Lean Marketing Wins with Mark Donnigan

If marketing feels like a never-ending list of things to do while sales still feels harder than it should, this is why. Most founders don’t have a marketing problem—they have a focus problem.

In this episode, we break down how small, focused marketing teams consistently outperform bloated departments by staying close to the buyer and prioritizing impact over activity.

You’ll learn what your first marketing hire should actually look like, why founder-led sales is still your strongest early advantage, and how to know when your messaging is finally working.

We also dig into how AI is changing marketing—and why the advantage is shifting toward people who can combine strategy with real human judgment.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to Scaling with People, your weekly playbook for turning chaos into compounding growth. Each week we go under the hood with battle test experts in all areas of business, from marketing to sales, operation, finance, and people, plus product and leadership to unpack the plays, numbers, and systems that turn chaos into compounding growth. Learn straight from founders and experts who've done it and continue to do it successfully. There's zero fluff, just moves that you can still immediately. This podcast is brought to you by Guide to HR, human expertise, AI-powered impact. Welcome everyone to today's Skilling with People Podcast. I'm Guinevere Curry, your host and founder and CEO of Guide to HR. On this episode, we're throwing a grenade into the old marketing playbook. I have Mark Donnegan here, who's a virtual CMO, creator of Marketing Pod, and a builder of more than 500 million in enterprise value. It's where we're going to make the case that the best marketing team might actually be the leanest, smartest, and most AI powered in one room. So uh what are we talking about? We're getting into why small teams can outrun bloated departments, why your CMO should act more like your fifth salesperson in the brand policy and why chasing output is yesterday's game when real growth is measured by impact. If your startup is tired of slow execution and marketing theater, this one is for you. Well, thanks, Mark, for joining us today. I'm excited to have you here. Um, you know, everyone is so resource constrained. So, what do you do and how can founders get started?

Why Constraints Create Speed

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Guinevere, first of all, thank you for having me on. I'm really excited uh for the conversation. So, you know, resource constraints, uh, I have come to realize in my journey of over 20 years supporting uh founders and really working exclusively with startups is actually a benefit. Now, I know in the moment, you know, it can feel like uh, you know, if I just had if I had more people, if I had, you know, more money to spend on marketing, uh, you know, we could we could run further, faster. And there's an element to that. Um, but really um the magic today are small teams that can move fast, that are nimble, that are free of a lot of the process constraints that come with a larger organization. And um, you know, it's it's it's a different mindset, um, but it's the truth.

Your First Marketing Hire

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I feel like, you know, especially with AI and everything that's going on, it just seems like there's so much opportunity to reimagine the marketing playbook. So for the founders listening right now, what's the ideal first marketing team structure before they start hiring aggressively?

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Now that is the that's the question, right? Is okay, so I'm ready to now make my first hire, or maybe I have someone who's sort of you know, it's like I've converted them from a product role and kind of said, Hey, congratulations, you're now marketing hire number one, you know. Um uh so so what I found is is that uh in my experience, especially if you're dealing with a more technical product solution, uh, is it first of all, you need someone who has domain expertise. Now, you know, that doesn't mean that they need to be an engineer. In fact, they probably shouldn't be an engineer, um, but they need to have domain expertise because with the tools that are available to us today, uh, creating marketing assets, you know, is um, I don't want to say it's easy, but it's easier. So creating the asset is no longer the challenge. It's connecting that um, you know, marketing asset or or or those approaches to the market, that is what's gonna make or break, you know, really success in terms of a breakthrough. And you know what? If you don't know um the market, if you don't know the industry, if you don't, you know, if you can't get into the, you know, kind of the buyer's head, you know, and understand the buyer's journey, um, then you, you know, we may be creating a lot of content, but it's just not connecting to the market. And so my strong advice with founders is um really to start out, you need to be the first marketer, you know, just like just like founder-led sales really is the right way to start from a selling perspective, it's the same in marketing. Um, but as soon as you, you know, you have some momentum behind you and you're like, hey, I now need someone who's a bit more of a specialist, you know, knows how social media works, you know, knows how to do email marketing, you know, understands how a website should be built and configured. Um, well, you know, get someone who has that expertise, but they really do need to know the market that you're in. They really do. Um, and and that's where I would start. In fact, I would start with someone who's maybe a little bit less of a marketer and more of a domain expert.

