Gabriel Weinberg's book Traction is a good resource in this regard. It's what my co-founder and I used as part of our guiding principle in terms of our basic marketing plan at the very beginning of the business, before individual people were hired to do any marketing work.
I would recommend all technical founders read that book. If anything it gives you a good frame or reference you can use to interview people with...
If you are going to interview a potential head of marketing, they should be able to explain the same high level thinking that the book presents, in terms of testing 1 or 2 channels, focusing on those channels until they are maxed out, and then opening up or using other channels for the next phase of growth.
If a rough growth plan doesn't invoke the same concepts as the book I would be skeptical they really know how to grow/scale a startup business properly.
On top of that, early on you should have a list of all the potential channels that could work for your business, in order to understand from the beginning how far you could probably scale your business, in order to make sure the venture is worth the time and building the product isn't a waste. If based on the uniqueness of your product, idea, service, etc there aren't many traditional channels available (or you couldn't make them work somehow) then that should be a warning sign.
I would recommend all technical founders read that book. If anything it gives you a good frame or reference you can use to interview people with...
If you are going to interview a potential head of marketing, they should be able to explain the same high level thinking that the book presents, in terms of testing 1 or 2 channels, focusing on those channels until they are maxed out, and then opening up or using other channels for the next phase of growth.
If a rough growth plan doesn't invoke the same concepts as the book I would be skeptical they really know how to grow/scale a startup business properly.
On top of that, early on you should have a list of all the potential channels that could work for your business, in order to understand from the beginning how far you could probably scale your business, in order to make sure the venture is worth the time and building the product isn't a waste. If based on the uniqueness of your product, idea, service, etc there aren't many traditional channels available (or you couldn't make them work somehow) then that should be a warning sign.