Building a Marketing Team: Roles, Costs, and Models for Companies and Startups

Building a Marketing Team: Roles, Costs, and Models for Companies and Startups

To build a marketing team that works, start with your business goals, then choose the people. Define the results you need over the next 12 months and identify the skills essential to achieving them. Then decide which roles to hire for permanently and which to fill with carefully selected outside professionals. Size the team for your company’s current stage, and establish roles, handoffs, and KPIs before launching your first channel. This guide covers key roles, organizational models, estimated costs in Italy, and a framework for coordinating the work, with a focus on startups and small and midsize businesses starting from scratch.

At a glance

• Goals first, org chart second: every role should support a measurable result, such as qualified leads, brand awareness, or online sales.
• A small core team, with expertise available as needed: one person responsible for strategy and a lean core team are usually enough. Bring in specialists in SEO, performance marketing, design, and video when you need them.
• Your structure changes as you grow: what works for a startup before product-market fit won’t hold up in an expanding company, so revisit it regularly.
• The true cost goes beyond gross salary: a senior Digital Marketing Manager in Italy earns €55,000–€75,000 gross per year, before employer contributions, tools, and onboarding time.
• Coordination makes the difference: a RACI matrix, a framework like Scrum or Kanban, and well-written briefs prevent overlapping work and delays.

Contents

• Start with goals, not roles
• Key roles on a marketing team
• How big should your team be? Growth stage matters
• In-house, freelance, or hybrid
• How much it costs to build a marketing team in Italy
• How to coordinate your team and measure results
• Our perspective
• A custom-built marketing team with HOOOP
• Frequently asked questions
• Sources

Start with goals, not roles

A common mistake is copying a larger company’s org chart: a social media manager, a graphic designer, an advertising specialist, “because everyone has them.” The result is a team full of talent working on activities disconnected from the numbers that matter.

Start with a different question: what does marketing need to achieve over the next 12 months? The answers vary widely from one company to another:

• a B2B startup needs to generate its first demo requests and figure out which messaging resonates;
• an established e-commerce business needs to lower its cost per acquisition and increase repeat purchases;
• a small or midsize manufacturer wants to strengthen its brand to support its sales network and trade shows;
• a food & beverage brand needs to launch a new line and get noticed in major retail stores and online.

Each goal determines the skills you need. B2B lead generation, for example, requires content, SEO, marketing automation, and a close relationship with sales. A consumer product launch calls for branding, creative, social, and paid media. Only then does it make sense to ask which skills to keep in-house and which to bring in from outside.

Put everything on one page: the goal, primary metric, available budget, required skills, and deadlines. This page will become the foundation for your brief and every decision about who to bring on board.

Key roles on a marketing team

There’s no universal checklist, but certain areas come up in almost every project. Performance marketing, brand, content, SEO, and data are among today’s most in-demand specialties, and familiarity with analytics and artificial intelligence is now considered a baseline skill for anyone working in marketing.

Two practical points. First, one person can cover several areas early on, but not all of them. Someone who writes excellent content is rarely also the right person to manage an advertising budget, and vice versa. Second, the most important role is the one providing direction. Without a strategy, adding people to execute simply creates more work to coordinate. When a company can’t afford a full-time CMO, a fractional CMO brings that expertise for a few days each month.

If content is your priority, our guide to content creation teams takes a closer look at roles and costs.

How big should your team be? Growth stage matters

The right structure depends on your company’s current stage. An analysis from MIT Sloan Management Review shows that both the type of marketing and the skills required change as a company grows. That’s why your organization needs regular reassessment and updates, rather than a structure set in stone. Reforge reaches the same conclusion: there’s no single right structure, and team design should reflect current needs.

Startups before product-market fit

At this stage, the goal is to understand who buys and why. The founder often leads marketing, because conversations with early customers are the best source for finding the right message. A large team is wasteful here. Instead, you need:

• strategic leadership, even part-time, to help define your ideal customer, positioning, and experiments;
• one or two specialists brought in for specific projects: a landing page, an initial test campaign, or a basic brand identity;
• a steady cadence of short experiments with simple metrics, such as response rate, demos booked, and cost per lead.

Growing startups and small and midsize businesses

Once your offering is validated, the challenge becomes scaling the channels that work. This is the time to establish a dedicated marketing lead and build a core team around them: often a content or brand specialist and a performance marketing or data specialist. Specialized expertise—video, technical SEO, development, automation—stays flexible and is brought in on a project basis.

Established or expanding companies

With multiple markets, products, or business lines, marketing becomes organized by function: brand, acquisition, product, and lifecycle. Roles become more specialized, but flexibility remains valuable, especially for launches, rebrands, expansion into new countries, and seasonal peaks, when you need extra capacity for a limited time.

In-house, freelance, or hybrid

The choice isn’t between “everything in-house” and “everything outsourced.” Most companies that grow successfully combine an internal core with carefully selected outside professionals. Here’s how the models compare on the criteria that matter.

Here’s how the hybrid model works: the company keeps its vision, decision-making, and customer knowledge in-house, while an outside team provides specialized expertise and execution. When working with multiple professionals, management is the sticking point: contracts, briefs, deadlines, revisions, and handoffs. That’s why a single point of coordination matters so much. We explore this in detail in our guides to Team as a Service and outsourced marketing.

For paid campaigns, which require highly specialized skills, you may find our guide to choosing a performance marketing professional useful.

