Hiring a marketing manager is a painstaking process. A marketing manager’s role is not limited to spearheading just a specific department or a small team of people. In today’s connected world, the scope of a marketing manager’s responsibilities has grown beyond advertising and public relations.
This is why it is crucial to hire the right person for the job, and for this big role, there are a lot of things that you should consider before hiring. Hiring the wrong person can cost you time, money, and even your business. It takes a lot of HR expertise and marketing know-how to hire the right marketing manager.
Some business owners who want to avoid the deadly mistake of hiring, connect with staffing firms or professional employer organizations like to do the legwork for them.
But whether you go hands on or not, here are 15 things you should remember when hiring your next marketing manager.
1. It’s not the years, it’s the depth of experience.
10 years of marketing experience may seem more advantageous than 5 years of experience, but it’s not always true. More years of experience is not always tantamount to more knowledge.
Above all, you should look at an applicant’s track record in his or her previous roles. Discuss the strategies they used to achieve success and how they overcome challenges. Most importantly, be particular with the amount of time they spent to do it.
An effective marketing manager is someone who’s naturally ingenious and someone who can hack your business’ success and maintain it.
If you’re starting out an e-commerce store, your next marketing manager should also be experienced with e-commerce. Someone who has been previously a marketing manager but focused only Google or SEO strategies may not exactly know how to run an ecommerce business.
2. Educational background matters, too.
While most employers aren’t particularly concerned with educational background, it is still important to consider it. The reason is someone who have a formal education in business management will most likely take lesser time to cope up and learn marketing terminologies.
Experience beats education they say, but it matters when you’re hiring for someone with a specific skill like app or software development, in this case, it is commons sense to hire someone with a computer science or programming degree. It takes years to learn and master these skills so hiring someone who had formal education is your best bet.
3. When he/she speaks, people listen.
Communication is the only way for teams to generate ideas, exchange knowledge, and achieve harmony.
A marketing manager should not only be a good public speaker, but also a person of influence. As a manager, he or she is responsible for the performance of his/her team. No matter how talented the marketing manager might be, all of this would be of no essence if he/she can’t communicate this effectively to the team.
Thus, he or she can’t be considered a leader if he or she can’t influence the marketing team to the direction he/she wants.
A marketing manager with influence is someone who can directly affect the attitude of his/her team towards work. Moreover, a leader of influence makes a difference in the lives of his/her colleagues.
One way to know if someone is influential is to ask practical and situational experiences he or she experienced in the past. The ability to encourage the team after a major setback, or to lead the team towards success are key evidences of being influential as a leader.
4. A marketing expert or an authority.
We agree there’s no such thing as a perfect marketing manager, but when choosing someone, do not compromise marketing expertise.
Marketing managers will act as a focal point in bringing tremors and new marketing ideas into the company.
As said, they should be equipped with the latest techniques that they can muster in the inbound and outbound fields of business. They should be the best in their chosen niche by demonstrating superb skills in planning, advertising, and optimizing marketing campaigns.
If possible, employers should hire those people that already have good reputation in the marketing world.
If you’re thinking of hiring a marketing consultant, you should still have an in-house marketing manager. Most of the time, marketing consultants have a “done WITH you” type of service, and in this case, you should still have an in-house marketing team that will apply the strategies.
The marketing manager will still take his/her responsibilities as it is in the implementation of the strategies provided by the marketing consultant.
5. A leader by example.
A marketing manager should walk the talk. The most important trait of leadership is integrity. Marketing managers must model the behaviour they want to see from their own team.
Since most of the time they’ll be leading and directing the team, they need to show their mental strength on doing what they advise their team to do despite the odds they encounter.
In addition, they should be able to gain respect without installing hostility between them and the people under them. Raising the bar on how to be a model employee by being responsible enough to follow clock-ins, deadlines, and some other things that are simple yet have a larger significance in the company in the long run.
6. Great mentor.
The cycle of knowledge in doing business should never stop.
Marketing managers should be able to train their subordinates and give out pointers on how to be effective marketing strategists and analysts themselves. The idea of “being your own manager,” or being able to work independently as much as possible without waiting for anyone to push or lead them to finish a project should be injected in the team’s culture.