Founder-Led Messaging That Converts

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Interesting. Okay, yeah. And, you know, as a founder myself, I do find that I kind of let myself get lost in the thethor of activities you can do in marketing. And a lot of it does feel easy to do. Yeah, and it's and it's a little bit more, I'm not gonna say administrative, but administrative, right? It's a little more tactical, it's a little bit more like, you know, task-oriented. And I preach all the time to my founders, like when it comes to that kind of activity, give it to somebody else. You need to be focusing on your investors and your clients. However, I do hear your advice. So kind of with the frame of both of those lenses, how how does a founder kind of, yeah, they are the first marketing person, but don't get stuck in that minutia of tactical. Like, what is it that they need to learn and do as the first marketer before they hire that next, that first true employee marketer?

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Well, I I think um looking at looking at the prototype of like founder-led sales, um, one of the uh, you know, I'm a seller who became a marketer. So um I often call myself a revenue-driven marketer. So I'm always approaching um, you know, the marketing strategy with how do we, you know, as Christopher Lockheed likes to say, ring the cash register. You know, how do we ring the cash register? IE, you know, it's one thing to say, wow, look at my amazing website. But you know what? If it's not converting, if it's not properly telling the story um of who we are, what we can do, you know, how we can help, how we can solve problems, then it's not gonna work.

SPEAKER_02 7:01

You know.

Knowing When Positioning Lands

SPEAKER_00 7:02

So so if we so if we go back and we look at as a founder, you know, the founder made those initial sales, right? That also means that the founder is generally closest, is gonna be closest to what resonates in the buyer's psyche, you know, as they are thinking about the problems that they need to solve, what is really resonating? And um, you know, really marketing on some levels is quite simple. It's having a very well-tuned ear to what is the market going to pick up on um the easiest or the quickest or the soonest, or just simply understand, you know, what are those messages that they're gonna say, ah, tell me more. You know, and and and then the marketing um, you know, role, the marketing function is to amplify. So um what I really think for a founder is a founder needs to be there to provide that input into you know the marketing function, like, hey, when we go to the market, here is what it cares about, you know, here's what's resonating with buyers. Now, what are all of the creative ways that we can say that without just sounding like we're singing the exact same song over and over and over again? Um advice that I give is that, you know, when we are tired, uh I mean, we're just sick and tired of saying, you know, um what it is that we have to say about our point of view, the market is only just starting to pick up on it. Which is to say that which is to say that you know, marketers are always like wanting to change, like, you know, change the campaign, like, oh, that's so old. We need to change our home page. No, the market may just be starting to pick up, you know, on on what your core, you know, value messages are, value statements are, you know, and so now we need to find new creative ways, you know, to be saying the same thing. Because no, we don't want to just be running the same videos, you know, 18 times a day on LinkedIn, you know, that is going to oversaturate and people are just gonna, you know, kind of turn us off and they might unsubscribe from our email newsletter, you know. So we need to find new ways to say it, but don't go changing, you know, your value props are your value props, your value statements are your value statements. And so, um, you know, that's that's actually a pretty important insight, is that I think founders are quick to move through and feel like, oh, I need to I need to come up with something new to say, you know, we've been saying this for six months now, the market knows it, you know. No, the market doesn't, and the market hasn't gotten it yet, you know.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

