Scale-ups: Should you make your first in-house hire, or outsource your marketing?
Let’s imagine that your business has scaled to $5M—maybe more—without a dedicated marketing function. You have a solid product-market fit or a great service-based business, and because of that, you’ve grown on referrals, relationships, and the daily grind. Perhaps you’ve even invested in an agency to help build your brand and put some of the foundational elements in place. And so far, it's worked!
But lately, something has shifted. Maybe your pipeline feels a little less predictable, or you’re noticing competitors are showing up in places you're not. Maybe your website looks like you built it in 2019… because you did. Maybe you just have big ambitions to someday double that revenue number. And so maybe your team, your mentor, or that little voice that keeps you up at night are starting to ask the same question.
Is it time for our first marketing hire?
And the answer is yes, but maybe not in the way you're thinking.
For most B2B founders and CEOs at the sub-$10M mark, the first instinct is to make your first in-house hire. But before you write a job description, there's a real decision to make here: at this stage, is in-house the right move, or should you outsource to a fractional marketing team?
Let’s break it down so you can make a more informed decision.
When hiring in-house makes the most sense
Let's start here, because hiring really is the right call sometimes.
Making your first in-house marketing hire is really less about the revenue figure you’re at and more about what stage your business is in. Here are some signs you might be ready for this person:
You have one clear, repeatable go-to-market motion and you need someone to own it full-time. That means you have an established ICP, brand, and sales team that will set the marketer up for success.
You have a significant marketing budget beyond salary, because a marketer without program spend isn’t going to get very far. If you’re curious how much budget you need, check out this resource on building a marketing budget.
You know exactly what you're hiring for: demand gen, product marketing, events, brand, etc… not "all of the above."
You're ready for a long ramp. Your first hire will spend months (sometimes longer) building foundation before you see pipeline impact. You’re okay with that.
You have enough internal context—documented processes, messaging, customer insights—that they won't spend their first quarter reverse-engineering your business strategy.
If you’re nodding your head to each of these prompts, and you feel genuinely ready for someone in-house that will help you build out the marketing function further, then hiring in-house is a good next step on your journey to growing your business.
But before you make a final decision, consider this.
Why one marketing hire rarely solves the problem at this stage
Here's the sobering reality. Marketing functions today require a genuinely wide range of skills:
Strategy
Content engineering
Copywriting
SEO/GEO/AEO
Social media
Email marketing
Design
Campaign management
Analytics
Brand
Demand generation
Video
Etc…
If you're hiring one person to own all of this, you're looking for a freaking unicorn. And unicorns—when you do find them—burn out fast when they own everything, everywhere, all at once.
We see this pattern constantly. A founder with a business at $4M hires a talented marketer. Smart person, strong instincts, genuinely wants to do well. Within six months, they're drowning. They're a generalist being asked to be six specialists simultaneously, without the budget to do any of it properly, without a team to support them, and without clear direction from leadership. A year in, they leave. The founder starts over. Everyone feels like a failure.
Meanwhile, the $100K salary—plus benefits, onboarding time, management overhead, and the cost of that first failed year—has quietly become a very expensive lesson.
So what’s the alternative? Enter the ‘fractional marketing team’
This is where a lot of founders check out, because when they hear "outsource your marketing," they picture one of two things: a virtual assistant posting to Instagram three times a week, or a bloated agency invoicing $20K/month for a strategy deck and a few dodgy leads.
Neither is what we're talking about.
Fractional marketing support means bringing in senior-level strategy and hands-on execution, without the full-time overhead. A fractional marketing team can bring real expertise across the different marketing functions, working alongside your business as a true partner.
And built right, they’ll serve as a genuine extension of your team.
Here are the perks:
→ Instead of one generalist stretched thin, you get a whole team: a strategist who's done this for dozens of companies, a writer who actually understands B2B, a designer who knows brand, a project lead keeping it all moving.
