Most SaaS founders hire their first salesperson before their first marketer. Then pipeline from the founder's network starts to dry up, and the question changes from "should we hire a marketer?" to "what kind?"
Get that answer wrong and you hire a title, not a job. Six months later you have a brand refresh, a new website and not much more pipeline.
When to hire your first marketer
You are ready when most of these are true:
Founder-led sales works. You have closed customers and know who buys and why.
The message is proven. You can explain in one sentence what you sell and to whom, and it lands with buyers.
Sales needs more pipeline. Your first salesperson, or you, can close more than you can find.
There is a budget to spend. A marketer with no budget for tools, content or campaigns has little to work with.
If the message is not proven yet, a marketer will struggle to fix that. The founder usually has to find it first, through sales conversations.
Decide what the job actually is
"Marketing" covers very different jobs. Your first hire should match how your customers buy.
Demand generation. Your buyers search, compare and book demos. You need someone to fill the pipeline through paid search, email, events and outbound support. This is the most common first hire for sales-led SaaS.
Content and product marketing. Your product is new or hard to explain, and buyers need educating before they buy. You need someone who can write, position the product against alternatives and arm the sales team.
Growth. Users sign up and try the product themselves before anyone talks to sales. You need someone who works on sign-up, activation and conversion, and is comfortable with data and experiments.
Write down which of the three you need most, and the one number this person will own. For most B2B SaaS companies, that number is qualified pipeline.
Our guide to defining the sales role before you hire shows how to agree success criteria before the search starts. The same approach works for a marketing hire.
Head of Marketing or a hands-on marketer?
This is where most first marketing hires go wrong.
A senior title attracts candidates who are used to having a team, a budget and agencies to brief. At Seed stage there is no team. Your first marketer will write the emails, build the landing pages and run the campaigns.
Hire for the job, not the title:
Pre-Seed to Seed: a senior, hands-on marketer. Someone who has led marketing at a small company and still enjoys doing the work.
Series A: a Head of Marketing who can build the plan, hire the first one or two people and still run campaigns.
Series B and beyond: a VP Marketing who manages managers and owns the full function.
If you want to offer a senior title to attract the right person, make the job description honest about how hands-on the role is.
What it costs
Pay depends on stage, scope and the individual. Our Sales and Marketing Salary Guide Ireland 2026 puts the ranges at:
Head of Marketing / VP Marketing: €90,000 to €150,000 OTE, base-heavy with a bonus.
Head of Growth: €75,000 to €120,000 OTE.
Demand Generation Manager: €60,000 to €90,000 OTE.
Content Marketing Manager: €45,000 to €70,000 OTE, usually base only.
Budget for the tools and campaigns too. A marketer with no money to spend will spend their first months asking for it.
How to interview a marketer
Marketing CVs are easy to dress up. Test for results and for the work itself.
Ask for the numbers. How much pipeline did their work create, and how did they measure it? Strong candidates know their numbers and can explain how they were tracked.
Ask what they did, not what the team did. In a large company, campaigns have many owners. Find out which parts were theirs.
Ask for a 90-day plan. Give them your brief and ask how they would spend the first three months. You will learn how they think and whether they understand your buyer.
Set a short task. A one-page campaign plan or a rewrite of your homepage message. Keep it short, and pay for it if it takes more than a couple of hours.
Involve sales. Your salesperson will work with this hire every day. Ask them to run one interview.
Red flags
Only big-company experience. Large budgets, agencies and a full team behind every campaign. Ask what they have built with no budget.
Vanity metrics. Followers, impressions and open rates, but no link to pipeline or revenue.
Brand first. A plan that starts with a rebrand and a new website before any campaign has run.
No view on sales. Marketers who see sales as a separate team, not the people they are filling the pipeline for.
Set them up to succeed
Agree one shared target with sales. Usually qualified pipeline, reviewed every month.
Give them a budget and the access they need: CRM, website, analytics and ad accounts.
Plan the first 90 days. Customer calls in the first month, first campaigns in the second, a clear read on what is working by the third.
Getting it right
When Noloco, an early-stage no-code platform with no internal HR team, needed a Head of Growth, the brief was clear: someone experienced, willing to work at a smaller startup and able to get into the detail of growth and marketing. Read how we ran that retained search for a Head of Growth.
Hiring your first marketer? Our Marketing Recruitment service places Heads of Marketing, Demand Generation and Growth hires for VC-backed SaaS companies across Ireland and EMEA, with a shortlist of 3 to 5 assessed candidates in 10 to 15 working days. Book a discovery call to talk it through.
The Recruiter is Ireland's specialist GTM and SaaS recruitment agency. We partner with VC-backed SaaS companies from Pre-Seed to Series C across Ireland and EMEA. Employment Agency Licence EA 4551.
