A week in the life of a marketing person: How to use your marketing resource
4-minute read
In her recent blog post, my colleague Stefanie Gajdecki wrote about hiring someone who is better at marketing than you are. I couldn’t agree more.
Over the past few months, I have spoken with many entrepreneurs who are reluctant to hire a marketing professional because they don’t know what that person could or should be doing. From my experience with clients, this can create growth challenges when companies decide to completely outsource the marketing function and cross their fingers hoping that things will go well.
So, what does a marketing person in a small or medium-sized business actually do? I took the liberty of creating a scenario that provides an overview of the week in the life of a marketing person. I hope that after reading this, you’ll give some thought to the idea of having an internal person drive your business forward.
Setting the stage
For our example, I have come up with XYZ Corporation, which produces two lines of products for the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) industry.
Overview of XYZ Corporation’s business
$7 million
Annual gross sales
60% of sales
Wholesale B2B product line, which is sold via distributors of industrial products
40% of sales
B2C product line sold directly to homeowners
2—3%
Annual growth rate
25 employees
Most of whom are in operations and production, but there are four salespeople working mainly with distributor groups.
Company XYZ has a good brand reputation within the industry, but the retail market continues to struggle with growth. The good news is they really want to grow and have set aside $250K to promote the business annually.
Hiring the right person for the job
They have experience working with a few content management systems, can add and update content to websites, and have experience running both Google AdWords and Facebook Ads. They know how to leverage a marketing budget.
They need some assistance from external partners for the creative development of ad and sales materials, but they know their way around a video camera and iMovie. They have also worked with public relations professionals in crafting messages and writing for the web.
A week in the life of your new marketing hire
Our marketer comes to work on Monday with a full docket of things to do for XYZ Corporation.
Now remember, this person’s role is to help fill the funnel with qualified leads for the salespeople to close. They should also support all the customer facing channels that might require a response from someone in the business.
This person must work closely with senior management to ensure there is alignment on every piece of communication from XYZ Corporation. They are accountable and responsible for the marketing strategy and plan for the year, as well as for properly managing your marketing budget.
The brand is everything for this person (i.e. How do our customers and prospects perceive us relative to how we present ourselves?).
With all that said, here’s a week in their life.
An investment that pays off
In my opinion, this is a typical week for any marketer. It’s also just a fraction of what an experienced marketing person can do for you.
Your marketing person can help educate you on the right marketing strategies and tactics, as well as do a deep dive in the data to provide customer and sales support to open up that sales funnel.
It will cost money to bring them in, keep them motivated and give them a budget to work with, but a good marketer with a strategic mindset will take that ball and run with it.
I’d like feedback as to what you think? Is there enough work here to keep someone busy and add some value to your brand and business?
Marketers: Does this sound remotely familiar to you?
Let us know your thoughts.