Your marketing hire’s first job isn’t marketing

Daniel Evans

Blogs

When you make your first marketing hire, you expect them to start marketing. Campaigns, content, pitch decks. Output you can see.

But the best marketers don’t only start there. Yes, quick wins are important. But the real first job is understanding the business and earning trust because without it, even good marketing won’t land.

I was reminded of this talking to Victoria Heard, who has just joined Thor as their Marketing Specialist. A new start is the perfect moment to dig into how you make marketing work from day one, whether it’s a first hire or a team that’s already established.

Trust first and scale second

Marketing output without trust goes nowhere. I’ve seen that a lot over the years. If consultants don’t believe marketing can help them, they won’t share what’s being created, and more often than not, they won’t follow up on the leads they’re given.

Those first months matter more than they look as they can set how marketing gets seen for years. That’s why the first job is to change that belief. Victoria’s focus in her first months in a new role isn’t volume. It’s landing one or two things that visibly help, then using them to build credibility she can spend later.

Doing it in that order is key. Trust first, scale second.

The mindset to help consultants sell

When I asked how she’d approached the role, Victoria didn’t talk about a content calendar. She talked about the salespeople. “My job exists to help them sell.”

Not marketing as a separate department with its own agenda and goals, but marketing pointed straight at what the business cares about, which is winning business, placements, and revenue.

For a founder, you want a marketer who, in month one, is asking your consultants what would make their lives easier. Marketers shouldn’t go straight into a 12-month brand strategy before understanding the market, the audience, your differentiators, and sales process. All of that information is absolutely essential to putting a strong strategy in place. And when you have that, the trust and credibility follow.

Make the CRM a priority

What I loved about Victoria’s perspective was what she learnt from starting in operations. Because what she’s carried into every marketing role since is a deep understanding of the role of the CRM. And how important it is for a modern marketer.

Clean data, process, structure, and knowing what’s valuable and what isn’t. Too often in recruitment, the marketer isn’t involved in CRM projects, updates, or managing data. Victoria’s background has helped her be ahead of many marketers. If you are hiring a marketer, or starting a new role, make the CRM a priority. It helps marketing speak the same language as sales, it helps you identify sales opportunities, and most importantly, it helps you track what’s happening more effectively.

Measure it in leads, not activity

Ask a marketer what a good year looks like and the answer tells you everything. Victoria spoke about qualified leads, and about proving marketing is more than decoration. In her words, it “shouldn’t be the person that sits in the corner making nice-looking PowerPoints. They should get in and really affect the business.”

If you’re both still counting campaigns at month nine, the function hasn’t shifted. Hold the bar at leads, pipeline and contribution, and judge the role against that.

But give it time

One caveat, and it’s the part founders most need to hear. None of this happens overnight.

Victoria is honest that a real understanding of a business takes longer than three months to build, and her advice to her day-one self was simply to give herself grace.

So hold two things at once. Expect early proof that marketing is pointed at the right things. But don’t mistake a slow first month for a bad hire, or expect anyone to change the commercial engine before they’ve learned how it runs.

The early wins build the trust.
The real impact builds over the year.

Victoria’s insight on how to set marketing up for success

Be explicit on day one that marketing exists to contribute commercially, not to just make things look nice. That understanding sets the right expectation from both sides. And it allows you to prioritise accordingly.
Get marketing next to consultants in week one, solving a real problem. That’s the best way to get buy-in, understanding, and awareness. And the fastest route to results.
Judge year one on leads and pipeline, not on how busy the marketing looks.