As a startup founder or small business owner, your focus is laser-sharp: growth. Whether it’s gaining traction, acquiring new users, or closing your next round of deals, you're hustling hard to move the needle. So naturally, you start thinking, “Maybe it’s time to build out a marketing team.”
Pause right there.
While that might sound like the next logical step, hiring a full-time, in-house marketing team too early can actually slow your momentum—and burn your budget.
In this post, we’ll break down why startups and SMBs don’t need a full-time marketing team right out of the gate—and what you should be doing instead to build a marketing engine that scales.
Hiring a full-time marketing employee isn’t just about covering a salary. According to Glassdoor, the average base salary for a marketing manager in North America is around $75,000–$90,000 per year. Add in benefits, taxes, software, onboarding, and operational overhead, and you're easily looking at $120,000+ in total annual cost.
Let’s break down what that looks like:
In short: You’re betting your marketing results on a single hire who likely can't cover the full spectrum of skills you need at this stage.
Early-stage businesses need a wide array of marketing functions: content, email, SEO, PPC, automation, analytics, and more. But expecting one person to be a master of all these areas is unrealistic.
This mythical “marketing unicorn” is more fantasy than fact. Even seasoned marketers will tell you: most professionals specialize in 1–2 areas at best.
Here’s how this plays out in practice:
A tech startup we worked with had hired an in-house generalist to “do marketing.” Within 4 months, they saw no increase in leads. The employee was creating blog posts — but had no SEO strategy. They ran Facebook ads — but had no retargeting funnel. When they finally brought in fractional experts, they tripled their qualified lead volume within 60 days.
Lesson learned: Early-stage growth isn’t about doing everything — it’s about doing the right things, in the right order.
What to Do Instead: Leverage Fractional Talent, Proven Systems, and Strategic Partners
Rather than spending big on a single hire, savvy startups are building smarter by tapping into a modern growth model. Here's what that looks like:
Instead of hiring a junior marketer, consider working with a fractional marketing team — who bring deep experience, high-level thinking, and proven playbooks. You get clarity on KPIs, messaging, funnels, and channels without the full-time salary.
💡 According to Chief Outsiders, companies that work with fractional marketing teams often see faster time-to-market and higher marketing ROI within the first 90 days.
Hiring an in-house marketer means starting from scratch. But marketing agencies and funnel specialists like Marketing Mavens bring pre-built, high-performing frameworks to the table. No guesswork, just systems that have worked across dozens of industries.
Think of it like this:
Would you rather hire someone to build you a custom engine, or would you prefer a team that brings in a fully optimized engine that’s already been road-tested?
Execution is where most startups get stuck. You don’t just need ideas—you need people who can actually do the work. That’s where a strategic agency partnership pays off. With the right agency, you get:
For example, a growing SaaS company we partnered with avoided hiring a full-time team. Instead, they worked with our experts to build a conversion-optimized funnel, launched paid ads, and refined their email nurture sequences—all within 6 weeks. The result? A 48% increase in qualified leads and a 3.2x return on ad spend within 90 days.
Think of your marketing like building a race car. You wouldn’t hire a single person to design the body, engineer the engine, and race it on the track. You’d bring in specialists to build it and then hire a driver to keep it moving.
The same principle applies here:
First, build the system that generates revenue. Then hire internally to manage and maintain it.
Doing it in reverse means paying a premium to figure things out as you go—and burning runway in the process.
Hiring a full-time marketing team may feel like a milestone, but for most startups and SMBs, it’s not the right move — yet.
✅ Instead of chasing unicorn hires, invest in systems.
✅ Instead of scaling payroll, scale performance.
✅ Instead of guessing, get data-driven growth strategies from experts.
At Marketing Mavens, we help startups and SMBs design, build, and scale marketing funnels and sales pipelines that convert. If you’re ready to grow smarter — not just bigger — book your Free Revenue Growth Assessment today, and give you a roadmap for turning leads into lifelong customers.
👉 Let’s build your growth engine. Together.