Building a Best-In-Class Marketing Team for Each Stage with Allocadia, HighRadius & Procare Software

Hi everyone, and thanks for joining us today. We're going to be diving into this session, the secrets to building a best-in-class marketing team for each stage of growth. My name is Julia Stead. I am the CMO at Allocadia. For those who don't know, Allocadia is a budget management and strategic planning platform for marketers. At this point, I have a marketing team of about 8, but throughout the course of my career, I've led marketing teams of 1 all the way up to the 18 to 20 person range and have overseen marketing budgets and resources in the very, very tiny numbers all the way up to $8 to $10 million annually. So that's a little bit about me. I'm going to pass things off to Damaris and Michelle to introduce themselves as well. Damaris, welcome.

Hey there, my name is Damaris Santiago. I am the Vice President of North America Enterprise Marketing at a company called HiRadius. HiRadius is a fintech SaaS unicorn. We are focused on the order-to-cash space specifically. I've managed teams of 1 to 25 folks. Inclusive within those teams have been things like marketing, product, and operations, and inside sales. I've managed budgets in the range of $1 to about $6 million.

Hi, I'm Michelle Burrows. I'm the CMO of ProCare Solutions. I currently have a team of 7. I have been the first and only marketer at small startups and had budgets of a couple hundred thousand all the way up to $55 million. And Procare does software for child care centers. So think after-school programs, enrichment programs, etc. And it's really nice to be here.

Thanks. Well, thank you. Thanks to you both for, for joining me. We're going to keep today's session very conversational. We'll, we'll move forward quickly since we don't have a ton of time, but we'll certainly leave some time at the end for questions from the audience. So we encourage you to pop questions into that box at any point, and we'll leave time at the end to address them. To frame our discussion for today, we really wanted to first take a little bit of a step back and look holistically at marketing investment. And when we're talking about growing a team, people really are the foundation and the heart of a successful marketing team, but they're not the only component of how you grow the function of marketing at an organization. So we'll be talking about people a lot, but also looking at that mix of people, programs, and technology, and how they all, how they all fit together at what point you need to lean in and invest more in certain areas, and also what pitfalls to, to stay away from to make sure that you're not overinvesting in one area at the expense of starving in another. So with that, let's just go ahead and dive into our discussion today. So first, we wanted to kick things off talking about early stages of growth, talking through what are some of those first key hires that you make, what are some outsourcing choices you need to make, what does the right leader look like when you're really at that small, scrappy stage of startup life. So let's start with you, Michelle. What's your take on this one?

So as I mentioned, I've been the first marketer, and I forgot to say I've also managed teams up to 35 with budgets of in excess of $50 million. And I think when you're small and scrappy, I like to hire up and hire for the team that we need to become over time, as opposed to where you might be right now. And I also look for teams that complement where my skill set is. So I'm, I'm, I probably hire more directors at this stage, and then I might fill in with some junior staff members. The things that I'm willing to outsource include content, some operational work, some demand gen work. I wouldn't outsource product, for example. I would keep that internal. So that's how I think about it when you're at that small and scrappy stage, hire for the team that you need to be in about 1 to 2 years.

Some, some great points in there. Tamaris, what's your take on this one?

I think I agree with Michelle's comments mostly. An ideal team starts with a solid foundation. I'd also suggest hiring up, director level, but not too senior. Some companies fall into the trap of thinking they need to hire a CMO, and they get stuck in a lot of theory and strategy and not in practical execution. You're going to want to look for that director that's really a utility player that has very strong digital acumen. And while they may not be in charge of demand generation at the inception, they have to be able to work with the vendor that you're outsourcing it to and make good decisions around that spend. Also, that person should have a really just positive temperament and be able to work cross-functionally, because ideally they'll be working with sales a lot, right? So the ability to roll with the punches with sales. As they'll be working on a lot of field activities as well at this level. And then I'd also start to think about early on aligning these team members with your SDR team if you already have that function in place and start building for the longer term.

Yes, some, some great points. I agree with both, both of you ladies. Definitely, I think in terms of a leader, you don't need someone extremely senior. You need a leader who's going to be comfortable rolling up their sleeves and doing a lot of the work as well. I always think it's important to look for a leader that's either strong in that demand generation, revenue generation side of marketing, or somebody that's really strong in the brand building, product marketing, storytelling side of marketing. Great if you can get someone that does all those things, but typically someone's a little bit stronger in one area or the other. So it involves looking at who your CEO is, what their vision is for marketing, what the business needs the most, and then hiring a leader who's got really really strong chops in one of those areas. And then I recommend, and do this myself as a leader all the time, hiring your next person to be also relatively senior and someone who complements the gaps that your, your number one leader has. So for example, if they're really strong in demand generation and revenue creation, hiring a really strong sort of second-in-command product marketer. From, from there, I think you can start to add a couple more junior people to the team, sort of the workhorses of the team that have the opportunity to level up and grow with the business as well. And the skills I look for in those areas are really strong writers and folks with marketers with really strong operational chops who can execute and run the programs that your, that your team needs. We didn't talk a lot about technology at this stage, but I'll toss it back to you, Michelle, for a second. How do you think about investing in technology when you've got limited budgets, a small team at this early stage?