So we probably have to do other what's a good like clue or or uh sign that they have gotten it and it is time to change.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Uh okay. So when your sellers, and again, the seller might be the founder, you know, you might still be in that phase depending on where you are in your growth, you know, your your market development. Um, but when the sellers start to report back, um, and this is kind of anecdotal, you know, it's hard to put numbers or metrics behind this.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Who's as a sell the marketing person? Okay. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

But when you feel like um, you know, you're going into meetings and this the sales team is going into a meeting and and and you put up kind of the first few slides, the positioning slides, and and and the um, you know, the the customer, the client, the prospects, you know, however it works for your business, it's kind of like, yeah, you know what, we get that. Can can we move to, you know, in other words, they're they're they're kind of either overtly giving you the the the signal or they're just flat saying it, like, hey, we get that. You know, you know what, we've been hearing hearing about you guys. Let's move to, you know, how do you implement your solution? How is your solution integrated? When they're moving you along, um, then you're like, okay, the market's now starting to get it. But if you put up those slides and you're still kind of met with a skeptical look and you're still kind of people have their arms crossed and they're, you know, they're you know, they're even just asking practical questions, like, but but why? You know, you know, I get it, I hear what you're saying, but why? If you're still in that phase, and you know what, you gotta keep hitting them with the with with with the first part of the story, which is, you know, what problem are you solving? You know, what's the benefit? Why did you choose to solve that? And what is your point of view um that makes your solution, your product, your technology uniquely qualified, you know, kind of thinking about the jobs to be done framework, um, you know, to address it.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

And why and therefore, why should I be listening to you? You know, so yeah, so that is marketing's job, you know, is to make the case very plainly, very clearly, easy to understand, do it in the ways that the buyer's gonna receive.

Small Team Beats Big Company

SPEAKER_01 12:38

I love that. And kind of going back a little bit more to the small teams beat big teams concept, because I think that really resonates with all founders. Um, you know, I'm curious from your perspective, uh, like when have you seen like what's a moment in your career where a small team has actually outperformed a much larger one?

SPEAKER_00 12:58

Well, um I I have a lot of examples, but um uh one one of the one of the the um uh company I've been running marketing uh for five and a half years now is a is a silicon company. And of course, silicon is really hot, you know. Of course, yeah. And um we have formed a uh whole new category, formed and created a whole new category called VPU, um video processing units, uh VPU. And it's a type of silicon, and I won't get into all of the the the details behind that. Um, but it's a whole new approach, whole new way to encode video. So when you're watching a service like Netflix, for example, um, you potentially are actually watching this company's products in action. Um, but it's a whole new approach. And we knew that the market was tipping, that the market had tipped when we would go into the um, you know, into uh talk to a customer, and they would say, Yeah, we're we're we're really interested. You know, we called you or we requested this meeting because we're starting to think that we need VPUs. Now, small teens beat big teams um when you realize that your competitors are companies like AMD. And AMD has a marketing department that is larger than the entire company. You know, you kind of go, okay, small teams beat big teams. And the reality of the matter is is that you know, is that why is that? Well, guess what? You have a whole social media team, you know, you have a whole events team to navigate. Now I'm speaking to these bigger companies, you know, you have you have a CMO, you have a vice president, you have multiple directors who all have their perspectives on how those respective functions operate.

SPEAKER_02 15:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

So, you know, it was super interesting. Um, we were lucky enough uh to win an Emmy Award, a technical Emmy Award, very, very serious, you know, in the media and entertainment space. This is, you know, this this is a really, really big deal. And so here we are sitting at the table, and the and and AMD was also nominated, and there were two people from AMD, and here we are with eight people from this small, tiny little company, you know, and I'm sitting there and I'm going, wow, you know, this is a combination of technical execution. You know, we had the right product, we built the product, it's been adopted in the market, but we drove this through, and here, here there's the mighty, you know, this much larger, incredibly, you know, powerful and revered company. And there's two individuals, and here we are, eight people sitting around them, you know, represented. And I just went, this is amazing. You know, it's like I have a marketing team of three people, you know, at the time, you know, now the team's expanded a little bit, but three people who drove this outcome. And here's AMD, you know, with an army of marketers, you know, and we're sitting at the same table. That is so amazing. It was really, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was a practical, you know, um, um uh manifestation, I guess, of, you know, like this really works. This isn't theoretical. This isn't like, well, of course, we're a startup, you know, we don't have the budget to go hire, you know, a whole events team and a whole digital team and a whole social team and a whole, you know, we don't, you know, we don't have that, which is true statement. Um, but the magic behind it is that you cut the infrastructure that actually holds back execution.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Oh, yes, yeah, it makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

