Building Out Marketing Function

Strategic Context

Every crypto project eventually faces the same question: Who owns marketing and what does “marketing” even mean here?

Most teams improvise in the early days. A few tweets, a Notion doc, a Discord announcement. But when it’s time to launch, raise, or scale, the cracks show:

• No one owns the brand voice.

• Growth is inconsistent and unpredictable.

• You’re burning budget on campaigns you can’t measure.

Marketing in crypto isn’t about hiring fast, it’s about hiring right, at the right time, with the right model. This module gives you the clarity to do just that.

Core Concepts

1. Start Founder-Led, Then Transition Fast

In the earliest stage, your founders are the brand. But founder-led content only scales so far. You need someone who can run campaigns, create consistency, and free up the team to build.

Your signal: If marketing is happening in someone’s “spare time,” you’re overdue for your first hire.

2. Don’t Build a Team You Can’t Yet Use

Premature scaling kills momentum. Don’t hire 4 marketers when you haven’t proven any channels. One generalist + external execution beats five people pointing fingers.

Your goal: Validate what works first. Then build around it.

3. Agencies Aren’t a Shortcut, They’re a Multiplier

Good agencies accelerate execution. Great ones help refine strategy. But neither can replace internal ownership. If no one in-house owns the brand, you’ll end up fixing outsourced work instead of amplifying it.

Rule: Use agencies to extend reach, not define direction.

4. Structure Follows Strategy

You don’t need a “Head of Growth” if you haven’t nailed product-market fit. You don’t need a content team if your product’s still pivoting. Every hire should map directly to a proven or strategic need.

Ask: What is our growth bottleneck? Hire (or contract) to unblock it.

When to Build In-House vs. Hire an Agency

Build In-House When:

• You need tight alignment with product, BD, and community.

• You’ve already validated working growth channels.

• You’re investing in long-term brand and ecosystem strategy.

Risks: Early in-house hires are expensive and sticky. If the strategy shifts, you're left with the wrong team and high burn.

Hire an Agency When:

• You need fast execution across multiple domains (content, PR, performance).

• You want to test new growth strategies before hiring full-time.

• You need firepower, but not fixed overhead.

Risks: The wrong agency will sell you Web2 playbooks, miss the culture, and burn time and money. Vet aggressively. A good agency will:

• Be crypto native and understand the culture. They’re in the trenches—shitposting on Crypto Twitter, tracking governance proposals, engaging with DeFi degens.

• Execute, not just strategize. The best agencies don’t stop at “advice”, they actually get work done.

• Align with your team. They’re not an isolated marketing silo. They’re on the ground floor collaborating with your core team to ensure consistency and effectiveness.

Proven Model: Hybrid Early-Stage Stack

For 80% of early-stage teams, this setup works best:

This structure gives you consistency and scale, without the risk of overhiring too early.

How to Scale: From Hybrid to Full-Stack

As you prove channels and increase velocity, build around your internal lead:

Key Trigger: When your lead becomes a bottleneck, hire or outsource to scale specific lanes.

What Should Stay External (For Now)

These functions are expensive, complex, and less frequent. Keep them with a trusted partner:

• Media & PR → Agencies have the relationships. You don’t need to build them in-house.

• Paid Growth & Performance → Specialized skills, rapid iteration, cross-platform nuance.

• Brand Campaigns & Motion → Keep large-scale visuals and animations external.

• Major Activations & Launches → Token launch? Protocol rebrand? Don’t DIY.

What About a CMO?

The truth: most early-stage projects don’t need a CMO. They need a marketer who can do the work, not a strategist floating above it.

When a CMO Isn’t Right:

• You haven’t validated what channels work yet.

• Your GTM is still founder-led.

• You need execution, not management layers.

• You’re trying to “look legit” for investors, not solve a real problem.

Hiring a CMO too early = hiring someone to manage a team you don’t have, execute on a strategy you haven’t defined, and build systems no one can use yet.

When a CMO Makes Sense:

You’re no longer guessing. You have traction. You’ve validated what works. Now you need someone to:

• Own marketing strategy end-to-end.

• Manage multiple specialists and agency partners.

• Align product, BD, comms, and growth into a unified GTM motion.

• Represent the brand publicly and drive long-term positioning.

What a Great CMO Looks Like in Web3:

• Crypto-Native Operator: Understands the culture, memes, and the mechanics of onchain growth.

• Builder-Led Marketer: Comfortable shipping experiments, not just planning decks.

• Full-Stack Strategist: Can think across product marketing, community, content, partnerships, and paid.

• Cross-Functional Glue: Works across eng, design, product, and growth to drive alignment.

If your CMO can’t explain your protocol in a thread, host an AMA, or jam on token incentives—they’re probably not the one.

CMO Hiring Signal:

You’ve hit product-market fit, you’re managing a team of 3–5+ marketers or agencies, and you need leadership to scale what’s working.

Until then, call them a Head of Marketing or Marketing Lead. Give them autonomy. Let them build. Save the CMO title for when the function is ready to scale with it.

Tool: Stellar Hiring Resource

Action Framework: GTM Marketing Ownership Map

Use this worksheet to clarify what’s covered, what’s outsourced, and what’s missing.

✶ Tip: Every unchecked gap needs a plan—hire, outsource, or deprioritize.

Final Checklist: Marketing Readiness

✓ Do you have a single owner of marketing decisions?
✓ Are you using agencies to amplify, not compensate?
✓ Have you validated any growth channels before hiring specialists?
✓ Is your structure lean, flexible, and ready to scale?
✓ Are you tracking what execution is actually driving traction?
Tool: Stellar Leadership Level Up
Tool: Stellar Hiring Resource