So I think about it as investing in the core. So obviously, marketing automation is a core Perhaps chat technology is a core foundational element. And then I think as you look to scale your team, then you can also look to scale your marketing stack. You don't want things too unbalanced and investing in a ton of technology that your team can't absorb, learn how to use, scale, etc. So you have to sort of go slow in order to eventually go fast.

Yeah, I mean, that, that line right there, I think, could be applied to a lot of different facets of growing in that early stage. Damaris, what's, what's your take on tech in the early stages?

Yeah, I agree with that. I'm a big proponent of tech and marketing automation, but I understand that at this stage, you're not going to really have too much of a need for it. You're going to want a core system that you can, like, build landing pages and emails in on the fly and train the whole team up of utility players on how to utilize that system and build programs out for success and repeatability.

Yeah, I agree with you both. You need that core, the spine, I think of it as, of marketing organizations, the marketing automation system. And then being cautious and going slow with adding too much technology expense at the beginning, because most contracts are long-term, right? You need to be flexible and agile with your spend at the early stage. And sometimes you need to— contract before you expand more. And you don't want to be locked into big, expensive, heavy, long-term contracts at that early stage. So moving on to that next stage of growth, scaling up. And when we talk about scaling up, we're thinking about when you hit that, say, $25 to $50 million range, when you're starting to build out a bigger marketing organization. What does this look like? What are sort of the key indicators for when it's time to invest in a larger team in-house? And how does that— the composition of the team and the leadership change as you're scaling up? Damaris, I'll toss this one over to you first.

Sure. Lots of times that's driven by a revenue change, right? Inflection point. So now you need to grow or scale. And usually in terms of marketing, you want to grow by filling your gaps. You'll begin growing subfunctions like product marketing and communications, maybe areas that you weren't focused on too specifically before. Also, you're going to want to double down on marketing operations. We talked about that initial foundation that you'll build at inception. But here's where you want to spend your next time and attention and focus on will be in operations. You'll want to just relook at your automation system, audit your processes, integrate your systems together, and really clean up your data. And then look to hiring a marketing operations person in-house.

I have to chime in on that point, 'cause completely agree. I think we'll all agree on if you don't invest in good, clean operational standards at this point, it's a huge headache. To have to unwind and go back and fix another couple of years down the road. So it really is the right tipping point to make sure you're putting in the time and investment to focus on clean data, consistent systems and processes across your marketing and sales organization, because going back and overhauling it is usually at a minimum like a 9-month to 12-month endeavor. So Michelle, what's, what's your take on scaling up the team and how the composition changes?

Well, first, that is such a good point about investing in data. And data integrity is sort of something that most of the company probably doesn't want to talk about. It's not the sexiest thing. It's not a new brand campaign. It's not an overhaul of a sales process, et cetera. But it is absolutely core. So I think of a couple of things. And I agree with everything that you've both said in terms of now you start investing in maybe some content folks, a product marketing person, et cetera. I also would emphasize that at this stage is really where you need, instead of a marketing leader, a market leader, a CMO that has a vision that's closely aligned with the CEO, who understands the market really well. And also, it's time for an investment in your marketing stack. So while your stack might have looked like a pancake in the early days, now it's time to add on some layers. So you might think about an ABM platform. You might think about Form Append, anything and everything that makes things that you're doing go faster and be able to scale quickly. Because usually at this stage in the game, you're looking to double, triple revenue fairly quickly.

Yeah, those are great points. I loved what you said about the leader and shifting the focus from a marketing leader to a market leader. Couldn't agree with more. More with you on that one. I think the role of the leader changes, right? It's more about collaborating with the executives, with the CEO, figuring out the market strategy, the company growth strategy, and then really being a people leader as well and making sure that you've got the right senior marketing team in place to basically run the marketing side of, of, of the role. I would also agree with what you're saying, Marisa, about the different functions that you're building out. I think of it at that stage, it's basically 5 or 6 different areas of marketing. You've got your demand gen, your product marketing, your communications, which can cover that umbrella of PR and AR and content. At this stage, I think also operations, building out a strong operations team, and then customer marketing as well, I've seen become its own unique designation within marketing at this point. And then last but not least, this is sometimes the right time to bring more design in-house. Which is a good segue into what do you actually outsource at this stage, if anything? You're scaling up, you're bringing more expertise in-house, you're investing more in technology. What pieces would you outsource still at this point? Damaris, I'll toss that one over to you.

Yeah, I start to bring things in-house at this point specific to demand generation, right? So the folks that are running those paid media campaigns will definitely come in-house. In terms of outsourcing, I will continue to outsource some specialized content creation, right? Because as you start to specialize, you find that You spend time talking about specific verticals or products, and sometimes you just don't have that bench in-house. So that's usually what I'll continue to outsource.

