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Podcast

Building Marketing Programs and Teams from Scratch and How to Hire Great Marketers with Charlie Liang

By June 30, 2023No Comments3 min read
Building Marketing Programs and Teams from Scratch and How to Hire Great Marketers with Charlie Liang

Last Updated on June 30, 2023

It can be daunting if you’re a startup looking to build a marketing team from scratch. But according to Charlie Liang, Head of Marketing at Finch, the key is to hire generalists who can adapt to changes as the company grows.

In this episode, Charlie discussed the challenges of building a marketing team in early-stage startups and shared insights on prioritizing and investing in marketing efforts with limited resources.

Overall, the key to getting buy-in and building trust is through transparent communication and accountability. By presenting ideas and plans, asking for feedback, and being accountable for progress and adjustments made to the plan, you can build trust and get buy-in from your team.

Topics

  • Building a Marketing Team 
  • Prioritizing Marketing Focus
  • Marketing Strategies That Worked
  • Principles of Prioritization
  • Learning from Mistakes in Building a Marketing Function
  • Tactical Communication Strategies 
  • Previous Experience and Hiring
  • Filtering for Eagerness and Hunger 
  • Reinventing Yourself 

Listen to the podcast:

Key Takeaways:

[00:04:30]  Building a Marketing Team

David and Charlie talk about their experiences building marketing teams at various startups, including the challenges of defining job descriptions and scopes.

[00:09:08] Prioritizing Marketing Focus 

David and Charlie discuss the importance of prioritizing marketing efforts and investing in specific areas, rather than trying to do everything at once.

[00:14:43] Marketing Strategies That Worked 

David and Charlie discuss the marketing strategies they tried at their current business, including webinars, SEO content, and thought leadership content, and which ones worked best.

[00:19:48] Principles of Prioritization 

David and Charlie discuss the principle of “Will it make the boat go faster?” and how it applies to prioritizing tasks.

[00:26:37] Learning from Mistakes in Building a Marketing Function 

Charlie shares some of the biggest mistakes he has made in building marketing teams, including not unblocking himself and trying to do everything himself, and becoming known as the Salesforce person when he wanted to focus on demand gen.

[00:33:00] Tactical Communication Strategies 

Charlie shares his tactical communication strategies, including weekly team meetings, one-on-ones, and written updates.

[00:50:35] Previous Experience and Hiring 

Charlie shares his opinion that people overvalue their previous experience and over index on hiring people they’ve worked with before, narrowing their talent pool.

[00:53:57] Filtering for Eagerness and Hunger 

David explains how his company filters for candidates who are eager and hungry to do good work, rather than sticking to processes and not questioning how things are done.

[00:56:01] Reinventing Yourself 

The importance of reinventing yourself every six to twelve months to stay successful in a hypergrowth company.


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David Khim

David is co-founder and CEO of Omniscient Digital. He previously served as head of growth at People.ai and Fishtown Analytics, and before that was growth product manager at HubSpot where he worked on new user acquisition initiatives to scale the product-led go-to-market.