What marketers do and how they can be most effective
The expectation of a marketing team is to provide the company with a steady stream of customers who are prepared to purchase the goods or services that a business provides. The role of a marketer in the eyes of a corporation, could look like a company landing airtime to run a commercial during the superbowl. In the eyes of small business owners, this role could look as simple as someone walking around in a hotdog suit in front of a snack bar.
Some business owners choose to hire an outsourced marketing agency. At PDFfiller, we decided long ago, to use an in-house team. More than anything else, this was a decision that was designed to support the clear overseeing of our marketing and brand management from a single “decision-making center.”
It took a long time for us to figure out what kind of team we actually needed. When developing our strategy, we were faced with all the usual questions: How can we build an ergonomic marketing team? And how can we do this as quickly as possible? What’s safe to assign to the in-house team? What should be outsourced? And most importantly – how can the company save money while still getting the most out of every marketing effort?
“We agreed that it was necessary to separate the functions of creative marketing and communications. It became apparent that each of these tasks required different skill sets,” says Gal Steinberg, VP of Business Development at PDFfiller.
“In the process, we realized that it would be more convenient for us to build an “internal agency” that could develop marketing strategies and advertising campaigns for all of our products”, Steinberg explains. “So now, we have a marketing department which allows all work, from A to Z, to be done in-house. Our creative team reports directly to the appropriate supervisors and this allows us to make decisions faster and avoid lengthy approval procedures. We experiment a lot, try new marketing tools and quickly evaluate their effectiveness.”
The marketing team from a manager’s point of view
To quickly build an efficient marketing department, consider looking at it from the point of view of a manager. The trick is understanding the three basic layers of management. These are operational, tactical and strategic. Take the army for example. There is the general, the officers and the soldiers. This chain of command structure helps clarify roles and increases efficiency. In order to succeed in creating a successful in-house marketing team, you need to clearly define the various roles everyone has. This makes it easier for you to know what to expect and from whom to expect it.
How to hire marketers and not fire them in two weeks
- 42% of small businesses list hiring new employees as their biggest challenge;
- It takes an average of 27 days to hire a new employee. The best candidates are off the market within 10 days;
- On average, it costs US companies $4000 to fill a job opening;
- 48% of businesses say their best quality hires come from employee referrals;
- 9 out of 10 recruiters who used interview scheduling tools said that it had a positive impact on their decision.
Sources: Score 2015, Undercover Recruiter 2016, Bersin 2015, LinkedIn 2017, Yello 2017.
So how do you know that you have a good candidate? Although knowing technical terms related to the position is important, this by itself is not a good indicator that your candidate would make a good employee. There are other factors that need to be taken into account.
For example, the candidate may not know all the technical subtleties, but that can be made up for if the candidate is intelligent and creative. However, it is ideal that the candidate knows the marketing basics. Also, take note of “soft skills”, such as the speed of answers, behavior and reaction to questions.
ROI of marketing automation
- By 2019, the global marketing automation market will reach $5.5 billion
- 71% of companies are using marketing automation in some way
- 75% of small businesses that use a marketing automation solution see a positive ROI within the first year
- Companies using a marketing automation system have reported up to a 451% increase in qualified leads.
Sources: MarketsandMarkets, Ascend2, Wishpond.
One of the latest trends in business management is automation. Specifically, marketing automation is becoming very popular. But it’s important to understand whether or not automation is necessary for your company. And if it is, you need to be sure that it is implemented properly.
The reasons for automating the sales process can be different depending on the company. The goals of automation could include reducing the load of work for sales managers, cutting the cost of attracting buyers, or increasing the frequency of repeated purchases.
Automation is useful only if there are regularly recurring tasks in your business workflow. For example, if you automate the sending of a series of emails, then the manager will have time to perform other tasks, while at the same time, the chances for human error are drastically reduced.
It’s important to understand whether you really need to pursue automation in terms of an economic perspective. Automation involves allocating a resource for development and support. At the same time, we expect that this will free up managers for a certain number of hours per day so that they can concentrate on other tasks.
How you can simplify the cost analysis of planned automation:
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create a hypothesis about the advantages of automating a process; |
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calculate the cost of implementation and support; |
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calculate how much money automation can save; |
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compare the figures with the current cost of implementing this task |
Before you start implementing your proposed automation, you need to check whether everything you planned will actually work in practice. It’s all about testing everything you implement and learning from your successes as well as from your mistakes. Testing will show the strong points in your interaction logic with the client. It will also identify interaction scenarios that should not be used at all.
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