How to Set Up a SaaS Marketing Function from First Principles
A Structured Guide for Founders and Early Operators
Introduction: Why Most Early Marketing Fails Quietly
In early-stage SaaS companies, marketing often begins too late—or too casually. It is either delayed entirely, or approached as a surface-level activity: a few blog posts, a logo, a CRM subscription. Neither yields the depth required to build repeatable growth.
Marketing is not a channel. It is not a hire.
It is the function responsible for identifying, communicating, and converting value. When structured correctly, it becomes the connective tissue between product and market. When ignored or misaligned, it becomes a silent drag on traction.
This guide outlines how to set up a marketing function in a pragmatic and sustainable way, with minimal waste and maximal learning.
1. Marketing Begins with Structure, Not Tactics
Before one considers channels, tools, or hires, several preconditions must be met. Without them, marketing will operate without direction or learning.
The foundational requirements include:
A defined ideal customer profile and clear use cases
A product narrative that articulates the problem, the promise, and the outcome
A basic website or landing page
A mechanism for lead capture (e.g., form, calendar, demo request)
A system for storing and following up with leads
A clear owner responsible for reviewing what works and what does not
Premature execution—running ads, publishing content, launching outbound campaigns—without this structure creates motion, not momentum.
2. Do You Need a Website?
Yes. Even in founder-led or outbound-heavy motions, a website is the narrative anchor for your product. It aligns internal language and external perception.
A minimal site should include:
A succinct headline describing who the product is for
A short section on the problem being solved and why it matters
A feature-benefit overview tied to outcomes
A call-to-action for engagement (demo, waitlist, signup)
Light social proof if available (logos, testimonials, data)
Tools such as Framer, Webflow, Super (for Notion sites), and Typedream enable rapid deployment. The sophistication of your website matters less than the clarity of your message.
3. What Level of CRM Is Appropriate?
Many startups overbuild their sales infrastructure far ahead of necessity. In the early stage, the purpose of a CRM is not automation—it is visibility.
The system should answer three questions:
Who has shown interest?
Where did they come from?
What has been communicated so far?
If a Google Sheet suffices, use it. If automation or tracking becomes essential, consider free versions of HubSpot or Bigin. Tools like Close or Outplay are viable for outbound-first organizations. Custom stacks built with Notion and Zapier are also functional, though they require maintenance discipline.
What matters most is daily usage and clarity—not the brand of software selected.
4. Who Owns Marketing at the Beginning?
In nearly all successful early-stage SaaS companies, the founder leads marketing. This is not a matter of preference—it is a matter of context.
At the outset, marketing is not a function of scale. It is a function of learning. The founder is the only person with the product intuition, customer exposure, and decision-making authority required to close this loop.
Common founder activities in this phase:
Writing landing page copy
Responding to early users
Testing cold outreach language
Posting on LinkedIn with hypothesis-driven narratives
Running initial demo flows
Reviewing feedback weekly
Delegating this prematurely to a junior hire or outsourcing it to an agency generally results in wasted time and money.
5. What Email Automation Is Appropriate?
If you are collecting leads, they must be nurtured. Failing to follow up means allowing intent to decay.
A basic four-email sequence is sufficient in the early stage. Its purpose is to reinforce value, build trust, and encourage engagement—without overcommunication.
Example for a product-led tool:
A welcome email with an introduction, a thank-you note, and a helpful link
A follow-up email showcasing a relevant use case
An email with light social proof or a customer quote
A final email with a simple, frictionless call to action
MailerLite, ConvertKit, and HubSpot (free tier) are suitable tools for this workflow. Avoid over-engineering flows with segmentation and logic trees until you have traffic and volume to warrant such complexity.
6. What Should You Be Measuring?
In the first six months of marketing, volume is a vanity metric. The real value lies in signal strength and repeatability.
Metrics worth tracking include:
The percentage of leads that match your ideal customer profile
The number of qualified leads progressing to a conversation or demo
Reasons people cite for engaging
Channel attribution, even if tracked manually
Time to follow-up and conversion cycle length
These metrics indicate whether early messaging and targeting are working. Dashboards are optional. Reflection and action are not.
A Lean Marketing Function is a Structured One
You can build an effective marketing motion without:
A full-time marketer
Paid campaigns
Dozens of blog posts
Fancy tooling
But you cannot build one without:
Narrative clarity
A functional feedback loop
Consistent follow-up
A disciplined approach to learning
Marketing at this stage should be treated not as a lever of amplification, but as a mechanism of understanding. Done well, it produces not only leads—but insights. And those insights compound.
The right question is not: “How do we grow faster?”
It is: “How do we get clearer about what works—and build the infrastructure to do more of it?”