Building a Marketing Team: What Comes First
Founder and Marketing Consultant, Kelli Williams recently contributed to a “Virtual Panel” series: Building a Marketing Team – What Comes First. This four-person Virtual Panel featured a Q&A exchange with four marketing leaders; Barb Bertsch, Karen Kleindl, Kelli Williams, and Jim Arnost.
The following are the virtual panel questions and Kelli’s responses.
Q: What are some common indicators that a growing business is ready to make marketing a dedicated role or department?
Kelli’s A: I believe marketing is a central role in any new, growing, or tenured business. To be seen as a credible business, at a minimum, businesses create a summary of what they do/what customers can buy, sales collateral, and a website. All of this is basic marketing.
As businesses grow, the need for strong, strategic marketing grows as well. Sometimes companies need more awareness or leads. Sometimes the competitive landscape changes and the company needs to adjust. Sometimes the value proposition changes and the company needs to react. Sometimes customer expectations change, and the company needs to respond. Whatever the reason, businesses need to rethink and reevaluate their need for marketing when it’s time to ‘raise the bar’ on their brand and communications.
When this change happens, it’s time to bring in a person who has a strong background and a track record in designing and developing strategic marketing plans, teams, and budgets to fulfill the plan.
Q: How is hiring a marketer different than hiring other roles within the business (i.e. sales, project management, finance)?
Kelli’s A: When hiring a marketing leader, it’s important to hire someone who has marketing experience and a track record as a marketing leader, not just a current high performer in your business. Although it might feel like a good growth opportunity for a high performer or a safe hire, I recommend hiring a proven marketing leader who can succeed based on previous training and expertise.
Once you hire the person, set them up for success by setting them up with a clear vision, purpose, and clearly articulated company goals to ensure they know the business plan and expectations. Then trust the leader’s background and expertise and give them space and time to do their job. Creating a marketing discipline and then seeing the return on the investment takes time.
Q: When it comes to making an initial marketing hire, should companies bring on a less experienced, more tactical (more affordable) person? Or should they hire a more senior leader? What are the pros and cons of each approach?
Kelli’s A:
I think the answer is that there is never a one size fits all approach to hiring a marketing resource. I would recommend the management team ask themselves a few simple questions to help them evaluate what might be right for their business.
· Are you looking for a marketing person to join the leadership team and help to steer the direction of your business?
· Are you looking for a marketing person to lead product management and innovation or other initiatives beyond marketing?
· Are you planning to set the strategic direction for the marketing person to execute against, or are you looking for the marketer to help define the strategy?
· What decisioning capability will the person have within the organization?
· What budget do you have to pay the resource?
Depending on your answers, your business may currently be better suited for a less experienced, more tactical person or a more senior leader.
Q: If a business has never employed a marketer or marketing leader in the past, how would you recommend they go about defining the role and screening candidates to make the right hire?
Kelli’s A: Bringing in a new discipline and new perspective to your business can be a big change. I recommend utilizing all your best resources to help make the decision. Explore if marketing is the correct solution to support your business growth needs. Use every resource and network connection. Talk to other business leaders. Attend industry events. Research marketing success stories (and failures). Talk to different marketers within your network. Use all of your resources to define what marketing is and what it can do to help your business grow. If this feels like a daunting task, you should consider bringing in a business/marketing consultant to do the evaluation work with you or on your behalf.
Q: What is the biggest mistake you’ve seen businesses make in defining and hiring for the marketing role? What is one piece of advice that you would offer to help leaders be successful in building their marketing role or department?
Kelli’s A: The one piece of advice I would give to a leader looking to bring marketing muscle into their organization is to embrace different perspectives. Be comfortable with adding a member to your team that may not think exactly like you and be open to hearing new ideas. As long as you can chalk the field for that person and help them understand the overall purpose and goals of the organization, you will be able to create a stronger, more cohesive team.
Unity is only possible when there’s diversity. Without diversity there is conformity. Conformity can lead to groupthink and no out-of-the-box ideas. Embrace a different perspective and allow your new leader to bring new ideas to the table.
Kelli Williams is the Founder of Williams Brand Consulting, Co-Founder of 40 Acres Investments, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer for multiple MN-based businesses, and a Public Speaker.
Williams Brand Consulting is an independent marketing consultancy providing services that range from Fractional CMO: senior-level omnichannel marketing strategy and team leadership on a long-term basis to strategic project expertise: ad-hoc / project-level expertise available to support short-term projects and initiatives. Contact us to learn more about how an outside-the-box approach to fulfilling your strategic marketing leadership needs may help build a strong marketing foundation and future growth.
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