When to hire a marketing leader for small business?
If you have been following our recent blog about the successful hiring of marketing leaders then you would have some of the essential considerations in finding and securing the right candidate. To supplement this for small businesses here are some specific thoughts for you. As a small business you might be running marketing on a shoestring budget, or the owner might be dipping in and out of marketing when there is the time! Is there ever time?
Most SME’s we work with wanted to know the answer to the question, how to hire a marketer and a cost-effective price.
SME’s are the lifeblood of the UK economy. To help you here is a guide to what you can get as a small business owner.
Why is it important?
No matter the industry you operate in you will need to communicate proactively with customers. People overinflate the role of marketing, but we believe that that is the value. We work with businesses from a range of sectors who share similar marketing challenges and as such our clients then benefit from that holistic view.
The biggest risk to a small business is making a bad hire, and wasting funds, time and internal buy into the project.
What do we need to consider?
What do you need?
When you are evaluating whether to hire a marketing director or senior marker there are lots of considerations as an SME.
Typically you will have a smaller team
What is your business model and the associated marketing model?
Your business model or the future business model that you want to develop will drive your marketing model and thus your marketing need from a people perspective.
How much will a senior marketer cost?
Cost. Cost is a big consideration of SME’s who are looking to hire marketing leaders.
There are a range of options here from hiring someone permanently, to taking on a contractor and both of these options can be done on a permanent or part-time basis.
Costs will vary depending on your decisions here but also based on the type of marketer you hire. ‘Senior’ is clearly a relative term. In an SME context, a marketing manager might manage all the marketing for the business, and a marketing manager might have 5-10 years experience. Within this, some managers might be at £30k and some might be at £90k. Associated day rates would range from £150 per day to £500 per day.
We’ve included below some useful further information on costs, but it would be best to speak to one of our consultants regarding costs.
Where’s the best place to find senior marketers?
Well, there are a number of dedicated marketing recruitment agencies in London and if you would like to have a list of these you can download our marketing recruitment agency list.
If you are looking for alternatives to recruitment agencies then you would be looking at job sites and if you would like a list of these you can download our marketing job site list.
Alternatives to hiring?
You can look at the marketing agency market. Here you might be able to get marketing support covering any marketing skill. Marketing agencies do offer you value but we would suggest to you that it can leave you waiting for the agency to prioritise your work over other clients, that might shout louder or pay more.
For the cost-conscious looking to hire there might be more value in a high-quality part-time marketer versus an agency. In this instance we would recommend that your hire has a broad range of skills, and potentially has some hands on ability, which will save you money in unnecessary agency fees.
Should I use sites like fiver to find a marketer?
We see small businesses often hire marketers from sites like fiver or:
- Upwork.com
- Freelancer.com
- PeoplePerHour.com
- Guru.com
- TopTal.com
- Codeable.io
- Outsourcely.com
- Truelancer.com
This really is an unfair question. We shouldn’t have asked it!
These sites have good value, but they do then put the emphasis on you to do a lot of work to evaluate potential options. As a rule of thumb, they are more suitable for Adhoc or project-based work, rather than strategic or longer-term investment & transformation projects.
Which is where we come in.
You can also consider marketing recruitment agencies in London and the UK. Do check out our complete list of marketing recruitment agencies.
How we work at The Hidden Market:
We work with SME’s on building marketing teams & have a range of products to support the varied and developing needs of businesses.
We intentionally proactive, working to find and engage with passive talent, i.e. marketing talent that is not currently looking, and the benefit to our clients is that we are doing that across the board, across a range of businesses. Our focus is on building communities and driving engagement with marketing leaders which is achieved via relationships media and engagement. We also harness the power of technology to build better and deeper relationships with candidates so we can measure engagement and predict who is most likely ready for a move.
Unfortunately, recruitment often is just the supply of a CV, and arranging an interview. We’re solving the recruitment problem with a superior human-led, data & tech facilitated solution. Candidates are matched on both quantitative and qualitative measures by both our matching model and us humans too! We work with clients in a variety of ways and put together plans on a case by case basis depending on client need.