The First Hire You Make in Marketing Is Usually the Wrong One
- Wickersham Team
- Jul 6
- 3 min read
Most organizations build their marketing function backward, starting with headcount when they should start with strategy. Here is what that costs and how to think about it differently.
The Sequence Problem
When an organization decides it needs more marketing, the instinct is almost always the same: hire someone. Post a job description. Interview candidates. Bring on a marketing manager, a content person, a digital specialist, whoever seems like the most pressing gap to fill.
This instinct is understandable. It is also, in most cases, the wrong move made in the wrong order.
The problem is not that hiring is bad. The problem is that hiring is a structural commitment made before the organization knows what structure it actually needs. The hire shapes the marketing function —its priorities, capabilities and blind spots—before anyone has answered the prior question: what does marketing actually need to do here, and what is the right architecture to do it?
The hire shapes the marketing function before anyone has answered the prior question: what does marketing actually need to do here?
What Gets Decided by Default
When an organization hires before it strategizes, a set of decisions gets made by default, not by design.
The marketing function becomes defined by whatever the first hire is strongest in. A content-focused hire builds a content-focused function. A digital-first hire builds a digital-first function. The organizational need did not shape the strategy. The individual's skill set did.
This matters because the first year of a marketing hire is rarely spent executing a strategy. It is spent on establishing credibility, learning the organization, managing competing internal demands, and producing enough visible output to justify the headcount. Strategy —real, deliberate, forward-looking marketing strategy—tends to arrive late, if at all.
Meanwhile, the organization is paying a full-time salary, benefits, and employer costs for a function that is still finding its footing. The math only works if the hire eventually produces enough value to justify the delay and the overhead. For many organizations, that math never closes.
The Real Cost of Building From Scratch
The cost of a marketing hire is not the salary on the offer letter. It is the full cost of the function that the hire is expected to build.
A single marketing hire cannot cover the full scope of modern marketing. Strategy, content, paid media, SEO, email, social, design, analytics and brand are distinct disciplines, each with real depth. One person, however talented, is making constant triage decisions about what to prioritize and what to leave undone. The things left undone are usually the ones that matter most: the strategic thinking, the brand architecture, the measurement systems that would make everything else more effective.
Organizations frequently respond by adding headcount: a second hire, then a third, before realizing they are building an internal agency without the infrastructure, specialization, or institutional knowledge that make an agency function. They have the cost structure of an agency and the capability of a generalist.
A Different Starting Point
The organizations that build marketing functions that actually perform tend to start from a different place entirely. They answer the strategy question before they make the structural decision.
What do we need marketing to produce in the next twelve months? What business outcomes are we holding it accountable for? What capabilities do we not currently have that are most critical? What does a marketing function that serves this organization at this stage actually look like?
Those answers often lead to a different conclusion than immediate headcount. They lead to the recognition that what the organization needs in the early stage is breadth and speed, not depth in any single discipline, and that the fastest way to access breadth and speed is not to build it from scratch internally.
The hire is not the strategy. It is the output of one. Organizations that sequence it correctly tend to build marketing functions that are more capable, more aligned, and considerably less expensive than those built on instinct.
The right question before the first marketing hire is not 'who should we bring in?' It is 'what does this function need to do?' The answer to the second question should determine the structure. Most organizations skip it and spend years correcting the result.
If your organization is facing this challenge and you want to talk through what it looks like in your specific context, you can reach us at hello@wickershamgroup.com.
