What to consider when hiring your first marketing manager

First of all, let's clear the elephant in the room: yes, every company in the world needs a marketing function. It is not something you can do without. As management guru Peter Drucker said: " business has only two functions - marketing and innovation". No, you don't always need a big marketing team to get the job done. A small team can be an asset for fast decision making and turn around.

Starting small

No matter if large or small team size, you need someone being responsible for and taking accountability in marketing. Even the smallest company consisting of a single founder is faced with the task to promote their business. This can be done through sales or marketing. And the longer you think about it, the blurrier the boundary gets between these two functions. A salesman markets his products, while a marketing manager sells her story. 

A jack of all trades, master of none?

So, now that we understand the need of marketing, what do you need to consider when hiring your first marketing manager? You might ask yourself if the ideal person should be savy in the lastest digital marketing trends or maybe someone with lots of brand management skills? There are literally hundreds of different nuances in marketing skills that each have their place and purpose.

However, if you believe in the pareto principle, you might want to consider someone who meets 80% of the requirements with 20% of the skills needed. In short, you need a generalist in marketing. Having worked with and hired many marketing managers, your best bet is to search for a product marketing specialist. Assuming that you are selling some sort of product or service, you need someone to understand your core offering.

Focus on story telling

A product marketer knows how to quickly gain a deep understanding of your product and more importantly, how to translate this into a story. If you hire a digital marketing manager first, you might be trading off the story-telling aspect with fancy online channels. But what kind of business sells anything well without a good story?

Product marketers are used to wearing many different hats: from crafting a storyline to writing content and distributing the message across different channels. Once your business is gaining traction in the market and your target audience understands your core offering, you can and should start to think about growing your marketing team.

Scaling a team requires a much deeper look into your business strategy. So for now, if you think about hiring your very first marketing manager, search for a product marketer and you won't be disappointed.