In the early days of a startup, you don’t need a dedicated Marketing person.
You do need someone who can handle the Marketing role.
This is a key difference, because even though you don’t need to have someone fully dedicated to this, you do NEED to have the responsibilities of this role fulfilled on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.
And this role should not be handled by one person – because then it becomes a Marketing person – instead this role NEEDS to be handled by everyone in your team for the reason that everyone understands the value of the role and what it brings to the company.
Some elements of a marketing role should always include;
- talking to customers
- promoting the company – events, social media, t-shirts, presentations
- whitepapers & stories
- competitive analysis
- product roadmap input
If you focus on those five points and you look at your team, how could you not want all of them knowing the competitive landscape, what direction the roadmap is going in, what customers have great stories to sell, who will be reading the blogs they write?
They should all know these points and be well-versed in them as it extends to how they build features in the products, how they support trial sites, how they handle customer support calls and yes, how they contribute to those oh so important sales demos.
Do you need a full-time marketing person? No.
Do you need the full-time marketing role? Yes.
