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We talk a lot about what is virtual. Virtual this and virtual that. All of this talk of “virtual” tends to apply to things that are intangible, but when it comes to a virtual marketing team, I see a slightly different application and one that may not make you all very happy.
My last 15 years have been focused on start-ups that exit. I build marketing teams that build categories and new ideas, and those ideas become attractive and get acquired. When a company gets acquired, there is a period of discovery and learning, and eventually a period of consolidation where teams get merged, and that typically signals layoffs and the chance to create efficiencies. What has been interesting for me is that in almost every case, there are no layoffs because I tend to build extremely efficient teams that are based on a truly virtual approach, and it’s an approach I think you should try.
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To create a truly virtual marketing team, you have to understand three basic ideas:
1. Hiring full-time is a last resort.
2. Technology creates efficiency at scale.
3. Experts are more efficient than generalists.
HIRING
When you decide to hire a new team member, you do so knowing they will be there for a long time. You want to hire the best people - the ones most suited for the job (think of Don Draper for marketing, Gordon Gecko for finance and Tony Stark for IT). You wait, and you wait before you decide to bring someone on because, well, it sucks to have to let people go. I would much rather wait until the last minute and endure some discomfort and pain in scaling rather than hiring someone, changing strategy a year later, and being forced to make a change. Why hire a full-time person when there are so many fractional and project-based resources to choose from?
In a start-up environment, you are hypothesizing and testing new ideas and strategies all the time, in an effort to determine the right way to grow. When you are trying out new ideas, you may need different skillsets to see results, and so it makes more sense to hire people whose skills apply to the project at hand. If you are focused on email, hire for that. If you are running ads, hire for that. If you are looking at events, hire for that. The only constants are design and copywriting, and you can easily hire contractors to handle that as well. I like to, at least in the early stages of a business, keep things flexible so I can ramp up, ramp down, or change direction based on what works and what the market is showing me. It’s like playing poker with an entire industry at once. You read the other players, you see how the rest of the table is playing, and you refine your strategy based on that. Once you know something works, and you need to scale that to the next level, you can always determine if you want to hire for that strategy at that time. If that strategy is locked in, you hire. Or you keep those flexible resources and simply maintain them place, shifting your attention to the next stage and letting them keep operating.
TECHNOLOGY
The buzz around AI is well placed, and I personally use AI tools all day, every day. I never use them to replace true strategic thinking. I use them to accelerate the steps from ideation to fruition, and doing so creates a lot of efficiency. I also never start with AI. I start with technology tools that solve a problem, and I look for how they integrate AI into them. Project management? Start with a tool like Monday.com, and use the AI embedded in it. Design? Start with Canva or Figma and use the AI tools baked into those. Strategy? Start with your ideas, then plug them into Claude from Anthropic and work out the details. Website development and sales enablement? Jot down your thoughts, launch Gamma, and work with that until you have something you like and can refine from there. These tools allow a smaller team to operate like a large one, and reap the benefits of scale more efficiently.
EXPERTS OVER GENERALISTS
This is one that I had to change my thinking around. At first, I wanted to say hiring a generalist is a better strategy, but the more I think about it, it’s not the case. A generalist who is an expert at something can work, but you need experts when you mature. When you do decide to hire, you want to hire someone who does that role better than you do it. That translates to an expert. As the senior-most person on your team, your skills need to be close to expert level on a wide range of skills, and you want to bring in people who are ultimately better than you. If they are contractors, they should be experts. If they are FTE, they should be experts. The price of hiring an expert on a contract basis is rarely different than hiring a generalist. The price can be different if they are on shore, but when you factor in off-shore, that levels the playing field. I hate to say that hiring on-shore is not effective, because I want to hire people I used to work with, but the fact is that as a start-up, you have to be cost sensitive and most people I know are too highly compensated. Not many people want to take the salary cut to work in a start-up. It’s a real decision to be made.
HOW IT ALL WORKS OUT
When your start-up succeeds, scales, and grows, someone may come along and try to acquire you. During a due diligence process, the statement you want to hear is, “Wow – you did all that with only those people?”
That’s the statement of wonder that comes from a large organization that forgot how to be efficient. That becomes one of the reasons they keep you and your team. They want to learn from you about how to be scrappy again, and not a bloated team full of generalists masquerading as experts.
Teaching a large organization to become more efficient is an awful lot of fun. The shock and awe of teaching people how to work smarter and use the tools at our disposal is very fulfilling. The organization ends up operating more smoothly, and you can see the impact of your efforts in a very short time. That’s the sort of impact you strive to have in an organization.
As you build your team and look to execute your strategy, keep in mind the principles of being smart, being scrappy, and being flexible. Keep the team virtual as long as you can and reap the benefits of doing so while you grow your business, build your category, and see success come to fruition.