How to find the right marketing manager for your business
Are you looking at hiring a Marketing Manager for your business?
Before you do, it's important to know the different types of Marketing Manager. Each have pros and cons, and it may be easier to think of these like ingredients. So rather than trying to find a 'Strategic' Marketing Manager for example, make sure you find someone with the right mix of traits to suit you, your business and your goals.
Please note this list is not meant to be comprehensive, but an idea to help get you started. Know of any other types of Marketing Manager? Add a comment below!
So what are the key types of Marketing Manager?
'Strategic' Marketing Manager - someone who can help translate what you want to achieve with your business into a strategy, a clear, accountable plan, and help narrow the focus on what will make a real impact to your outcomes. Ideally the strategy is simple (no more than one page/slide) and memorable - so once it has been created you can easily bring to mind what the focus is to achieve your outcomes. The good test for this is a day after seeing the strategy, can you remember the key pillars or do you need to refer to the slides.
Here's an example questions to help quantify this:
Tell me an example where you have created a strategy and explain what the challenges were, what was your strategy, and if possible, what were the results
Live test - provide a bunch of data and ask the candidate to create a strategy on the spot on how to achieve the outcomes (e.g. your market share, competitor product launch planned, where you spend and what the current outcomes are)
Share your current strategy and ask the candidate to provide feedback on what works and what could be done better (you also get free feedback on your strategy!)
'Performance' Marketing Manager - someone who is exceptional at delivering results in the most effective and efficient way. Once the plan is set they then get on with either doing the work or making sure it get's done to achieve the agreed outcomes. A good way to identify this is individuals who have clear measured results in their resume and can share lots of examples with numbers of the impact of their work - it's important to make sure the numbers being shared make sense for the outcomes you want (e.g. increase leads or revenue compared to increased social likes or followers).
Here's an example questions to help quantify this:
Tell me where you have achieved agreed outcomes, how you went about it and how you performed against target
Give me an example where you haven't met budget part-way through a campaign and what you did to help turn it around (including the outcome if not shared)
Live test - we currently spend $X on ad words and get X leads, what would you do to get more leads for the same budget
'Generalist' Marketing Manager - someone who is across all areas of marketing, such as product, price, place and promotion, with limited depth in each area. For example, they may know social media, search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimisation (SEO) but not have deep technical understanding how these all work (e.g. meta tags and descriptions when it comes to SEO). This becomes more important depending on your business and the role. For example if you are an online retailer and need to build online sales, you may need deep specific knowledge in these areas to achieve your outcomes.
Here's an example questions to help quantify this:
What areas of marketing do you manage and to what depth?
If holistic marketing is about having the right product, at the right price, promoted to the right audience, in a location they can easily access - which parts of this do you manage well and which areas do you lean on experts to help with?
Marketing covers lost of topics such as events, sponsorship, social media, websites - which areas do you add the most value in?
'Specialist' Marketing Manager - someone who knows a specific area of marketing deeply. They may not know all areas of marketing, such as advertising, but are experts in ensuring your website ranks highly in google search, for example.
Here's an example question you can ask to help quantify this:
What's your area of expertise in marketing?
What extra study or qualifications do you have in this area?
Why did you pick this area to specialise in?
'Hands on' Marketing Manager - someone who rolls up their sleeves and gets their hands dirty actually getting the work done, whether this is organising events, creating content, sending emails or updating websites for example.
Here's an example question you can ask to help quantify this:
Some people are good at being Generals and laying out the plan, others are better at being soldiers and living on the front-line getting the work done - which one best describes you?
If we were to host an event/run a campaign, what role would you play in bringing this to life?
What help would you bring in to host an event/run a campaign?
'Leading' Marketing Manager - someone who is great at setting clear goals and ensuring others get it done. This may be either direct employees or outside advertising agencies, with the 'Leading' Marketing Manager role about goal setting, measuring and co-ordinating, rather than directly doing.
The questions to help identify are covered in the above 'Hands on' Marketing Manager questions.
'Creative' Marketing Manager - someone who likes coming up with the ideas, concepts or designing the marketing materials. This is someone with a creative flair, that may be more interested in the design and how something looks.
Here's an example question you can ask to help quantify this:
What role do you play in bringing marketing collateral (brochures, social media content etc.) to life?
How do you know if marketing collateral is right for our business?
Have you created any marketing materials yourself? Can you share an example?
If you know you want a Marketing team or Marketing Manager and not sure where to start, we can help. We have over 10+ years working in businesses in senior marketing roles. We can help you clearly define and prioritise your challenges, come up with a simple strategy, and then help you find the right person to get it done, or even get it done for you.
Click here to get in touch, or click here to find out what a marketing partner may be a better first step for your business (hint: it's not the same as hiring an advertising agency).