Why Marketing Leaders Aren't Hiring

Marketing leaders aren't hiring for one simple reason: They no longer see the marketing org as "roles" but as tasks that need to get done.

A CMO used to default to: hire in-house for core work, maybe hire an agency for campaigns. But budget constraints and AI have shaken that model.

Now each task has multiple competing paths to execution:

• In-house hire → high control, long ramp, high fixed cost
• Agency → expertise, speed, external perspective, higher per-task cost
• Freelancer → flexible, narrow skill coverage, variable quality
• AI workflow → cheap, instant, scalable, but unreliable and requires oversight

The difficulty for marketing leaders is that the time horizon is short: they need results this quarter, and switching costs are high if they misallocate.

So GTM strategy becomes an allocation game:

Which tasks are core differentiators → keep in-house Which are high-stakes but episodic → outsource to agency Which are specialized but limited → hire freelancers Which are repeatable but non-differentiating → automate with AI workflows

The job of a marketing leader today is less about building a perfect team structure and more about being a portfolio manager to execute on their vision.

The most savvy leaders aren't asking, "Do I need another hire?" They're asking, "For this specific task, what's the right execution path given cost, speed, quality, and time-horizon?"

But I've never been a CMO, so maybe I'm way off.

Originally posted here.