By sharing his or her knowledge, the marketing manager opens up more doors for creativity and ingenuity to come in. New ideas keep the team relevant, and the new strategies generated from this ideas keep the business going.
7. Superb working attitude.
Each company have their own set of SOPs or work culture, but a good marketing manager is not one that strives to “just” fit in. As mentioned earlier, a marketing manager is a person of influence, and that means he/she is meant to conquer frontiers that slows the company down.
It could be a flaw in the dynamics of work, bureaucracy, or in the way people look at their job itself.
Having a superb working attitude also means being determined and focused enough to finish the tasks and to achieve its corresponding goals. The marketing manager serves as the lubrication that keeps the processes smooth-flowing and with lesser obstacles ahead.
8. Egoless when it comes to finding the best ideas.
Aside from being a good leader, marketing managers should also be a good listener.
In team meetings, they should be open- minded about the ideas of their team and the people around them. They should be able to sense the pulse of the people and not pushy about their own ideas.
You’re not always right and two minds is better than one, as they say.
Eccentricity has no room inside the business world, especially if the nature of your work needs collaboration with other people. And this is especially true in marketing.
9. Calm under pressure.
Queuing deadlines are common if you’re working in a marketing team. Aside from that, upper management can also be demanding at times.
Employers should hire marketing managers that remain calm and clear headed in dealing with deadlines. Moreso, they should also be able to thrive in a fast-paced work environment.
10. In the know. Relevant.
In Marketing, the trends are fluctuating daily. To stay in the game, marketing managers should be well- informed of the latest marketing strategies.
Alongside this, it is also important for the marketing manager to be able to conduct relevant researches and interpret data analytics. It will be the basis in formulating strategies and roadmaps.
11. Social media fluent.
Social media is today’s most viable marketing platform; giving access to reach millions of prospects worldwide. In fact, marketers have focused a lot of their energy on brand awareness through social media.
Social media fluency is important because it keeps the marketing team relevant to your market’s context. Social media platforms has evolved from simply social to political platforms, and it’s important for your marketing team to know what’s “in-the-now” to meet your customers’ current needs.
In addition, this also serves as a line of communication between the company and the clients. Facebook’s Messenger has become a tool for both advertising and customer service for many companies.
Social media messaging gives your customers multiple access to reach you and opens a new line of communication for you to promote your products as well.
12. A Good PR.
Marketing is a vicious world that if you won’t compete you have to pack up and leave.
On the other hand, some business competitors bring this matter into a different level and deliver underhanded tactics such as tampering your products, spreading false rumors, doing fake reviews, etc; staining the legacy of your company.
That’s why having a know-how in doing PR is very important.
It is just right that Marketing Managers are good with these things because they have access to multiple channels of communication where you can reach your customers instantly.
13. Great references.
In hiring, doing a background check by interviewing the people on their references is a must.
There’s no better way in knowing applicants than to make interviews with their past co-workers, bosses, supervisors, etc. Sometimes, one’s professionalism is known if you just listen to the words of their co-worker’s mouth.
Furthermore, do research about their past jobs, the companies they’ve been before, and the reason they left.
14. Disagrees even when it’s controversial.
Perhaps the most important trait a marketing manager should have is the ability to disagree even when it’s controversial.
A marketing manager is one that should voice out his or her ideas while encouraging others to voice out theirs. In the same way, a marketing manager should not be hesitant to disagree or provide constructive feedback where needed.
Through this, we can really say that the marketing manager has become a leader who cares more than just an employee who does their job. Breakthrough ideas happen after going through many disagreements and polishing.
Conclusion
A good marketing manager gets the job done, a great one makes leaders. A good marketing manager is not just an expert in his/her trade, but should also be expert in dealing with people.
Their ability to influence people, their mental strength and fortitude, and their sincerity and interest on making you succeed are what you should be looking for a marketing manager.
Author: Andrew Walker is a resident writer at bradfordjacobs.com and he covers different topics including business, finance, tax returns, insurance, and many more.