And this is this is, I think, the magic behind a startup, and you're seeing this play out. How is it that open AI can be the fastest, one of the fastest growing software companies in the world? How is it that anthropic can go from zero revenue to you know three, four, five, six billion? I I don't even know where they are right now. I mean, it's just every quarter, it's just scale. Of course, they're a private company, so it's not disclosed, but you know, but um, you know, it gets talked about. How is it that these companies can scale in 18 months, you know, in six quarters, seven quarters, eight quarters, just breathtaking rate. It's because there isn't the infrastructure in the middle to hold them back.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Exactly. That middle management layer that just exactly is a gatekeeper.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

And and and and look, why is it that Amazon has eliminated you know, 14,000 jobs and the rumors are that that's even going to going to expand? You know, now I you know I'm very sensitive and very um, you know, um uh you know, I feel for all of these management layers, these managers who are getting eliminated, but why why is Amazon doing that? It's to eliminate infrastructure that slows down the organization.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Well, there's just so many mouse that have to share the same message the same way, and misalignment happens in a nanosecond.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

It happens so quickly, and it's and it you know, it's not even because anybody is trying to pull in an opposite direction, right? You know, um, so but it is like even in a startup, you know, you go from 50 people to a hundred people, and all of a sudden it's like, whoa, not everybody's in alignment with the founder, you know. Like I remember the days when it was 20 people, 30 people, 40 people, everybody kind of just ate together at lunch, and you know, like like there was automatic alignment, right? Just because everybody's in the same room together, all of a sudden, at 100 people, you're like, whoa, we now have three offices, and guess what? You know, this team over here is a little bit out of sync, not because they want to be, because they're just they're they're they're just out of sync there, you know.

Where AI Changes Marketing Most

SPEAKER_01 19:30

So interpretations of words and understanding also have a big impact. But going back to the smaller teams, where does AI change that equation the most? What have you seen the impact of AI?

