Before You Make Your First Marketing Hire
You’ve successfully built your business from the ground up, but as you continue to grow you are finding that your time is getting maxed out and that your leads are plateauing. Traditional wisdom says, “It’s time to hire somebody to ‘do’ the marketing.”
Except, like with most business decisions, it’s not that simple.
First you need to ask yourself, “What exactly am I hiring them to do?”
Do I want them to take over the marketing tasks I’ve already been doing? Do I want them to follow trends and market however my competitors are marketing? Or am I hiring them to create an overarching marketing/growth strategy for the business?
Too often, business owners make the honest mistake of hiring someone to “do marketing” without realizing these two vital things:
“Doing Marketing” requires expertise in creating a cohesive marketing strategy, media buying, graphic design, SEO, SEM, and perhaps most importantly - copywriting (among many other things). Each of these are vastly different skillsets, and yet each are needed at some capacity. So which skills do you hire for? As one example, I have spent years strategizing market approach with owners and executives of businesses of all shapes and sizes. I have developed expertise in this arena. However, you would certainly NOT want me designing your logo, choosing your brand colors, writing your copy, managing your Google Ads account and a plethora of other things. No one can do it all well, so it is important to know what skills you are needing to hire for.
Strategists are not practitioners, and practitioners are not strategists. So do you hire a Chief Marketing Officer (Strategy) or a marketing intern (practitioner)? These are very different roles with compensations typically separated by 6-digits.
Let’s dive into this for just a second. We typically break marketing into three levels: strategy, tactics and tasks. Lets start with tasks.
Tasks include things like posting on social media, sending marketing emails and coordinating sponsored events. These are necessary actions most companies can hire a recent graduate to accomplish.
Tactics are the framework through which you decide which tasks are worth doing. Tactics include deciding which social media platforms are worth investing time and money into, how to capture warm leads, how to create awareness of your brand. Tactics are typically director level decisions.
Strategy is where EVERYTHING must start. Assuming your company has competition, your strategy is what will set your company apart. It’s what will be your “north star” in all marketing decisions going forward. Should you sell online, in-person, or both? What should your price point be? What should your customer service people say when they answer the phone? Should you expand into a new metro? Which one? Any experience your customer or potential customer has with your brand is marketing, and all of this should fall under your company’s marketing strategy, your north star.
An effective strategy can only be created by understanding the personality of the business, which requires vital keys only the owner/founder/CEO has. The person steering the ship needs to answer questions like: Who/what is this company? Who/what do your customers say the company is? What stories about the company could connect with your potential customers?
When businesses have stories that show its “personality” to its prospects and customers, it’s much easier to win their hearts. People buy from people, right?
Once your company understands what means of connection with customers are at its disposal, a strategy can be created that stays true to who the company is. Only then should you begin considering what tactics and tasks are optimal/worth your effort.
So, does your company need both someone to create a strategy and people to implement that strategy? Yes.
Since our focus at Wizard of Ads is to deliver the most growth for our clients at the lowest cost, we typically surprise our clients with how few channels/media types we recommend they invest in. We are wizards at creating masterful strategies for businesses we believe we can grow 4x in three years or less. We then custom build a team for your company from our 75 partners (who have expertise in all industries, company sizes and types of marketing) to execute that strategy and keep you pointing towards your north star. Lastly, we coach your team in the tactics and leave the tasks in their hands.
If you’d like to begin getting clarity on some of the key strategy and tactic questions your business needs to answer like:
How much should I be budgeting for marketing?
Who should I be targeting?
What means should I be using to reach them?
You can book a free 90-Minute Starter Session with me. I’ll email you a questionnaire and then we’ll meet to discuss what would be optimal for your business. That’s it. No strings, no bombarding you with emails/calls, no selling your info. I’m here to serve.