Writer Should Be the First Marketing Hire at a Startup

This is going to be a short post, but if you follow this advice you will save your startup money, time, and resources.

A content writer (or a journalist) should be your first marketing hire.

(You can stop reading here).

Before you hire anyone else in marketing and certainly before you hire the VP of Marketing, prior to implementing marketing automation tools or designing marketing processes — hire a content writer.

Why?

Good content will generate an instant audience from day one. Your marketing process might be wrong or not optimal, but your startup will benefit from great content right away.

A good content writer will help you identify and test effective messaging.

Making a marketing manager or a VP of marketing your first hire has a 50/50 chance of working out.

In order to improve these odds, founders should consider running marketing for a little while. Understand marketing processes that might work for your organization before you hire a full-time marketing manager. This approach will help you identify what skills are essential in your next marketing hire.

Also, every new early marketing hire (and certainly a VP) will install new processes, direction, and goals. Therefore, almost every time that your company goes through a change of a marketing leader, it will cause your organization to experience small shocks.

So, hire a writer/journalist first.

Establish the following goals for the first 90 days:

• Weekly content deliverables (Ex: 1 premium asset per week (whitepaper, e-book, guide); 2–3 blog posts covering this week’s topic.)
• Create a content calendar
• Create 2–3 value proposition statements and map out content topics that will educate prospects on why they should care about these values.

If you are a writer and you are reading this, don’t sell yourself short — great writing skills are in high demand.