The marketing team focuses on planning, executing, and managing activities related to promoting products or services. It is their job to find prospects, customers, and investors while creating a comprehensive image that reflects company values.
A marketing team includes professionals with diverse skills in market research, digital marketing, content creation, and public relations. In this guide, we'll talk about the critical steps on how to hire a marketing team. Let’s begin!
1. Define Your Marketing Goals and Strategy
Your marketing goals should be the main foundation of hiring a dedicated marketing team. After all, the team will handle brand awareness, improving customer engagement, and boosting your online presence.
Six months is all it takes to zero to mid-level in anything you pursue, be it a broken relationship, a music class, or a fitness regimen. The same rule applies when you hire a marketing team. Based on this concept, it’s better to set clear, achievable, and easy-to-measure goals. This way, you can keep track of your progress and make adjustments as needed.
2. Identify Key Roles and Functions
Understanding the key roles and functions of each member of the marketing team is also essential. Review each role and see how you can utilize their talents and expertise in executing your marketing strategies.
Marketing Manager
Marketing managers lead the marketing teams and ensure each team member delivers their tasks timely and accurate. They also help your marketing team stay focused and organized while working towards the attainment of your goals.
SEO Specialist
Consider including an SEO strategist in your marketing team to maximize the amount of inbound traffic to your websites through keyword integration and SEO analytics. SEO specialists may work closely with other team members who focus on digital marketing.
Data analyst
Consider including a data analyst on your marketing team to better understand the success of strategies, make informed marketing decisions, and discover ways to improve your processes in the future.
Public relations manager
Public relations (PR) managers develop brand awareness techniques and represent brands at industry events. They also build and maintain customer relationships and develop social media campaigns.
Brand strategist
Brand strategists function similarly to PR managers by maintaining a brand's image. These experts determine logos, color schemes, and fonts used on websites or promotional materials.
Visual designer
Visual designers can help ensure that your visual marketing material remains consistent across all platforms and aligns with your brand's values and objectives. They may work closely with advertising and sales teams to create, edit, and publish visual materials.
Content marketer
Content marketers are essential to your digital and print marketing efforts. Consider including a content marketer on your team to write, edit, and publish text and web copy for promotional use.
Website developer
You may include a website developer on your marketing team to build and maintain your web pages in coordination with the rest of the team to create an internet presence that best supports your objectives.
Pay-per-click (PPC) specialist
Consider including a PPC specialist to handle advertising placement, review spending, and report ad performance to top management.
3. Allocate Budget
A marketing budget outlines all the financial resources a business intends to allocate for marketing-related projects. If you have a limited budget, you can work with freelancers. For example, you need to film a video across the country from where you live. You can tap a freelance videographer to get the footage you need.
For temporary campaigns, you can also hire a short-term freelancer before bringing on a full-timer. You may contact your network for recommendations, or consider using a freelancing platform like UpWork. Since freelancers typically charge an hourly rate, you should check your budget before hiring.
4. Write Clear Job Descriptions
A competent marketing team should include acquisition, monetization, and content experts.
Acquisition
Acquisition specialists are skilled in understanding target audiences, conducting market research, and developing effective strategies to attract new customers. The acquisition team's key components are SEO, copywriting, and paid advertising.
Monetization
Monetization specialists also develop customer retention strategies to ensure that existing customers continue to do business with the company. Generally, PPC marketers, email marketers, and sales teams are vital members of the monetization pillar.
Content
Content experts are skilled in content development, which sometimes includes white papers, social media posts, blog articles, and video scripts.
5. Recruit Candidates
Social media platforms are shaping how modern businesses find and connect with potential employees. From LinkedIn's professional networking features to Instagram's visual attraction, the hiring process has become a multifaceted journey.
Recent social recruiting research shows that 98 percent of recruitment and branding teams use social media. The main reason is the broad reach at a relatively affordable cost, helping recruiters achieve their objectives.
6. Conduct Interviews and Assessments
A job interview is an opportunity for an employer to assess a candidate’s skills and knowledge and determine whether they would be a positive cultural addition. You could hire the best marketer in the world, but if you cannot communicate with them, you won't achieve anything meaningful.
Additionally, soft skills like teamwork, adaptability, and problem-solving are crucial for any marketing team. Evaluate these qualities in a candidate to ensure they align with your company culture and can work well with your existing team.
7. Onboard and Train Your Team
To effectively onboard a new team member, focus on these key points:
- Prepare a clear and concise onboarding plan
- Start small and gradually increase responsibilities
- Prioritize information
- Establish open communication
Following these steps can help your new hire feel welcomed, supported, and productive.
8. Set Performance Metrics
You can evaluate progress toward specific marketing objectives by setting clear, quantifiable key performance indicators (KPIs). To give you an idea, here are seven KPIs for measuring your digital marketing plan’s success.
- Impressions
- Search engine rankings
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Cost per Click
- Conversion Rate
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
- Return on investment (ROI)
9. Foster a Collaborative Culture
Collaboration is the backbone of business success. The most successful companies regularly assess how to improve teamwork in the workplace and actively promote collaboration.
Marketing automation helps B2B businesses nurture, qualify, and pass leads to sales. The most popular marketing automation tools are Adobe Marketo Engage, Zapier, and HubSpot.
10. Continuous Learning and Improvement
Once you have hired the right people for your marketing team, train them regularly so they can contribute to the company's success. By training employees, you are upgrading their skills and increasing their eagerness to stay at the company.
Wrapping Up
When you hire a marketing team for your business, you should focus on your long-term marketing plan. It would be best if you had a checklist of things you want to accomplish before you start the hiring process. Remember, every hire is an opportunity for growth. By meticulously creating your marketing team, you’re building a group of experts while cultivating a driving force to bring your business to new heights.
