maybe an SEO specialist... 

Your Head of Performance Marketing will have deep knowledge of your main channel and broad knowledge of the others, so they can manage the in-house team.

It only makes sense to stop working with your agency once you are big enough to have an expert in house person on every channel. I have seen businesses try to have someone run Google, email and Facebook ads, and unless you find a genius, it’s very unlikely that they will do all of them well. 

What Not To Do:

• Expect your junior doer to know everything and manage every channel without a mentor.

• Hire a senior person but not give them budget or agency or team to justify their expertise.

• Expect a senior person to implement multi-channel digital campaigns by themself - most people who are that strategic will find it very difficult to be on the tools all day as well.

I hope this is useful, and can you help you avoid some of the pitfalls I came across in my career as a marketer. 

If you’re not a founder, but work closely with one, make sure you share this with them.