Have you been thinking of adding a new member to your team? Someone to focus on your marketing initiatives? Someone to “Get things going!”
My suggestion is to pause and think about what type of marketing resource is right for you.
Do you need a campaign manager? A marketing director? A graphic designer? A social media specialist?
Marketing is a large umbrella and numerous functions sit underneath it. “Marketing” isn’t a single, uniform term, job function or skill set.
To determine which type of marketing resource is right for you, take another step back and think: “What are our marketing needs?
If you don’t have a marketing plan or director of marketing, my advice is to start there. Having a bunch of different marketing efforts floating around with no real strategy to connect your efforts, isn’t going to produce the results you’re hoping for.
Once you have a plan in place, then you’re ready to look more specifically at a strategy and tactics to help you accomplish it.
Here’s a for-instance. You’re looking to enter a new geographic territory. One strategy might be to demonstrate your company’s expertise to your target audience living or working in that area. A tactic to support this strategy might be to look for speaking engagements and/or networking opportunities that put your staff members front and center of the intended audience.
How many different marketing efforts would go into making this example a success?
Here’s my list:
Front-end strategic planning and creative brainstorming to put a marketing plan together to help you achieve your business goals.
Investigation, planning, and coordination of logistics for each speaking/networking engagement (including travel arrangements).
Coordination of marketing each event to drive people there (online and offline advertising), creation of the presentation, and post-event marketing efforts.
Development and oversight of a creative team: a writer, graphic designer, social media specialist, etc -- to bring your plan to life.
Choosing a presenter, presentation development and on-site coordination for this individual to maximize their time at the event
Follow-up business development efforts (is this a sales, marketing or other senior leadership role?)
Oh, and how do you mix your current customers into this initiative?
As that list illustrates, a lot of different skill sets fall under the marketing umbrella (especially the creative hands). Blend all that into one job description and you set that individual up for failure.
Are you a marketing department of one? Have no fear! Once you’ve developed a plan and a strategy, select the marketing tactics that align with your own skill set--for instance, if you’re not comfortable with public speaking, then skip over the speaking engagements and choose something else. Don’t be afraid to hire specialists who can help you with specific tasks--it can make a big difference.
Whether you are an organization of 1 or 100, walk through this exercise for your upcoming marketing initiatives: Visualize which marketing resources you have, and gaps you need to fill (based on existing resources). From there, you’ll be in a better position to hire appropriately.
This Marketing Minute is brought to you by Sarah Hurley, owner at Weber Marketing, LLC.