If you're not sure which marketing or branding skill you need to hire next, this formula might help (a summary of recent conversions with founders with this dilemma and from my painful mistakes in the past) - applicable mostly for saas but also consumer:

Let's first sync on the slightly obvious - the marketing flywheel - to understand which skills and tasks we have at hand. Starting from honing in on your ideal customer persona —> acquisition —> activation —> revenue —> retention —> referral.

Now, let's flatten this into a timeline, and place key roles here - very simplified, just as an example. Each 'color' is a step in the cycle.

Useful method is going from left to right - i.e, from the biggest & long term pain points (building awareness and content) to the last - from outbound to inbound, to product led stickiness and referrals. Let's assume you're pre-launch, and want to grow a brand from the ground up.

Been there #1 - always opt for a lower seniority level. If they're great, they'll eventually hire under them. And if they're still learning, the title would imply that some day someone is going to manage them.

Been there #2 - preferably, opt for hiring brand before growth, even if you found someone amazing. I've had cases where the growth side of my team was full, and once branding talent joined, it was very hard to shift the team's mode from ROI to storytelling.

Step zero - of course you'd want someone to manage the entire marketing team - and that person has to be fairly full stack. BUT - unless you're planning on relying mostly on paid acquisition - you'd want them to lean towards the brand building (i.e left side of the skill map).

Next hires - go from left to right with no need for senior positions, at first. Your head of marketing could directly manage social, creative, content, etc - without a brand manager in between. Same for content or growth positions.

Also, a few things to remember:

1. Unlike dev or product, marketing talent is fluid. You might get a content writer who can cover SEO as well, or you might have a product marketer who can easily handle funnel copywriting. You don't know. You CAN'T know. And that's ok!

1. (cont'd) All you need to do is basically start meeting with folks and understand strengths and weaknesses of the key people you feel have the most potential. And then you add the missing talent around them, to complete whatever they're lacking.

2. Paid acquisition can and should preferably be outsourced at first. Because algorithms change so fast, what you want is someone who's working for a few customers at a time, and reads all the relevant newsletters and forums, on a daily basis, to keep up.

3. There's great tools like @TheOrgCom that can help you learn how others build their team.

Still exploring this myself so channeling the beyonce & jay z of my marketing feed, @heyblake @mkobach for any thoughts and comments!