Startups love speed, but when it comes to marketing, trying to move fast with just one person behind the wheel usually ends in missed opportunities, burnout, and a backlog of half-launched ideas.
The “one-person marketing team” model doesn’t just fall short. It’s a setup for simple mistakes, missed opportunities, and dashed expectations. Let’s get into it…
Marketing Isn’t a Task List, It’s a Growth Engine
Let’s start with the basics: Marketing isn’t just a distribution channel. It’s the engine that sparks interest, earns trust, drives adoption, and keeps your product in the minds of the people you’re trying to serve.
That means it’s not just about being visible ~ it’s about being relevant, resonant, and remembered.
For the devs out there, I’m sorry, but a good product doesn’t cut it, you need marketing for that extra push in getting your product seen and used.
When I say “marketing,” I’m talking about the wide and interconnected ecosystem that can include:
- Product marketing & positioning
- User funnel creation / Onboarding flow optimization
- Organic social creation
- Paid media & performance marketing
- Content strategy & storytelling
- Email marketing & lifecycle flows
- SEO & conversion rate optimization
- Partnerships & influencer marketing
- Event strategy, IRL activations
- Brand development & visual identity
- Competitor research & analytics
📌 Note: Comms/PR is not on this list. That’s a hot take, but a deliberate one. While deeply related to marketing, communications is its own domain focused on media relations, crisis comms, stakeholder messaging, narrative control, and more. Different skills. Different outcomes. Different playbook.
Why One Person Can’t Do It All (Even If They Try)
I’ve been the one-person marketing team, drafting brand strategy in the morning, jumping into community threads and visual designs during lunch, building an onboarding email in the afternoon, and closing the day by prepping a paid ad campaign. All while keeping an eye on competitor activity and trends.
It’s thrilling at first. You feel resourceful, indispensable, scrappy. But it’s unsustainable. What did I learn from this?
The strategy was half baked, execution was rushed, not all possible optimizations were implemented, and a LOT of great ideas never saw the light of day. All because I didn’t have the bandwidth to move them forward and do the daily work. I was burnt out and honestly disappointed.
Each marketing pillar is easily a full-time job. Expecting one person to give 100% to ten priorities doesn’t lead to ten wins. It leads to ten half-built bridges.
The Core Problem: Zooming In and Zooming Out
At the heart of this is a tension no one talks about enough:
Strategy vs. Execution.
- Strategic work is zoomed out. It’s mapping customer journeys, identifying positioning, building campaigns, analyzing what’s working, and setting vision.
- Executional work is zoomed in. It’s writing copy, scheduling posts, designing assets, managing tools, and building flows.
Good marketing requires time to think and time to build. One person doing both at once is like trying to architect a skyscraper while laying bricks on the first floor. You’re constantly shifting mental modes, with every shift slowing you down.
The result? Strategy gets ignored in favor of short-term deliverables. Or execution gets sloppy because you’re focused on the big picture.
But Wait, Can’t AI & Tools Fix This?
Yes, of course tools and automation help. I use them every day. But they aren’t the fix-all people assume.
They still need humans to:
- Define strategy and end goals
- Set tone and voice
- Understand audience psychology
- Interpret data meaningfully
- Spot timing and cultural shifts
- Refine and review all work produced
Yes, AI can generate headlines or summarize analytics. But it can’t understand why a message didn’t resonate, innately know the correct pronunciation of a company name, or when a meme fits your narrative just right. And using these tools still requires oversight ~ integrations, QA, content review, and judgment calls. The overhead is real.
Tools are amplifiers. They are not yet capable of being a reliable substitute for team capacity.
The Collaboration Cost
Stepping outside of just the marketing space, one person trying to run all of marketing also affects the rest of the team, becoming a bottleneck for:
- Product launches (copy, positioning, email, design reviews)
- Sales enablement (case studies, one-pagers, website updates)
- Community engagement (narrative coordination, tone setting)
- Support (FAQs, documentation, proactive content)
- Engineering (onboarding flows, tracking, product updates)
Those who’ve been a one-person marketing team know, instead of being proactive, your marketing becomes reactive. Firefighting replaces planning. And your campaigns? They’re put on the back burner until you finally find time to run them.
