What is the optimal configuration for a marketing team in a SaaS company with less than $25M/year in revenue?

I had an enlightening discussion with a friend who oversees marketing for a $5M/ARR startup supported by venture capital. His marketing team consists of four members, and he's grappling with the decision of what to handle internally versus what to outsource.

While I'm not a traditional marketer, my experience in building and operating various companies has provided me with valuable insights about the essential human elements within an organization and the functions that are more about execution than in-house intellectual capacity.

In the B2B SaaS industry, we often refer to marketing as "top of funnel generation for MQLs." This field has witnessed significant evolution over the past decade, and it has accelerated in the past year. The online feud between NetSuite and Intuit QuickBooks on TikTok serves as a clear illustration of this trend.

Here's my perspective on how to structure your startup's marketing organization:

1. Branding, Strategy, and Management - These aspects should always be handled internally. They include brand definition, key target markets, customer intelligence and insights, acquisition and retention budgets, product, sales, and customer experience alignment, and importantly, internal communication. You can occasionally engage external expertise to enhance your strategy, but this should be about knowledge empowerment rather than effort outsourcing.

2. Creativity and Content - As much as possible, maintain in-house control over brand storytelling and campaign narratives. However, you can engage external partners to enhance execution. It's acceptable to use outsourced creative teams for artifact creation and content development (video, visuals, copy), but the core messaging should be owned internally. External partners can provide best practices and user insights, but the most effective narratives come from your customer-facing employees. For outsourcing, consider using a fixed monthly service like Superside.

3. Distribution and Performance - Beyond email and LinkedIn for your primary personalities, you can outsource all other channels - social, PR, media buys, lead gen, affiliate, partnerships. A robust content game simplifies the task of instructing your distribution partners to target the right audience. Performance marketing is a complex and rapidly evolving field where having a specialized executor can be invaluable, though difficult and expensive to retain in-house. Instead, consider partnering with experts in specific channels, incentivizing them based on results. This way, you can focus on your customers and messaging, while outsourcing as much of the rest as possible.

In a nutshell, grasp the essence of 'aaS' (as a Service) to streamline your marketing efforts.