You need senior leadership first, so the team gets built right the first time.
Most founders run marketing themselves until it breaks. The ads run on instinct, the agency runs on autopilot, and every campaign decision lands back on your desk. The business has revenue and ambition. What it does not have is a marketing function. We build one.
A function is more than a hire and a HubSpot login.
You do not need a marketing team before you bring in senior marketing leadership. The order runs the other way. Leadership first means the structure, the channels, and the budget get decided by someone who has built them before, and the hire you eventually make walks into a role that was designed rather than improvised.
A function is the system: positioning, a channel plan with money attached, the partners or people running it, the tools underneath, and a reporting cadence that ties back to revenue. A team is one part of that system. Build the parts in the wrong order and you end up paying a salary to someone with no plan to execute.
Every piece we build is documented. When we step back, the function keeps running.
What the business ends up owning.
Positioning and messaging
Positioning and messaging that sales can repeat without a script, so the story holds whoever is telling it.
A channel plan with budget attached
A channel plan matched to where your buyers already are, costed, sequenced, and sized to what the business can fund.
The first partners or hires
The first hires or agency partners, selected against role scorecards rather than gut feel, and briefed against named outcomes.
A martech stack sized to your stage
The tools underneath, chosen for the stage you are in, so you pay for what you use instead of what a demo promised.
A reporting cadence
A monthly rhythm that tells you what moved revenue and what did not, in language a CFO can act on.
Documentation that outlasts us
Every piece is written down. When we step back, the function keeps running without a knowledge gap where we used to be.
Twelve weeks from diagnosis to a function that runs.
Nothing gets built before it is approved, and nothing gets launched before it can be measured.
Diagnose
We interview leadership, audit the numbers, and map what marketing currently costs against what it returns. Most businesses discover they are already spending more than they thought, just without a system around it.
Design
The channel plan, the budget, the team shape, and the metrics. You approve it before anything gets built.
Install
Campaigns launch, partners get briefed or replaced, dashboards go live, and the operating rhythm starts. From here the function runs on cadence, with us leading it until your team can.
Revenue and ambition, but no marketing structure.
Businesses with revenue and growth ambition but no marketing structure. Founders still making every marketing call. Funded startups that need a function before they need headcount. If you are pre-revenue and still searching for product-market fit, this is too early; we will tell you that on the call and point you at what to do instead.
What it looks like when it works
Cohen Handler started as a single Sydney office. Building the marketing function underneath the brand, channel by channel, took them to Australia's first national buyer's agency. The function came first. The growth followed it, and the full story is in the case study.
What it costs
Engagements run as monthly retainers, scoped by how much building there is to do. For comparison: a first marketing hire in Australia costs $100,000 or more in salary before super and recruiter fees, and the average founder finds out the hire was wrong about six months in. Building the function first makes that hire smaller, later, and far more likely to stick.
When the time comes to make it, building the team is the next engagement: role design, hiring support, and coaching for the people who inherit the system.
Building a marketing function, answered.
Do we need a marketing team before hiring a fractional CMO?
No. If there is no team, the engagement changes shape: instead of leading an existing function, we build one, including structure, partner selection, and the operating system that a future team inherits. That is what this service is, and it sits alongside our fractional CMO engagement rather than competing with it.
Who makes our first marketing hire?
You do, with our role design, scorecard, and assessment behind the decision. We define the role the business needs, screen for it, and test candidates on the judgement the interview normally cannot reach. The full process is our marketing team and hiring service.
What does a marketing function actually include?
Positioning, a channel and budget plan, the people or partners to run it, the tools underneath, and a reporting cadence tied to revenue. A function is the system; a team is one part of it.
How long until the function runs without you?
Most builds hand over inside six to twelve months. The engagement is designed to make itself unnecessary: everything is documented, the team is coached, and scope steps down as the system proves itself.
What does it cost to build a marketing function?
Engagements run as monthly retainers, scoped by how much building there is to do. For comparison, a first marketing hire in Australia costs $100,000 or more in salary before super and recruiter fees, and the average founder finds out the hire was wrong about six months in.
Bring us the marketing you are doing now, however scrappy.
In thirty minutes we will tell you what a function would look like for your stage, and what it would cost to build.