New director, no existing marketing - start here?

bigcoffee

Landing a director of marketing role when there's zero existing marketing is both exciting and terrifying. I've just done that - mid-market health SaaS, B2B, starting from scratch. Came from a massive corporate healthcare environment where everything was structured. I was a cog. Now I'm building the wheel.

I'm putting this out for the seasoned folks who've been in this mess. A few specific questions:

First priority: customer segmentation or basic tracking infrastructure? My gut says without data, anything we do is guesswork. But health SaaS sales cycles are long - can't afford to guess for six months.
Agency support: do I push for an agency immediately to show quick results, or prove internal capability first? I've seen agencies burn cash on bad targeting in this space. Headcount isn't approved yet.
Trade shows: I've run patient-facing events but never a healthcare conference. Someone in another thread said these are relationship-heavy with long sales cycles - what metrics do you actually track there? Booth leads? Qualified meetings? I need a benchmark.

Churn is the enemy - that much I know. But building a retention strategy from zero with no historical data is a special kind of hell. Any playbooks for that first 90 days would be gold.

neonlights

Starting from zero in health SaaS? The real ROI comes from nailing your activation metric within the first 90 days. Forget everything corporate taught you about "brand awareness" - your only job is identifying which user segment hits your "aha moment" fastest. Hospitals vs clinics have completely different time-to-value curves. I'd map the one with the shortest cycle first, then pour all your firepower there.

Trade shows? they're a vanity trap unless you're capturing qualified intent signals in real time. Healthcare deals drag because decision-makers aren't the users. Focus on getting a single practitioner cohort to show a 20-30 % activation lift in three months. that's your wedge. Everything else is noise

funnelhacker

The biggest ROI killer? not having your ICP and actual buying process nailed down before you touch a single channel. blew a solid chunk of budget early chasing "interest" metrics that looked great on paper but translated to zero pipeline. real talk: clean CRM hygiene and attribution setup from the start saves you months of chasing garbage data. that alone put us ahead of where most teams fuck up

cpaoptimizer

Focus on effective reach - the real stuff, not the vanity metric. And for the love of everything, don't score leads based on behavioural intent nonsense. That'll sink your campaigns faster than anything.

pixelperfect

Start with ICP and message. Fix CRM and site tracking, build one simple funnel before trade shows or an agency. That worked for me.

wordweaver

Oh, congratulations on the new gig, and yes, the em dashes were a power move. Respect.

Before you do anything else, get your hands dirty with an internal marketing audit. Sit down with every department head you'll be working with-plus your own marketing squad-and ask them two things: what's actually working right now, and what's a dumpster fire. And crucially, why.

This buys you two things. First, it shows you're not that newbie who waltzes in thinking they've got all the answers. You'll spot the people who actually give a damn about transparency, and you won't waste time repeating the same mistakes the last poor sod made. Second, it makes it crystal clear you're not here to torch whatever's already humming along. You might even stumble onto a quick win by just doubling down on something that's already delivering.

That audit will also scream at you what tech you need to keep or toss. Saves a lot of "oops, we just bought a tool nobody uses."

Hope that helps-fire back if you've got more.

buggedout

Solid win - DoM is a big milestone. We work with plenty of SaaS/tech brands, so here's my take.

What's the current state? Any social presence yet? Budget for paid or purely organic? And more importantly - what's the actual goal? Follower growth? Engagement? Brand awareness? Hard leads? Each one changes the entire strategy.

On the agency question: you're the person in charge now. If you've got the authority, you can build an internal team, bring in an agency, or mix both. Run a quick cost-benefit on time vs. output: if you can get better ROI farming organic yourself while scaling, do that first. If the target numbers demand faster velocity, agency support makes sense.

Best move is to show a few quick wins solo, then use that data to justify whatever resourcing you need.

analyticsjunkie

oh, honey. Another soul who looked at the job description, saw "growth hacking" and thought "yeah, I can handle that." Classic case of the blind leading the blind-except you're the blind AND the one holding the map. Welcome to the club. We meet Tuesdays to cry into our coffee and curse whoever told us "you'll figure it out."

backlinker

Congrats on the role. Building from absolute zero is a rare opportunity-you get to lay the foundation your way instead of unpicking someone else's spaghetti.

On the agency question, I've seen most people get the timing wrong in one of two directions. Either they bring in an agency too early, before they even know what they need, and end up bankrolling the agency's learning curve. Or they hold on too long trying to prove they can do it all solo, and execution falls behind while they're still figuring things out.

The real question to sit with is whether you understand your ICP well enough to brief an agency clearly-especially what a qualified lead actually looks like for your business. If the answer is no, keep it in-house for now. If you've got enough clarity to hold an agency accountable to outcomes rather than vanity metrics, then it might be time.

When you do reach that point, go in with your definition of success written down before you even have a call. that shifts the entire dynamic from "here's what we do" to "here's what we need to move." Completely changes the conversation.

cpaoptimizer

ICP is crucial, but don't just throw together a wish list of enterprise names. Realistically, enterprise almost always buys from other enterprise. Narrow it down to what's actually achievable.

digitalnomad

Absolutely agree with you on this. From my own GTM experience, I've seen too many teams burn budget on a flashy rebrand before they've even validated product-market fit. 📌

✅ Agencies and contractors make perfect sense when your internal bandwidth is maxed out and you've got a crystal-clear goal-otherwise you're just paying them to figure out what you should have defined yourself.
🚩 Huge red flag: "Let's do a website overhaul because it feels outdated." That's a money pit unless you've got the SQL engine running first.
💡 Priority one: generate pipeline. Every dollar you spend on lead gen vs. a new logo earns you a lot more trust come board-meeting time.

honestly, the fastest way to executive buy-in is to show you can move the needle on demand gen, not on how pretty the landing pages look

bigcoffee

Big mouth, backed by data.

digitalnomad

Totally agree - that reply was totally uncalled for. OP was being genuine and asking for help. Why kick someone when they're reaching out? Not cool. 💔

analyticsjunkie

oh absolutely, this is the kind of thing that makes clients look at the rest of us and go "so you're all just winging it, then?" Industry credibility takes a hit, OP's reputation takes a hit, the company gets a black eye. Everyone walks away worse off.

did OP overpromise and underdeliver before even starting? Obviously. That's not harsh, that's just reading the room.

and let's be real - asking a forum how to pull off a job you clearly don't have the skills for is like asking strangers to build you a bridge while you're standing on the wrong side of the river. The knowledge gap here isn't something a few comments are gonna close.

but thanks for the lecture on being nice. I'll make sure to bring marshmallows next time someone sets their career on fire.