6 Things You Need to Know Before Hiring Your First Marketing Manager - Part 2
If you’ve been reading along with us from Part 1 of this series, we hope you’re finding this helpful. This next part digs into the expectations for your marketer and how that ties into ROI.
Be Realistic with ROI
Don’t expect your marketing person to show positive ROI on all of their activities
I’ve heard it said before: “We’ll bring on a marketing person and see what the results are. If we can show good ROI for that position, then maybe we’ll keep them on.”
(My first questions to this statement are usually: Does that person have full control over the decisions that impact their ability to succeed? Will they be able to touch anything in the business they need to in order to succeed? Will you clarify for them upfront what they need to accomplish and what your expectations are?)
Marketing is not sales. The work that marketers do is not always in direct correlation to sales revenue. The goals can be completely different and may have a long-term focus rather than a short-term one.
Marketers work on things like brand awareness (answering the question: Who are you?), marketing operations and infrastructure (see Part 1 of this article), managing or communicating with others inside and outside the organization, coordinating projects, working with vendors, creating content that generates interest from potential customers, etc. All of these things are potentially critical to driving revenue for the company. But are any of them going to show direct ROI?
It’s likely no.
Just like hiring an additional service staff member doesn’t necessarily drive the next sale, but it does help take care of existing customers, which over time leads to a great reputation. Just like hiring an HR person doesn’t drive sales, but it might address employee morale or retention issues that are slowing down productivity, therefore eating away at profit.
Consider that your marketing professional is working on customer activities that will drive revenue over time, but do not expect that all activities will be directly correlated to sales.
Leave Time for Analysis
expect it to take time to measure and report on results
When it comes to tactical ROI, not all tactics will have the same ROI expectation. That doesn’t mean they’re not working or useful. Your company may have goals beyond sales, and some activities may be dedicated to reaching those goals. For example, you may have specific reasons to price something the way you do, or advertise in a certain place, which may open up new doors with partners or vendors, increase visibility to a new audience, or serve a more altruistic goal.
Even among the tactics that are meant to drive new customers and sales, not all of them are measurable, and many of them overlap each other, so expecting tactical ROI can be nearly impossible. Not only are many channels not measurable beyond guessing at estimates, but if you’re using a lot of channels or messages, it takes a lot of time to collect, analyze, and communicate results. It’s up to you to make sure your expectations around measurement are realistic.
For example, if your marketer is so swamped that they don’t have time to measure, analyze, and report on how things are going, but you hold them accountable to an ROI goal, which they don’t have time to calculate, that’s not a realistic expectation.
*Note: If your marketing person is that swamped right out of the gate, please help them prioritize their work or get them additional help. It is possible you needed to hire two people!
Full-Time, Part-Time, Outsourced?
Determine if you need a full-time staff person, or if outsourced marketing would be a better solution
Depending on your company’s needs, you may not even need a full-time marketer. If you or someone on your leadership team is running the marketing function successfully but needs help with executing specific tactics, you may only need a part-time or contracted marketer. These types of marketers work well with specific project start/end dates, a well-defined scope of work, and a reasonable budget. Many of them are also highly specialized in a specific skill set (web design, graphic design, social media management, digital advertising, etc.).
If your situation is just the opposite, where you have someone executing somewhat successfully, but your leadership team isn’t sure if those are the right activities or why you’re still doing them, then you may be looking for what we call a ‘fractional CMO’ or outsourced marketing leader. This is someone who will work with your leadership team on a part-time basis to ask and answer questions related to the overall revenue funnel - not just “marketing,” “sales,” or “service.” A fractional CMO - serving as a contractor, not a full-time employee - helps you stay accountable and focused on delivering results throughout the funnel and will bring together the key players in your organization to help find solutions that drive overall revenue growth. As a contractor, your company benefits from their experience and wisdom without the high costs of executive-level salary and benefits.
Need Help?
If you’re thinking of bringing on a marketing person, but you’re still not sure if that’s the right move, we can help! As a fractional CMO, we can help implement the marketing operations and infrastructure, walk you through business-case budgeting, determine a baseline tactical plan, select vendors, and help you with ongoing oversight of the customer/revenue functions in the business. If at some point you are ready to hire someone full-time, the ground will be well-established for them to come in and grow from there. We can also help with projects ranging from content writing to email marketing to marketing analytics.