Marketing department

[Daniela Costa]

I think we should all think big and I'm sure most of you do. Those who already have a very well-established business, do you have a department dedicated to marketing? Those with plans to go big, is setting up a marketing department an integral part of that plan?

Or would you rather go the way of hiring someone to do your marketing on a freelance basis?

I guess what I'm really asking is how big of a space will you dedicate to marketing in your long-term big business plan?

[Gretchen Roberts]

I'm a digital marketer and would agree with John that a full-time marketer would be overkill until you have the operational capacity to handle the bottom of the funnel--i.e. close deals. That entails both time and cash (or cash/financing). You can usually work backwards by the time you're established: If you want to close X deals a month, how many qualified leads does that take? How many leads do you need at the top in order to get those qualified leads? A funnel might go like this (numbers totally made up but proportions will give you an idea)

100 responses to marketing initiatives

10 qualified leads

1 deal

So if you want to do 50 deals, you'll need 500 qualified leads and 5,000 initial leads. That's where a marketing person would come in handy, to generate those initial leads and qualify them for the close.