Recruiting your first marketer? You’re not alone!

This morning I took yet another spec for a marketing manager job, this time for a small IT consultancy. They have a team of 3 sales people that generate a good amount of business but the MD feels there is more opportunity in the market place, so they’re now looking for their first marketer…and they are not alone!

Over the last year, we’ve seen a significant increase in the number of SME’s looking into marketing recruitment for the first time. The reasons cited for the vacancies tend to centre on a need to keep control of costs and generate more quality leads, and ultimately make the sales team more efficient and a productive unit.

Historically, many small business owners take a more traditional approach to generating new business. They hire small teams of field sales people and when you factor in salaries, bonus schemes, company cars it all adds up at a time when keeping the overheads in check is important.  

This door knocking approach can be effective to a point but what if the doors aren’t really open? Are your teams wasting time on the road attending meetings they won’t close?  Are they struggling to generate the meetings in the first place? It’s a bit like buying a nice expensive Ferrari  but not being able to go above 40mph – you don’t get bang for your buck.

At this juncture you have 3 choices – either recruit another expensive sales person, recruit your first marketer or stay where you are…and in a down turn the latter probably isn’t a good option! And when it’s done well,  adopting a more marketing led approach and establishing a series of lead generation programmes will simply generate more sales – that is how powerful good marketing can be. And it needn’t be at a huge expense.

The marketer provides the framework in which your sales team can operate and sell in. By passing across a steady flow of leads, your team will spend more time talking to the right people, in the right companies at the right time.
And they have an array of tactics up their sleeves to help you achieve this. Email marketing, seminars, webinars, optimising the website and social media are all proven methods to generate leads. If integrated with thought leadership through videos, white papers, news, blog posts or research you could end up with a very busy sales team. And this type of marketing doesn’t require big budgets.

Practical examples of these tactics could include downloads of a recent white paper, a list of clicks from an email campaign promoting a video on a website, consistently engaging members in a LinkedIn group, attendance at a seminar or a response to an email campaign.

The strength of these leads will vary depending on the tactics used and the aims of the campaigns but the opportunities are warmer and will enable the sales person to do what they do - build the relationship and close the sale. If there is no sale to be had right now, they can be re-marketed to at a later date….they might even come to you first and every salesperson loves that!     

Have you been recruited as a company’s first marketer?  What was your experience? Maybe you’re a business owner and experiencing a similar situation? We’d love to hear your views!

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