What to Do Instead: Realistic Team Structures by Stage
🟡 Early Stage (Pre-product market fit) ~ Goal: Define a clear narrative and build community trust.
Team Setup:
- Marketing Strategist (or Head of Marketing): Sets direction and guides narrative.
- Content Creator / Community Manager: Brings it to life on social, email, blog, and community channels.
💡 On a tight budget? Hire a sharp generalist and pair them with freelancers (designer, copywriter, lifecycle marketer) on demand.
🟠 Growth Stage (Product fit → Revenue) ~ Goal: Define set goals, scale awareness, convert interest, and optimize funnels.
Additions:
- Paid Media Manager: Tests and scales acquisition channels.
- Growth Marketer or Analyst: Tracks KPIs and optimizes conversion.
- (Optional) Influencer/Partnership Lead or Lifecycle Manager
💡 You can still outsource, but someone internal must own the strategy and voice.
🟢 Scaling Stage (Revenue → Market Leader) ~ Goal: Own the category, deepen brand, and build leverage.
Full-stack team might include:
- VP or C-level of Marketing: Aligns teams and strategy to business goals.
- Product Marketing Manager: Bridges product and customer.
- Brand Manager: Owns storytelling and visual cohesion.
- Marketing Ops Lead: Keeps tools, workflows, and attribution running smoothly.
- Events/Partnerships Lead: Builds visibility and relationships.
*Please note, this is just my opinion based on what I saw work best for Web2 and Web3 teams. Always open to hearing what other positions need highlighting in these different stages!
Common Push Backs and How to Rethink Them
“Can’t one person just handle this early on?”
They can start, but they’ll quickly max out. Expecting them to scale you to Series A metrics alone is a fast track to burnout and shallow execution.
“We’ll outsource it.”
Outsourcing is great for production, but not ownership. You still need someone inside who owns your strategy, voice, and messaging. Agencies won’t magically know your product, market, or deep-rooted culture.
“We don’t have the budget.”
Then be honest about priorities. Don’t pretend one marketer can do it all. Instead, invest in the area that moves the needle most, whether that’s brand clarity, activation, or retention, and staff around that.
Final Word: Marketing Deserves a Seat at the Table
Marketing isn’t a task rabbit role, it’s a leadership function. It guides how you’re perceived, how you grow, and whether your product sticks. When you treat it like a bullet point in a Notion doc and hand it to one person, you end up with:
- Campaigns that never ship
- Messages that don’t land
- Customers who never quite get what you do
- A brand that’s forgettable instead of magnetic
I believe the companies that truly succeed don’t just have a great product, they also recognize the value of thoughtful, well-executed marketing. That means giving marketing a seat at the table. If you have a board or multiple C-level roles, someone from marketing should absolutely be included to provide their perspective on key decisions.
✨ Long story short, if you want meaningful growth, build a marketing team that can think, execute, and evolve seamlessly, without drowning!
Ready to Take Action?
🔍 Audit your current setup:
- Is one person holding too much?
- Are great ideas getting stuck?
- What’s your top marketing priority, and is someone really owning it?
👥 You don’t need a massive team tomorrow, but you do need a thoughtful one.
Because if no one’s fully owning your story, your audience won’t be able to see its full potential.
If you’ve made it this far ~ thanks for sticking around. Hopefully something here sparked a new idea or gave you a fresh angle to bring into your marketing work.
Disclaimer, this is just my perspective shaped by years of building and running marketing across multiple industries. I’ve tested a lot, learned a ton, and earned some real wins through consistent, hands-on work. But the one thing I always come back to? Stay curious, keep sharing, and never stop listening.
I’d love to hear your take! Whether it’s a different pov, a question, or something this reminded you of. Find me on X or Linkedin. I’m always up for a good idea swap. Growing together beats going at it alone.