Building a Marketing Team

Building a marketing team is one of the most critical inflection points for any growing beverage brand. Around the $15 million annual revenue mark, most companies find themselves stuck between scrappy startup execution and the need for scalable, strategic marketing. Without a clearly defined marketing structure, brands risk losing momentum, miscommunicating with retail partners, and failing to convert online awareness into in-store velocity.

If your brand is approaching this growth phase, this guide will show you how to approach building a marketing team with precision, clarity, and long-term impact.

Hiring Marketing Leadership First

When building a marketing team, start with leadership. A Head of Marketing—at either the Director or VP level—is the keystone hire. This person is responsible for setting the overall marketing strategy, aligning consumer and trade efforts, managing both internal staff and external partners, and translating brand identity into effective retail and digital campaigns.

Without this role, marketing efforts tend to be reactive or siloed. By bringing in experienced marketing leadership from the start, you create a foundation for scalable growth and consistent execution.

Why Trade Marketing Comes Next

The next priority in building a marketing team is trade marketing. This role focuses on in-store success: shelf placement, promotions, distributor relationships, and retail activations. As beverage brands expand into new regions or chains, trade marketing ensures the product doesn’t just make it onto shelves but actually moves off them.

A Trade Marketing Manager works closely with sales to build promotional calendars, secure retail co-op placements, and coordinate tastings or demos. For beverage brands trying to drive velocity and earn distributor support, trade marketing is a must-have function.

Adding Brand and Consumer Marketing Functions

Once trade marketing is underway, the next step in building a marketing team is hiring for consumer-facing brand roles. A Brand Marketing Manager is responsible for translating the company’s positioning into content, campaigns, and touchpoints that build awareness and loyalty.

This role oversees:

• Campaign strategy and execution

• Content calendars

• Coordination with PR, creative, and digital teams

Alongside this, a Social Media & Influencer Manager should focus on growing the brand’s presence on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, engaging directly with customers, and leveraging influencer partnerships. These positions create the "pull" to match the "push" of trade efforts.

The Role of Creative Support

When building a marketing team, you also need to consider creative capacity. Whether you hire a full-time designer or contract with freelancers, it’s critical to have access to visual content that aligns with your brand. This includes social media graphics, packaging updates, sales materials, and more.

Speed and consistency are key here. A designer familiar with your brand can respond quickly to needs from sales, social, or field marketing.

Structuring the Team for Growth

A well-designed structure when building a marketing team ensures that consumer and retail efforts support each other. Here’s a typical structure for a $15M brand:

• Head of Marketing (leads overall strategy)

• Trade Marketing Manager (handles retail execution)

• Brand Marketing Manager (owns consumer campaigns)

• Social & Influencer Manager (runs digital engagement)

• Creative Designer (supports all content needs)

This setup keeps strategy, execution, and creative aligned under one roof. Depending on your team size and budget, some roles can start as part-time or outsourced, with a plan to bring them in-house over time.

In-House vs. Agency: Making Smart Decisions

A key part of building a marketing team is deciding what to keep internal and what to outsource. Some capabilities are better managed in-house for speed, brand consistency, and day-to-day coordination. Others, like PR or large-scale media buying, can be handled more efficiently by agencies.

Recommended in-house functions:

• Strategy and leadership

• Community and social management

• Trade execution

• Daily content production

Recommended agency support:

• High-end creative campaigns

• Public relations

• Paid media buying

• Experiential logistics

The balance you choose will depend on budget, internal talent, and growth stage.

Balancing Growth Marketing and Brand Building

When building a marketing team, one of the biggest challenges is balancing short-term growth tactics with long-term brand development. Many beverage brands over-invest in deep discounts or hyper-targeted ads while neglecting broader brand storytelling. Others build a beautiful brand but fail to drive sales velocity in retail.

A strong team focuses on both. For example:

• Use influencer content to drive immediate product trials

• Pair retail promos with digital awareness campaigns

• Launch experiential events that drive both impressions and purchases

An effective marketing team doesn’t pick between brand or growth—it integrates them into a unified plan.

Integrated Execution Across Channels

Once you begin building a marketing team, ensure all functions work together. Avoid silos by:

• Holding weekly cross-functional check-ins

• Aligning campaigns across retail, digital, and events

• Repurposing content across platforms

• Tying influencer activations to retail availability

Integrated teams create more touchpoints, drive stronger ROI, and deliver a more consistent brand experience. Each role should feed into the others, with the Head of Marketing ensuring overall cohesion.

Build With the Future in Mind

Building a marketing team isn’t just about hiring bodies—it’s about creating a strategic function that drives awareness, velocity, and brand equity. For beverage companies around the $15M mark, now is the time to shift from patchwork marketing to a true in-house engine.

Start with leadership. Prioritize trade. Layer in brand, social, and creative. Keep key functions in-house and scale with agency support. Most importantly, align all activities toward the same goal: growth that lasts.

Whether you’re building a marketing team for the first time or evolving your structure, use this moment to create a foundation for sustainable success.