The Ultimate Guide to Finding and Hiring a World-Class Marketing Manager written by Kyndall Ramirez read more at Duct Tape Marketing
When you first start your business, you’re wearing every hat—you’re overseeing every single aspect of the company:
Accounting, check.
Sales outreach, add it to your to-do list.
Administrative work, it’s not going to do itself.
And let’s not forget, you’re the full-time Marketing director, too.
Your list of roles and responsibilities goes on. And these things add up quickly. Most entrepreneurs suffer from the belief that they can do it all. But eventually, there will come a time when you’ll have to admit that doing everything yourself is no longer effective.
So that’s why we’ve created the last guide you’ll ever need to help you find and hire someone you can trust to take some work off of your plate.
Signs that it’s time to hire someone to help you
1. When you just can’t seem to find enough time
When you’re spread too thin tending to every other aspect of your business, your days start to get longer and longer. Your to-do list becomes more than just a list—it becomes pages. And things start to get put on the back burner—like your marketing efforts.
2. When you’re constantly fixing mistakes and putting out fires
When you’re strapped for time and in a hurry, the quality of your work suffers. Mistakes happen—and you’re busy fixing things instead of creating.
Marketing mistakes can cost your business a lot of lost revenue. When this happens, it’s time to take a step back and look for additional help.
3. When you find yourself doing repetitive tasks
As the business owner, your attention should be focused on leading, pitching your products/services, and managing your big picture operations.
If you’re finding yourself working on a laundry list of repetitive tasks like social media scheduling, managing clients, or preparing marketing reports, it’s time to bring in help to allow you to focus on the big picture.
4. When you lack consistency in your marketing efforts
If you want your campaigns to produce results, your marketing needs constant attention and consistent effort. Writing a random blog post every couple of months, sending a one-off email promoting a new product, or following a content calendar sometimes—isn’t going to cut it.
You can’t expect the garden to grow if you don’t water it.
If you can relate to any of these telltale signs, it’s time to bring in someone who can tend to marketing your business, regularly—like a Marketing Manager. The job is too important to do in your spare time.
What a Marketing Manager does
A Marketing Manager helps with daily marketing activities and initiatives of a company.
They work on building brand awareness, managing social media, planning and implementing marketing campaigns, creating content for SEO and traffic growth, tracking and analyzing performance data, and the list goes on.
To be sure you’re hiring the right person for the job, you need to know what to look for in a Marketing Manager.
What a typical day looks like for a Marketing Manager
Each day can be different, but some of the most common activities you can delegate to a Manager are things like
- Creating content for publishing on your blog
- Managing and engaging with social media accounts
- Writing newsletters to send out to your list
- Designing collateral and assets for social media
- Writing landing page copy to support promotional campaign
These are a few things that may take up the day for a Marketing Manager. They often wear many different hats and usually have a long list of responsibilities.
The skills to look for when you’re hiring a Marketing Manager
These are the 6 core skills you should look for when you’re hiring someone in-house to help with marketing.
1. Creativity—they’re creative. They use out-of-the-box thinking to ideate and develop strategies on how to drive growth for your business.
2. Writing—they’ll be responsible for creating a lot of content. It’s imperative they understand how to write for audiences in a way that captures their attention and connects with them on a deeper level.
3. Research—they’re investigators. They need solid research skills to keep up with new trends in the industry as it relates to your business’ target audience.
4. Omni-channel and social savvy—they’re a versatile marketer. They understand that the customer journey isn’t linear. They should know how to implement marketing tactics and strategies across all marketing channels: email, social, paid, SEO, and content.
5. Critical thinking—they’re inquisitive and analytical. They should be able to understand and leverage data to guide marketing decisions and the overall strategy.
6. Project management—they’re a project management pro. They should know how to juggle and manage multiple projects and initiatives at once.
What a job description for a Marketing Manager position should include
The job itself varies based on the needs of your company. Here’s an example job description including the core responsibilities and qualifications you should include in your Marketing Manager job post:
Responsibilities:
- Research and analyze customers’ behavior and insights, consumer trends, market analysis, and marketing best practices to build successful strategies
- Plan, create, and implement strategic marketing campaigns that align with company goals
- Organize promotional assets and campaigns for new products/services launches
- Set up and maintain tracking systems for online marketing activities
- Write content for campaigns across various channels such as social media, email, and blog
- Manage all online channels of production, including website, social media pages, email campaigns, and responses
- Create, maintain and strengthen the organization’s overall brand through all media avenues
- Create and distribute content on key channels to reach new audiences
Requirements:
- Proven work experience in digital marketing and knowledge of content management, creative writing, advertising concepts and vendor negotiations
- Demonstrable experience with social media marketing, email marketing, advertising campaigns, marketing databases and analytics, and SEO/SEM
- Knowledge of traditional marketing tools
- Critical thinker with strong problem-solving and research proficiencies
- Solid knowledge of website and marketing analytics tools
- Highly creative with experience in identifying target audiences and planning digital campaigns that engage, inform, and motivate
- Knowledge of various Content Management Systems (CMS)
- Solid organizational skills and detail oriented
- Ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines
- Superb written and verbal communication skills
- Ability to simplify complex information into a user-friendly format
Find world-class marketing candidates by looking in these places
Luckily, there are many places where marketers hang out. Social media, networking sites, job boards—since most marketers have an online presence, there are a lot of places you can look to find talent. Here’s a few places to start:
LinkedIn is a great place to start. You can post your job there as well as source for candidates based on their title.
Freelancer sites
Upwork and Fiverr are sites that are dedicated to hiring talent and finding jobs. You can browse profiles and reach out to folks to invite them to apply for your open job. People can also find your job posting and apply on their own.
Facebook groups
There are many Facebook groups that are made up of people with specific skill sets (e.g. Content Marketers, The Copywriter Club, Remote Marketing Jobs). People often add posts about jobs to groups, and these kinds of posts typically get a ton of engagement.
Job boards
Larger job boards like Indeed, CareerBuilder, or Monster have a plethora of candidates with all levels of experience. There are also marketing job boards you can check out like VentureBeat, CrunchBoard, or Mashable.
Interview questions to ask marketing job candidates
You should ask questions that give the candidate an opportunity to show how they think about and work on problems.
What’s an example of a lead-generating campaign you’d be excited to work on here?
This question gives the candidate an opportunity for on-the-spot brainstorming. It highlights what they know about your company and if they did any interview prep prior.
Share an example of a challenge you faced at one of your previous employers.
How a person responds when the going gets tough or when they’re caught in a difficult situation is important. This question hones in on how they handle those situations.
Quickly onboard your new Marketing Manager with these 3 steps
If you want to get your Marketing Manager productive quickly, here are a few things you can do to set them up for success:
- Give them access to your marketing tech stack—you want to be able to manage the tasks and projects your Manager is working on. Giving them access to the programs and tools your team uses is important for transparency and accountability.
- Integrate them with your team—most people work best where they feel ‘part of the team’. They’ll communicate better with you and your team. This is especially important for marketing roles where collaboration is key.
- Get them to interview a few of your best customers—a quick way for your new team member to learn about your business quickly is to learn directly from your audience and have them interview your customers.
Two things are almost always in short supply for small business owners: time and money. Is it worth it to spend money on a Marketing Manager if it frees up your time and contributes to the growth of your business?
The answer is most likely yes. By hiring a Marketing Manager, you get to take some things off of your plate and focus on the big picture. Not only do you get some of your time back, but now you have someone whose job’s main purpose is to focus on efforts that will grow your business. Pick the right one, and your return on investment should outweigh the initial cost.