→ Senior brains and junior hands. People who've already figured out how to build efficiently—no ramp-up required. They likely come with processes and procedures and can dig in right away.
→ A severable monthly retainer instead of a salary plus benefits. When you’re in the early stages, every dollar counts. A fractional team is on contract, so they’re naturally more accountable than an in-house hire. If they suck, it’s easy to let them go.
The objection most founders raise—"agencies don't know our business"—is fair. It's just not unique to agencies. A new hire doesn't know your business either. At least not yet.
Our client Jennifer Brookman, VP of Revenue Operations & Innovation at WCD, made exactly this call when she was weighing a new marketing hire. She looked at the fractional team she'd built (specialists who knew the brand, collaborated directly with each other, and produced work she trusted) and asked herself a simple question: "Why would I trade that?"
So she didn't! Read her story here.
What good fractional marketing support looks like in practice
The fear most founders have is that external partners won't care enough, or that they’ll become just another client on the roster, briefed via email, handed off to a junior, and invoiced on the first of the month regardless of results.
This is totally fair, because truly, I’d be hard pressed to find someone in business these days that hadn’t been burned by an agency in the past. The suckage is everywhere.
But here’s what we tell our clients, because it’s 100% true.
Your fractional team will know your business intimately. We don’t just walk in and flip tables. A true fractional partner invests deep upfront to get integrated with the business, understanding (or helping you define) strategy, goals, and direction.
Then we work closely alongside your team, interviewing SMEs, listening to customer feedback, asking the hard questions, and building context over time. They should take the time to genuinely understand their client’s business goals, their brand voice, their customers, their competitive landscape, what moves the needle, etc.
This is why the first client we ever had at Outspoke is STILL a client today…
Your fractional team talks to your in-house team without routing everything through you. One of the things Jennifer flagged as a differentiator: her fractional specialists communicate directly. Her content partner (that’s us!) talks to her SEO specialist and collaborates with her creative team. Nobody's waiting for her to be the middle (wo)man.
"If you become the conduit between everyone, you become the bottleneck," she told us. Good fractional teams are self-organizing in a way that lets you stay focused on the business.
You get honesty. Being outside the business, a fractional partner has the fresh and un-biased eyes needed to call things out when they aren’t working or need to shift. An in-house hire—especially early on—is often navigating organizational politics and trying to figure out what you want to hear.
There's real value in the outside perspective. We've built a business on it.
Before you decide either way, ask yourself these questions
Whether you're leaning toward a hire or outsourcing, work through these first:
Do you need strategy, execution, or both? A lot of founders assume they just need a junior tactician (AKA someone to write blogs and schedule social posts) when the gap is actually strategic. No one has sat down to figure out who you're talking to, what you're saying, or why anyone should care. You really need both builders and operators on a marketing team.
How much time can you realistically give to marketing? An in-house hire still needs direction. If you're not in a position to manage someone, provide feedback, set priorities, and make decisions, a more self-directed fractional partner is probably a better fit.
Is this a one-time push or an ongoing need? Some marketing work is project-based—a brand refresh, a website rebuild, a launch campaign. Other needs are ongoing—a content program, a social presence, a newsletter. A freelancer or agency might be perfect for the former. For the latter, you need a partner who's in it with you month over month, not someone who delivers and disappears.
Our honest take:
For most founders under $10M, the question isn't “should I hire or outsource?” It's “what does good marketing look like for where I am right now?”
The answer to that question may point to fractional first. Not forever—but for now. The goal is to build the engine: clear strategy, consistent execution, a brand that can stand on its own. When you get there and your revenue engine is growing, you'll know it's time to bring someone in-house. And when you do, they won’t be alone because you already have a team in place they can work with.
If you want more context on how fractional marketing works in practice, check this out:
How we helped IX Solutions scale from $5M - $20M in under four years with fractional marketing >
Not sure where to start?
If you're a founder weighing your marketing options and want an honest conversation about what makes sense at your stage—no skeezy pitch deck—drop us a line and let’s coffee and chat.