How much it costs to build a marketing team in Italy

The first cost to consider is compensation. According to the digital marketing salary guide published by Uninform Group in 2026, these are the estimated gross annual salaries in the Italian market:

These figures are employees’ gross annual salaries. To calculate the total employer cost, add employer contributions and Italy’s statutory severance accrual (TFR), as well as:

• tools: CRM, email marketing platforms, analytics, design software, AI tools, and project management;
• training: ongoing learning in advertising platforms, analytics, and artificial intelligence;
• recruiting and onboarding: management’s time spent on interviews and onboarding, plus the months before a new hire is fully up to speed;
• media budget: actual advertising spend, separate from staffing costs.

Here’s an example. A minimal in-house core of one mid-level Digital Marketing Manager and one junior Social Media Manager already comes to €67,000–€83,000 in gross annual salaries alone, before contributions, tools, and media spend. And it covers only two of the seven areas listed above. That’s why many companies establish a permanent leadership role and bring in other expertise by project: costs track the actual work, while the range of available skills expands.

How to coordinate your team and measure results

A marketing team, whether in-house or hybrid, performs well when everyone knows who decides, who executes, and how success is measured. Four tools help you make that happen from day one.

1. Define clear responsibilities

For every recurring activity—campaign, article, launch, or newsletter—establish who does the work, who approves it, who needs to be consulted, and who simply needs to be informed. A marketing RACI matrix is the simplest way to put this in writing and avoid endless approval cycles.

2. Choose a workflow framework

Teams focused on campaigns and launches find Scrum for marketing useful, with two-week sprints, a backlog, and regular reviews. Teams handling a continuous flow of requests, such as content, graphics, and website updates, tend to do better with a marketing Kanban board, which makes bottlenecks visible.

3. Write briefs that leave no room for confusion

Every assignment, especially one given to outside professionals, starts with a brief: goal, audience, message, constraints, formats, deadlines, and success criteria. An effective creative brief reduces revisions and speeds up delivery. For content, it also helps to define a production and approval workflow, so no piece gets stuck waiting on someone.

4. Choose a few KPIs and a review cadence

Tie each area to a primary metric. In B2B, key metrics include growth in sales-qualified leads (SQLs), the MQL-to-SQL conversion rate, and cost per acquisition (CPA). In e-commerce, focus on conversion rate, average order value, and repeat purchases. Some metrics deserve daily attention, such as campaign spend and CPA; others, like leads, conversions, and attributed revenue, can be reviewed weekly or monthly. Bring everything together in one shared dashboard: discussing the same numbers does more to align a team than any meeting.

If you’re considering how to integrate artificial intelligence into your team’s processes, our analysis of AI for marketing explains what it really changes for businesses.

Our perspective

Every week, we talk with companies and startups looking to build a marketing team, and they start with the same question: “Who should I hire?” We think the better question is: “What skills do I need, for how long, and with what kind of leadership?”

Technical skills matter, but they aren’t enough on their own. The most successful projects we see share one thing: people were also selected for cultural fit and for how they work together and with the company. That’s why we use a rigorous, tailored approach to selecting talent, rather than a standardized process, and build teams that integrate with the people you already have in-house.

The other factor is management. Coordinating five freelancers you found separately means spending your time managing contracts, briefs, and deadlines instead of thinking about strategy. With centralized coordination, the company can focus on the decisions that matter, and ideas turn into campaigns faster.

Our advice is to keep the vision close—your goals, positioning, and customer knowledge—and build a flexible team around it that grows, adapts, and develops specialized expertise alongside you.

Marco

A custom-built marketing team with HOOOP

If you want to build a marketing team without waiting through months of recruiting, HOOOP assembles teams of vetted freelancers for your company or startup across marketing, design, branding, content creation, and digital development, with centralized operational management.

With Talent as a service, you bring in the professionals you need. With HOOOP Studio, you hand projects to an already coordinated team. With Fractional Management, you bring management-level leadership into your company without a full-time hire. Explore our services on the for companies page, or start with the business assessment to understand which skills your project needs.

Frequently asked questions

How many people does a startup marketing team need?

Before product-market fit, the founder and part-time strategic leadership are often enough, supported by specialists brought in for individual projects. During the growth stage, a dedicated marketing lead works alongside one or two specialists, while other skills are added by project. Covering the right skills matters more than headcount.

Which role should you fill first?

The leadership role: someone who translates business goals into strategy, priorities, and budgets. Without this person, specialists work on disconnected activities. If a full-time CMO isn’t financially viable yet, a fractional manager can fill the role for a few days each month.

Is it better to hire employees or work with freelancers?

In most cases, combining the two makes the most sense. Keep your vision, decision-making, and customer knowledge in-house, and bring in carefully selected professionals for specialized expertise. Centralized coordination saves you from managing each freelancer separately and keeps the team cohesive.

How much does a Digital Marketing Manager cost in Italy?

Estimated gross annual salaries for 2026 range from €32,000–€40,000 for a junior professional to €45,000–€55,000 for a mid-level professional, and €55,000–€75,000 or more for a senior professional. Total employer costs also include contributions, statutory severance accrual (TFR), tools, and training.

How do you measure whether a marketing team is working?

Tie each area to a primary metric, such as qualified leads, MQL-to-SQL conversion, CPA, or attributed revenue, and review it on a set schedule. One shared dashboard helps the team work from the same numbers and adjust course quickly.

Sources

• MIT Sloan Management Review: Design Your Marketing Organization to Fit Your Company’s Growth Stage
• Reforge: Design your marketing org
• Uninform Group: Digital Marketer Salaries in Italy 2026

Recommended reading

• Content Creation Teams: Roles, Costs, and Models for Companies
• Scrum for Marketing: Sprints, Backlogs, and Roles in Practice
• Outsourced Marketing: When It Makes Sense and How to Make It Work
• Fractional CMO: What It Is, When You Need One, and What It Costs