Most business owners and CEOs have no idea how to hire the right marketing person. They just don’t know what to look for. I’ve seen many smart business leaders churn through dozens of people before they find a match.
The revolving door gets costly.
Most businesses rely on small, efficient teams of people for all their marketing needs. They hire interns to handle social media, freelancers for design help, and specialists to managed the entire effort.
But without good leadership those marketing efforts can go completely astray.
So sometimes, the best marketing advice I can offer is how to hire the right marketing person.
It’s not easy, and the answer varies dramatically depending on the skills and interests of the CEO or owner.
But one thing’s for sure… If you have a fledgling start-up, you better think carefully about the type of person you hire to spearhead your marketing efforts.
The most common mistake is hiring a specialist to do it all… someone who’s deep into SEO, or social media, or web development, or graphic design. Whatever.
Those “doers” are all important team players in your marketing mix, but what you need is a thinker/doer to lead the way. Unless you’re a marketing generalist yourself, you’ll need an idea person who can wear many different hats.
According to the Harvard Business Review, “top marketing talent must be able to combine skills that don’t often go together, and might even seem contradictory… Analytical + Creative. Innovation + Execution. Storytelling + sales skills.” You won’t find that combination of skill sets in the typical marketing specialist.
In this age of marketing specialization, you need a generalist… someone who can take the podium and speak for you one minute, and then jump in and get work done the next.
Here are three good tips on how to hire the right marketing person:
1. Broad experience means better perspective.
The marketing game is changing quickly these days, and there are a lot of moving parts. You need someone with enough perspective and experience to understand the entire playing field and keep all the balls in the air.
If you hire a specialist you’ll get a myopic view of marketing and branding. If she only has experience in social media, she’ll assess your entire branding effort and come up with many creative ways to use social channels.
It’s like the old saying… if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Recently I sat in on a presentation by a young man pitching his social media expertise to a non-profit organization. With no research, no understanding of the brand or the business model, and no experience to speak of, he was absolutely convinced that the organization should replace every other marketing tactic with social media advertising.
That’s not the kind of thinking that will take your business to the next level.
3. Specialists don’t know strategy.
Specialists often talk “strategy.” One will offer an email marketing strategy, another candidate will bring a social media strategy, a digital strategy, a direct response strategy, a Facebook strategy, an SEO strategy and even a TikTok strategy.
If you’re not careful you’ll be swimming in “strategies” with no ability to execute.
Don’t be fooled. There’s only one strategy. Everything else is just a to-do list.
British adman Simon Pont puts it quite well: “One strategy, one collective intent; many expressions and executions, all with moving parts and all aligned. It’s all about linking into that one given strategy and expressing it through many specialties.”
You can always hire outside help on a project-by-project basis to execute specific tactics and get through that tactical to-do list. What you can’t find so easily is someone who can think strategically and come up with ideas that actually do qualify as a true marketing strategy.
“A strategy is an idea… a conceptualization of how a goal could be achieved.”
Emphasis on IDEA! Successful marketing strategies are rooted in big ideas. Not punch lists.
For a big idea you need someone with creative skills, uncommon business sense and a good working knowledge of all the different marketing specialties.
In a perfect world you’d find an experienced, well-rounded marketing pro who brings strategic planning experience as well as creative skills to the table… a one man marketing machine who could to analyze market research data one day, extrapolate that one little nugget of consumer insight you need, and write a brilliant ad the next.
That’s a rare breed. If you find someone like that, pay him or her handsomely. Give them tons of freedom and let them in on every crucial management decision. I guarantee you, your company will be better off for it. If you can’t find that person, call me.
3. Effective managers know something about what they’re managing.
If you hire a manager who knows nothing about computer programming, he’s going to have a very hard time managing a team of computer programmers. Some fundamental knowledge of the material is necessary.
Same holds true in marketing.
Most specialists simply don’t have the fundamental knowledge of the material they need to manage the whole effort efficiently.
For example… If you hire a social media specialist to drive your entire marketing effort, she’s going to struggle when it comes to managing traditional advertising, content marketing, direct response TV, or any other tactics.
Don’t expect that person to suddenly be capable of doing anything beyond her specialty. That’s just not realistic. Marketing is important, and you could lose a lot of money waiting for your marketing leader to “grow into the position.”
Instead, hire a generalist who’s already there. Then hire a specialist to do her specialty thing under the leadership of the savvy generalist. Don’t hire a specialist to manage other specialists. It doesn’t work.
Look, hiring right is very hard. I know that. (That’s why I’m a firm believer in hiring HR specialists to handle the initial screening and recruitment and help with the interviewing.)
Hopefully this piece will help you avoid costly trial and error when hiring a marketing person. And maybe a great, well-rounded marketing generalist will find the perfect position that will lead to fame and fortune. In either case, it helps to have a strategic branding company on your side, as well.
About the author…
John Furgurson is one of those valuable generalists. He cut his teeth in the direct response advertising and has done corporate film, advertising of all kinds, content marketing, PR, social media and just about every other specialty under the big branding umbrella. So if you’re still wondering how to hire the right marketing person, hire him to lead your marketing team, and then just add a couple specialists in supporting roles.
