Hiring A Part Time Marketing Manager

Does anyone have experience in how to hire this position? I'm looking for someone part time..maybe 10 to 15 hours a week. Handle managing and monitoring of existing marketing as well as bringing in new marketing activities and implementation. I'd also like them to do a little area marketing for which I thought I can pay some sort of incentive on leads they bring in..

I thought a good fit may be a recent stay at home parent with home improvement business background. But I've little response to my add.

My sales person suggested trying the placement office at the local university which I kind of liked because clearly such a young person should have a good knowledge of the latest and greatest in online stuff but then I thought of course they'd have no experience in practical application..

Vinney, I can't answer your question from a MM or contractor perspective but I can offer a little insight working with marketing managers as a service provider. One thing you want to look for in a MM is someone who can effectively communicate with a service provider. As long as they can articulate the objectives of a particular marketing objective, I can make that MM manager look like a hero and everyone is happy when that happens.

You're not necessarily looking for someone great at marketing, you're only looking for someone who can serve as a mediator between your marketing objectives and the person they can discern well enough to trust to meet those objectives.

Are you familiar with Upwork, other Freelance sites? Post your job there. Let me know how it goes.

I am not familiar with those sites but thank you for the info.. I have someone I'm meeting soon to interview but frankly my ROI for my add was not good. I will try your suggestion..thanks.

If you want someone to actually go out and be a face for the business then I'd stay away from the college kids. You may find that the best mix is to have an employee that does the networking(BNI, Chamber of Commerce, etc.) for you, as well as updating your website and Facebook with current projects, while leaving the heavy lifting of internet marketing to a pro. Upwork can be a good source but there's a ton of crap to sift through. I think we also have a few guys on here who really know what they're doing and could probably manage the whole package(website, ppc, local, etc.).

I do both of those things for a company but it's a full time job and I've even started farming out some of the steps, like PPC, so I can focus on sales a bit more. A real sales and marketing person gets a pretty substantial pay rate.

Hey Vinny

What Ad are you talking about? Facebook, Google, local media...

I think it depends on what marketing you want to do. It's all about understanding who you are marketing to and why. This makes a big difference when deciding what to do and how much to spend. I would definitely suggest bringing someone in with experience. At least they know what questions to ask when starting.

It's also worth looking at your online profile as whole, from website design to online ads. If you are targeting a stream of clients to your website, you want it to be a water tight bucket.

Soooooooooooooo true! Also true of all freelance sites.

To add some inside perspective, the amount of motivation I, or any other qualified professional, would have to engage in their business model can be summed up in one word: none. It's a raw deal for both the freelancer and the client but there are just enough success stories to keep the crap flowing.

In my trade, roofer, I and many of my competitors have little patience and are a bit ADHD. What I needed was a marketing person that could deal with my lack of willingness to sit down and pay attention. I needed someone who would say I'm doing this and then go do it. I don't think I would have found that in a part time person. Instead I hired a marketing company that could contract with me for marketing my roofing business.

Tony
Pro Long Roof Care

I completely agree. Let them handle the marketing while you manage your business. Did they do your website Tony?

Hi Vinny...
Hiring a marketing person is a great idea and essential for growing any business... Devote a certain percent of revenue for consistency out out good marketing. They say "Marketing is selling the sale".. with effective, consistent marketing, your sales just turns into "order taking"..

On that note you said...
My opinion is... hire someone with marketing knowledge... having home improvement knowledge is irrelevant. They need to know proper marketing and sales skills and techniques.

There are tons of freelance marketing people (including me) that would be willing to help your company grow. And because they are freelance or independent, you don't need to pay them for full time service.. they are paid either based on results or a fair and reasonable monthly retainer.

Look on craigslist, you can also hire a virtual marketing assistant, for various task on Upwork.com these guys are highly skilled and educated, but from other countries... for instance you can hire an MBA for about $10 per hour, and hire them on a per job basis..

a freelance marketing consultant can manage all your online activities, email campaigns, design flyers and handouts, build and manage website SEO, etc...

Just make sure you keep them focused on RESULTS... generating leads... Beware of hiring someone who says they do marketing.. but all they really do is build websites... Track Everything...

