Most Startups or entrepreneurial cloud-based software companies don’t start with a marketing team, since the companies have to prove that the products or services that are offered are viable to the marketplace first, before they are marketed to a wider-scale. Once a company has sales, that’s normally when marketing departments become part of the thought process. This is a big mistake by entrepreneurs because marketing is just as important as the selling of the product, since marketing delivers the impression of the company and its products to the target audience.
If you’re company is in the start-up or mid-level growth stages, hire a Director-level marketer to help to set the tone of the company and its products and create a marketing budget based on the company’s annual or projected revenues. A good rule-of-thumb, is to give the Director of Marketing a budget that is based on 10% of revenues. Let that Director of Marketing figure out how they use that budget for staffing, technology, or marketing activities, but make sure that the budget must deliver in providing into the lead generation funnel. Marketing helps to begin the lead funnel and should be held against metrics to help in deriving revenues for the company. This is why CEO’s need to hire marketers at the beginning of building companies, rather than later. Good Digital Marketing Directors will build marketing budgets that will drive a certain amount of leads into the funnel and will help with increasing revenues exponentially.