SPEAKER_00 19:42

So very, very that is a great question. Um, because um, so normally what would happen, the natural development of a marketing team was um you would you you would typically hire a a generalist who was kind of up and coming in their career, you know, and you give the person a director title, but let's face it, they're a department of one, you know. So it's like, this is my director of marketing, you know, and and um, and so but you know, it's a chance for them to build. Usually the remit was hey, we need you to come in, you know, initially you're a team of one, but you know, we have budget or we soon will have budget for you to begin to build a team, and this is a great opportunity. Um, and you get on the right in the right company, and it generally was, you know, a little bit like joining a rocket ship, you know. Next thing you know, you've got 20 people, you know, reporting to, you know, to you. Um, and so what would happen is you would hire a generalist, but a generalist who was who who who could go reasonably deep in enough of the disciplines of marketing that they could come in and they could execute on social, you know, they they they knew how to build some sort of narrative, you know, um, so they could look at the website and say, hey, are we saying the right things? Um, you know, they they you know, they they had done a few events, so they kind of knew like how to do an event. So, you know, they come in and you know, it's like super, super busy, and then you begin to hire the specialist. Okay, you know, we now have budget, we just raised our series B, you know, um, you know, or the board has said, yes, it's time to go ahead and do marketing. So, you know, you hire a social person, you hire a digital person, you hire an events person, and now you've got some more specialists, right? Well, and and so then those people would come in and you know, the digital um, you know, marketing person is a specialist on the digital platforms, you know, knows how to get more reach on LinkedIn, you know, knows how to run ads on Google, you know, knows, you know, those platforms. Well, what's happened now is that the LLMs can do a lot of that work way better than a specialist can. So then You start to say, well, wait a second, does that mean we don't need humans? Oh no, we need humans. But the role of the human in the loop is in two primary areas. One is to be the human in the loop, to be, you know, reading and checking and screening this all of this content that's being generated by the LLMs, by by AI, you know, to maybe just make sure, like, hey, wait, this actually is saying what we want it to be saying, you know, this doesn't just sound like AI slop, you know, or it's not AI slop. Well, that's a human that's gonna do that, you know, because again, it's a human who knows the industry, knows the market, understands the psyche of the buyer, and is gonna be able to get in and think like a buyer. That's a human. Right now, the LLMs can't do that. Now, I say right now, you know, um, as the models are just getting amazingly sophisticated, we're going to increasingly get to a space where where where more and more we're able to just copy and paste, you know, but we're absolutely not there yet. So you need a human um at this level of taking on the buyer's persona, thinking like the buyer, thinking like the you know, whoever we're creating this marketing for, and then saying, hey, does this work? You know, um, and and and then we have the strategy layer. So what's actually interesting is is that now the most valuable people in marketing are um kind of not to say we don't need specialists, okay. So I am not saying like, hey, if you've invested 12 years of your career, you know, as a digital marketer and you know, you've got you know all the certs hanging on the wall, you know, from from all the you know all the major organizations, that that's no longer useful. So I'm not saying that's not useful. However, the marketer who has the broad experience, but then has learned how to harness the tools, tools meaning, you know, the various LLM platforms and you know, um is actually going to be able to run faster than someone who is a specialist in a narrow domain. Um, because uh to to be frank, a lot of that expertise of optimizing ads on Google, you know, or optimizing ads on Meta, or, you know, really, you know, writing uh, you know, um subject lines for email newsletters, um a lot of that is being commodicized, commoditized um in in the LLMs.

SPEAKER_02 24:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:58

And and there's some just you know, you open up X, open up LinkedIn, and it's just nothing but marketers saying, I killed, you know, this function with this L, you know, with this agentic workflow. Now that rarely is really true, but when you really dig in and you look at what they're demonstrating, you go, oh wow, they're starting to get into in into the area of the target, you know, like no, they're not hitting the bullseye. And yes, this is a demo, it's definitely not ready for prime time, but this is starting to get pretty darn close to the bullseye. Yeah, you know, and to ignore that would be at the peril of somebody who uh wants to maintain a career in marketing, you know, yeah, and so so I guess my answer about how AI both contributes, and then you know, maybe the subtext or the follow-on question would be how does AI disrupt marketing? is to say humans are still absolutely needed. But if it it if someone has built their career or sort of has hung their hat on, hey, I know Google better than anyone else, like that's kind of a dangerous place to be. Yeah. Um, because that's just not as valuable. Um, now being a human in the loop, you know, with an agentic workflow that you're designing and operating, or maybe you're operating um as a specialist. Now that's valuable. You know, that is valuable.

Talk To Customers Not Product

SPEAKER_01 26:38

So yeah, wow, that's amazing, Mark. I love it. And I think, you know, you're right, AI is not necessarily coming after jobs yet, but it's more of who understands how to use it. Those are the people that are going to come after those that don't understand it. Uh gotcha. I have so many other questions for you, but we're coming to a close here. So I'd like to ask my my final question to you is uh based off this topic or even your experience working with founders, is there any last final thoughts or tips or tricks that you'd like to share with the audience today?