I hope that helps... feel free to message me if you have questions.

Upwork is an excellent address, just make sure to do the interviews personally and ask the right questions. Cheap is rarely good, so keep that in mind. Previous home improvement knowledge shouldn't be important. The person who will do the marketing will learn mostly from you about the work you do, how you do it and everything that is important in order to advertise your business. If this person is a professional, he/she will have the time and room to grow and get familiar with the niche in detail.

We've recently hired a guy to do Facebook ads and SEO for our web site. We're paying $500 month. I'm not sure if that's good or bad. But he's taking care of everything for us and we're already starting to see a return.

Without knowing specifics I can't say for sure the price is good or bad but I will say it seems fair for a small business web site in average market conditions. But since you are already seeing results I'd say that says all that needs to be said.

Since you're new to CT, welcome to the community.

I have found, from talking to friends, and myself, that hiring one marketing person is not a good idea.

Assumptions that go into doing that:
You have to know enough marketing to know what type of marketer to hire.
You have to know enough not to be ripped off.
You have to pay them and still worry about if the job is getting done.

You are most likely better off hiring a marketing firm or bringing in a business partner or a marketing as a service subscription.

All of those solutions above are better options. It will allow you to focus on running your business and doing great client and project work.

Has anyone here ever hired a small business coach to helped them run their business? I have heard that might be a good option as well. Would love to hear some thoughts.

I dunno, you don't trust a marketing person to do the marketing but you'd hire a business coach to run your business?

It's very possible to check a potential employee's credentials and portfolio, especially with something as tangible as marketing. The issue is that a good marketing person is going to already have a job or command a high salary so a biz with a small budget is going to have to take a chance on hiring a inexperienced person or hire a talented person for a much smaller amount of time.

About the biz coach thing: I meet a ton of business coaches and almost all of them have the same issue, lack of attention span. Most of them aren't even very good at business so they just give generic advice and then move on before the lack of result manifest, or they blame the customer on not following through. Some are pretty savvy and enjoy the challenge of being involved with a business for a short period of time and trouble shooting issues, they wouldn't consider a permanent position unless it was much more lucrative. Then there are the retired people who just like to help newer businesses succeed, again, not looking for a job.

How large is your business VinnyE? If you're under the $2 million or so per year mark - hiring a part-time marketing manager might not be the best next step.

The right strategy will depend on your local market and service. But in my experience it's better to focus on dominating very few channels to drive leads - rather than hiring a generalist marketing manager who'll dabble in a lot of areas.

The problem with most of the marketing managers I've dealt with seem to have a very vague understanding of what they should actually be doing.

They take a shotgun approach - they play with Facebook a bit, add some blog posts to the website, try a little email campaign, work on your website SEO and maybe have a play in Adwords.

It's like hiring a handyman to do 5 different specialist jobs. You might get some results but there's a good chance it won't be great.

Usually they haven't mastered any of these channels (and they're each very different) or taken the time to hone what really works.

Marketing a small business (especially a home improvement business) should be about spending a predictable amount of money to generate a predictable amount of leads & sales.

If you want to drive serious growth, you need to evaluate the various marketing channels available to you - then focus all your attention on the one most likely to drive results for your business.

Each of the channels I talked about above can drive hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions) of dollars revenue by themselves if used correctly.

The best way to focus is to work with a specialist who understands that channel inside and out, as well as understanding what actually works in your market. Once you've maxed out the opportunity in one channel you can move to the next. You'll get far better results in a lot shorter time frame.

The best in-house marketing managers I've dealt with aren't doing 4 different jobs themselves. They're coordinating different specialists a company works with to dominate 2 or 3 channels.

When you get to the point of needing someone to manage a couple of specialists - your business should be well into the millions.

This is great advice. Figure out what you'd be paying a part-time marketing manager (10-15 hours times $X per hour) and instead find a social media specialist who can create/manage a campaign for a small monthly fee, while putting the rest of your budget (previously set aside to hire someone) into targeted Facebook or Google ads.

Keep in mind, this isn't a "one and done" strategy. You may need to run for a period of 3-6 months in order to start seeing cumulative results. And if your campaigns are successful in growing revenue, you might be able to hire that marketing manager after all! Win-win.