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With 2020 around the corner and every recruitment and staffing company desperate to stand out marketing is now at the top of every owner’s agenda.
So, how will you deliver what needs to be done? When is it time to recruit your own marketer?
These are questions we are often asked, and we explore this in more detail in this weeks post and podcast.
- How ambition and goals link to your marketers, arrival
- Marketers can’t do everything
8 signs of a great recruitment marketer : Access the blog
Marketing Training Superfast Circle
Hi everyone, this is Sharon Newey from Superfast recruitment. And over the last week, I’ve been asked a particular question on several occasions, so I thought I’d share my answers and insights from working with organisations of different sizes over many years.
When Should I Bring In Marketing Support?
First, the question, though, a client asked me, “What is the most appropriate time for me to be thinking about bringing in an internal marketing person?
In fact, is that what I should be thinking about or do I keep outsourcing? Or another option was, do I train one of my admin people to take on some of the more admin functions of marketing?
Then the last one was; “I’ve got a consultant who’s interested in marketing, had some element of marketing in their degree. Should I look at that person and give them some marketing responsibilities?”
So there’s quite a lot of choice here. And I guess there’s another choice that I threw into the mix and that was, do you do a bit of everything?
Just playing devil’s advocate, of course, 
How Big Do You Want To Grow?
Now, what is the answer, then? Before I do answer, I would suggest that what you need to do is step back and think about what’s the scale of your ambition?
Are you serious and committed to growing this business?
And you’ve got some tight timeframes because there are things that you want to be doing with the business. So think about how much do you want to grow and then think about what’s the best way of resourcing that, because if you’re committed to scaling and you’ve got some ambitious goals then absolutely, I would strongly recommend that you think about bringing somebody internally to support you with your marketing.
Now I’m not going to sit here and say that they can do everything because they won’t be able to.
It’s like the 360 recruiting model, isn’t it? There’s lots of talk in industry that that model is no longer sustainable based on all the changes in how the industry has developed and how we move forward.
It’s not realistic to expect them to be a copywriter, a web designer, a coder, a graphics person, a pay per click specialist. There’s an awful lot of different elements and specialisms within marketing.
I mean think about it. Here we are a marketing and training company.
And what do we do?
We have our own web designer that we’ve worked with. I think we’re onto the third iteration of our website. We’ve got a pay per click partner that we work with too.
So we outsource areas of specialism. It’s only sensible and practical, but you know, when, at what point in someone’s size and growth do you start thinking about bringing that marketing person on board?
Well, it does depends on the scale of that ambition. Let me give you a couple of different examples.
So we have one client with a headcount of five people, but they are absolutely focused on a significant growth plan. So this year they have brought in an internal marketing person.
And what has that allowed them to do?
They have been creating content and blogging consistently for the first time in several years since we’d been working together with them. They are getting their email marketing out every week. They have in the last month run their first webinar. That is something that they just would not have done had they not had the time and the support of this internal marketing person.
So now their brand presence is building, they’re engaging more with clients, and they’re starting to build momentum. So that’s how the model can work with a smaller business.
Let’s go to the other extreme though.
We have a client with a headcount of 11. They’ve got an internal marketing person. And then we’ve got clients who are in that 20, 30 headcount bracket and one that’s in the 50 bracket where one company has one full-time person who’s working across two brands and outsources many of the tasks.
Then we have another company that have two marketing people, one marketing executive, and then someone who specialises in all the graphics. They are still outsourcing their content to ourselves.
So, it’s a blended model. So what I would say to you is think about what the scale of your growth ambitions are and what’s right for you, where you are now.
Do plan though in your business plan to be introducing a marketing person because you can achieve so much more when you’ve got someone with real marketing expertise and insight and clarity.
I think the last thing that I want to say is, if you’re at that point where you are also thinking about “Well should I, shouldn’t I?” or “Actually it’s in the plan for 2020, which is great, but what kind of person do I need in terms of a marketing executive or a marketing manager?”
What I want you to do is I am going to drop a link to a post-Denise wrote for one of our clients who was at this point thinking about, “We want to recruit. But what should we be looking for?”
And Denise put together a great blog post that several people have commented on how valuable that’s been in that recruiting process.
So that’s Sharon Newey from Superfast Recruitment. And we’ll talk to you soon.
If you want to support your marketer, then our Superfast Circle programme is for you. You can find out more by clicking the link here.