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Yeah. Yeah, I would say, you know, if you're a founder and and and you're at that stage where you're saying, hey, it's time for me to start investing and building a marketing function, or you know, or you just have a feeling like I really need to understand marketing. A lot of the founders I work with come from technical backgrounds. Uh, and so, you know, they've spent their career building products, oftentimes in big companies where, you know, there was a whole marketing team, you know, or you know, they, you know, if you let's face it, you come out of Apple, you come out of Google, you come out of Meta, like a failure, um, you know, is like, oh, sorry, we only had 35 million signups in the first week, you know. Yeah, exactly. We we hope to have 50 million, you know, and you know, and and I'm I'm I'm not making light, I'm I'm not making fun, but it's like you, you know, a lot of founders I find come from, you know, where there was big brands behind them, you know, so they create a product and it's like, well, yeah, the product's so good, and look how many users we got. Well, all of a sudden you go out on your own and you realize, whoa, not everybody's Google, you know, not everybody's Apple, you know. Um, so um, what I my advice is is really pretty simple. Um, it is, and and hopefully founders are doing this, but um, I find everybody could do more of it, is get out and talk to your customer. Um, but don't talk to your customer about your product. And in fact, do everything to try to not talk about your product, which is really hard because hey, you know, this is your baby, you know, you spent, you know, a lot of time, energy, and money perhaps, you know, building the product and and and and it probably really does what you say it will, and it can really will have the impact. But get out and understand what the buyer really care about? Um, because it doesn't mean that they don't care about your solution or don't need your solution. But if you don't understand how they're gonna use it, the problem it's gonna solve, and how they think about that problem, you could be putting messages into the market that they just don't understand. It's a little bit like speaking a different language, you know, and they're sitting here going, I I can kind of tell from your body mood, I kind of get what you're saying. I think I understand, but I don't understand it enough to say, hey, let's go take a look at this, you know. And this that mismatch is where I find routinely startup founders get stuck, you know. They go out, they win a couple early deals, take that as positive signs that hey, the market wants or needs what we have, which the market does. The problem is they assume that whatever they did to get those deals is a repeatable pattern, you know, or is the language to use. And sometimes that's not true. You know, there can be a whole lot of reasons why those first few deals came in. So go out once you, as a founder, have a sense of of what the market wants to hear, needs to hear, what the market's going to respond to, then all of a sudden you know how to design your sales process, you know who to hire in sales, you know now how to at least direct your marketing messages. Um, and now the person that you're bringing in to, you know, your first director of marketing or your first few marketing hires, you know how to guide them. Um, but without that, you can bring in the best marketer in the world, you can bring in an absolute rock star CMO, and they're gonna fail because they're they're going to put the wrong messages into the market. They're gonna be making statements that you know the market kind of goes, huh? Okay, hey, good luck with that, you know. Yeah, and this is why you'll see tech startup after tech startup have a revolving door of CMO. Every 18 months, there's a new CMO. Every 18 months there's a new director of marketing, new VP of marketing. Every 18 months, there's a new CRO, new head of sales, etc. Is is often it's not the person that failed. You know, the person actually didn't know what they were doing, it's that they were they're just speaking a different language, yeah. And if you're speaking a different language, it's hard to get people to follow you.

Closing And How To Engage

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Yeah, that makes so much sense. Well, I appreciate your time work and all the insights you've given us. And for those listening, I hope you got a couple of tippets out of it. We will see you on the next episode. Have a great day, everyone. Thank you so much. That's a wrap for today's episode of Scaling with People. If you got value from this conversation, do me a favor, share it with someone building something big. And hey, I'd love to hear your take. Drop a comment, shoot me a message, or start a conversation. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss the bold, unfiltered strategies we drop every week. I'm Gwen Rick Quary, founder and CEO of Guide2HR, where we help high growth companies scale smart with people for strategies and AI powered systems that don't just keep up, they lead. If you're building fast and want your HR to move faster, head to guide2hr.com and let's talk. And remember, scale isn't just about speed, it's about people. Until next time, have a great one.