Marketing Search: Hire for the Growth Problem, Not the Title
Perpetuate's Marketing practice, led by Sophia Philippou, headhunts SaaS marketing leaders and specialists off-market across Australia and New Zealand: CMOs, VPs and Heads of Marketing, Product Marketing, Growth and GTM. No job ads. One hour of your time to brief. 2-3 qualified candidates in 5-10 days.
Which SaaS marketing hire do you actually need?
The best SaaS marketing hire isn't defined by title. It's defined by the growth problem you're trying to solve.
Founders usually come to us with a title: "we need a Head of Marketing". The better brief starts one step earlier. Is the problem positioning that doesn't land, pipeline that's too thin, self-serve sign-ups that don't convert, or a category nobody has named yet? Each of those is a different marketer with a different track record.
Sophia Philippou spends the one-hour brief on that question rather than on a job description. Once the growth problem is precise, the title, the seniority and the shortlist follow from it.
Not every SaaS marketer is the same
SaaS marketing is six distinct capabilities that happen to share a department. Sophia assesses candidates against the one your growth problem needs, never against the word "marketing" on a CV.
Product Marketing & Positioning
Positioning, messaging, ICP definition, pricing and packaging, launches. The bridge between what was built and why a buyer should care.
Growth & PLG
Activation, conversion, retention and expansion loops in self-serve and product-led motions. Experiment-driven and analytics-heavy.
Demand Generation
Pipeline from paid, SEO, outbound support, events and lifecycle. Measured in qualified opportunities and cost of acquisition rather than impressions.
Brand & Category
Narrative, point of view and category design for companies creating a market rather than competing inside one.
GTM & Commercial Strategy
Segmentation, channel strategy, sales enablement and revenue alignment. Marketers who think in ARR, win rates and payback periods.
Marketing Leadership
Building and running the function: team design, budget, board reporting, and the judgement to know which of the five capabilities above the company needs next.
The context matters as much as the capability
A marketer who was brilliant at one stage or in one motion is often the wrong hire at another. Sophia maps five things about your company before a single approach goes out.
Business stage
Seed, Series A, scaling past $10M ARR or preparing for exit each call for a different marketer with a different tolerance for ambiguity.
GTM motion
Sales-led, product-led, partner-led or hybrid. The motion decides which marketing skills carry the load.
Customer & ACV
Selling $5K self-serve plans to SMBs is a different job from $250K enterprise deals with nine stakeholders.
Product & category
An established category with known buyers, or a new one where the first job is teaching the market what to want.
Growth challenge
Awareness, conversion, retention, expansion or repositioning. Name the constraint and the hire gets clearer.
Why Product Marketing is the easiest SaaS discipline to hire badly
Sophia's practice spans Product Management, Product Design and Product Marketing, so she works at the intersection of what gets built, who it's for, why it matters and how it goes to market. That vantage point shows when a candidate has only ever seen one side of it.
Product Marketing CVs read alike: launched features, wrote messaging, owned positioning. The assessment that matters is whether the candidate developed the positioning or inherited it, whether they defined the ICP and the pricing or executed someone else's, and what happened commercially afterwards.
"Product Marketing is one of the easiest disciplines in SaaS to hire badly."
Sophia Philippou
Co-Founder, Perpetuate. Leads the Marketing practice.
How we headhunt SaaS marketers
The same off-market search Perpetuate runs for technical and product leaders, pointed at the marketing market. One hour of your time to brief. No job ads, ever.
01
Define the mandate
One hour with you on the growth problem, the motion, the stage and what success looks like in twelve months.
02
Map where that experience exists
Which companies solved this problem at your stage, and who did the work there. The Talent System's concentric-circle mapping, applied to marketing.
03
Headhunt the market
Direct, individually written approaches to marketers who are employed, performing and not looking.
04
Assess the evidence
What they built, what they inherited, and what the numbers did afterwards. References on outcomes, never on personality.
05
A small, qualified shortlist
2-3 candidates within 5-10 days, each one Sophia would hire herself, carried through to signed offer.
Which SaaS marketing roles does Perpetuate place?
Perpetuate's Marketing practice places eight SaaS marketing roles, from a company's first dedicated marketer to a CMO reporting to the board. Sophia Philippou leads every search personally.
Chief Marketing Officer (SaaS)
Owns the growth narrative, the team and the number. For scaleups where marketing has to become a revenue engine.
VP Marketing
Runs the function across demand, product marketing and brand. Usually the first executive marketing hire after Series B.
Director / Head of Marketing
A hands-on leader who builds the first real team and the first repeatable pipeline. Often the first senior marketing hire.
Head of Product Marketing
Owns positioning, pricing, launches and sales enablement across the portfolio, working shoulder to shoulder with product.
Product Marketing Manager
The first dedicated PMM in many of our clients: ICP, messaging and launch for a single product line.
Growth Marketing Manager
Runs experiments across acquisition, activation and conversion in product-led or hybrid motions.
VP Growth
Owns the self-serve funnel end to end across product, marketing and data. For companies where growth is a product discipline.
GTM Manager
Coordinates launches and go-to-market across sales, marketing, product and customer success.
Hiring a product or technical leader at the same time? The same off-market process runs across all three practices.
See the Product practice →See Stephen’s AI/Technical practice →Marketing searches Sophia has closed
Four marketing placements from Perpetuate's ledger, 2025 to 2026. Across all practices: 53 placements for 34 clients since January 2025, and 41% of those clients have hired more than once.
Head of Marketing
Biarri. Biarri's second Perpetuate hire, after a Chief Operating Officer.
Growth Marketing Lead
ProcurePro. Construction procurement SaaS.
GTM Manager
ReadyTech (ASX:RDY). ReadyTech's second Perpetuate hire, after a Senior Product Manager.
CRO Specialist
Domino's Pizza Enterprises (ASX:DMP). Conversion rate optimisation for a digital-first retailer.
Sophia's network runs across B2B SaaS, AI, FinTech, GovTech, PropTech, ConstructionTech and MarTech in Australia and New Zealand.
SaaS marketing hiring: questions founders ask
How do I hire a Head of Product Marketing who isn't looking?
You go to them, because they will never see a job ad. Perpetuate maps the SaaS companies that solved a positioning problem like yours, finds the product marketer who did the work, and Sophia Philippou writes an individual approach explaining why your problem is the more interesting one. Expect 2-3 candidates within 5-10 days of a one-hour brief.
What should I look for in a SaaS CMO?
Evidence that they have owned a number, and which number. Ask what pipeline or revenue they were accountable for, at what ARR, in which GTM motion, and what changed under them. A CMO from a $200M enterprise-sales company is often the wrong hire for a $10M product-led one.
Do we need a Head of Marketing or a Product Marketing Manager first?
It depends on the growth problem. If the product is strong and nobody can articulate why it matters, a senior Product Marketing Manager usually comes first. If positioning is settled and pipeline is the constraint, start with a Head of Marketing who can build demand generation. Sophia works this through in the one-hour brief, and the title often changes as a result.
How long does a SaaS marketing search take with Perpetuate?
One hour of a founder's time to brief, then 2-3 qualified, off-market candidates within 5-10 days. Perpetuate manages both sides through to signed offer, and the same timeline applies to Australian and New Zealand searches.
Your next marketing leader is already on another company's payroll.
Perpetuate's Marketing practice delivers 2-3 off-market, pre-vetted SaaS marketers within 5-10 days. One hour to brief Sophia on the growth problem. Nothing else is asked of you.
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