And Michelle, what are you outsourcing at this stage?

I would echo most of what you just said. I would also add, I might still outsource website development. I want us to be really good at what our core functionality is and, and where we need to be as a market leader. As opposed to keeping up to date on the latest and greatest in website technology. That's probably something I would still outsource. But as Damaris noted, I would probably bring in a lot of the media campaigns, running media campaigns, etc.

Yeah, I would agree. One, one area that I personally outsourced for a fairly long time is digital advertising. Unless— and that's because I've been at companies where we just don't do a huge volume of paid search or other types of digital advertising. We do enough to help grow the business and sort of provide air cover, but it's not one of the number one channels. So for me, that's an area that I typically outsource until I've got a, you know, 15 to 20 person team as well, and it makes sense to have a dedicated resource in-house instead of an agency for that piece. At this stage as well, when it comes to scaling up, any pitfalls from a hiring perspective, whether it's the leader or the different folks on the team, in terms of going too senior, going too junior? How do you think about the composition of the team at this point and sort of balancing the levels of expertise? Michelle, I'll toss this one back to you to start.

So I really think about the team dynamics a lot more than I think about the individual skill set. So if, for example, I've started with someone on the marketing operations side who is highly analytical, the person I want to add is someone who complements that, doesn't lean way on the other side of creativity, but really a team that complements each other so that, so that we can gel, bring in a variety of perspectives, of diversity of thought. Into your team. So I think about it more like that, as opposed to you must have this specific skill set. The other thing I would add in terms of what the market leader needs is it depends on the type of company. So you talked about, you know, ideally you have both brand and demand, but depending on what kind of category your company is, you might need a very, very different leader. So if you're creating a category that hasn't existed before, you probably need someone that is more of a storyteller, versus if you're in a highly fragmented competitive market, you might need more of a demand marketer, but ideally you have someone who has both of those skill sets.

Yeah, that's a great point. I totally agree. And if you think about the importance of the role of the CEO making these decisions as well, if you've got a CEO that's got a really strong product vision and feels passionate about the story of the company, you might not need a marketing leader that's as strong in that area. They can kind of take the ball and run with it versus if you've got a CEO and founding team that's maybe just more focused on the technology or different— or the revenue side of the business, then that would be a perfect example where you need more of that storyteller marketing leader on the team. Damaris, any final thoughts on this before we kind of wrap up and move to Q&A? Yeah.

I think I agree with all the previous points. The other things I would caution on is hiring too junior, right? There's a temptation to keep operational budgets low and hire a ton of folks that are junior, but you'll spend a ton of time just getting people up to speed and not actually executing. The other thing I would think about as a CEO is how my marketing and sales leaders are getting along. That relationship will be the single most important relationship to help you scale and speed to market.

Yeah, such a great point. Yeah, absolutely agree with that.

So just to quickly wrap up, and then we'll, we'll answer some of the questions right away. Some key takeaways here: making sure you're really picking the right level of leader for the stage of growth you're at, not hiring too junior or too senior, making sure to hire for your weaknesses. So look at the composition of your marketing leader and then making sure that they're hiring for gaps in their areas of expertise. And then really keeping your areas of competitive advantage in-house, stuff like product marketing and not outsourcing those key areas. So at this point, let's move on into the Q&A section. I'm going to go ahead and stop sharing my screen so that we can see the panelists a little bit more clearly here. Okay, first question that came in here. Just looking for some clarity around when we're talking about hiring a director-level person in the early stage, what we're looking for there. Are there currently any other marketing employees on the team? What would their roles and responsibilities be like? And what would sort of the profile of, of person look like? Someone from a large established enterprise, someone that's got more startup experience? Michelle, I'll toss this one over to you to answer first.

Wow, there's a lot to unpack in that question. So early, early stages, you might be the first marketing hire, perhaps. So, and in terms of the type of budget you might expect, I mean, it just really depends. It depends on where you are. It depends on, you know, does the company have a well-established or somewhat of an established brand and they have a website and they have things clicking along and, and they've sort of been doing a bootstrap kind of thing. In terms of where does that person come from, in my experience, if you hire somebody from a large established business, they're used to processes being in place, teams being in place, and it's hard to make the transition to more of a startup environment. So I think you want someone with— who can see the vision of here's where we need to get to, maybe has some of that large corporate experience, but also has been, you know, has done it themselves, has rolled up their sleeves and worked in that kind of environment in the past.

Great answer. I'm going to move on to another question because we've got a lot coming in here. Damaris, I'll pass this one over to you. To generate new business for a company, would you recommend hiring an SDR or marketer? Right now, this particular company's sales are coming predominantly from the founders. So where do you see the best quick returns, SDR or marketing?

So it probably depends on who that founder is and how fast he wants to see returns.