Well who wouldn’t? There comes a time in every CEO’s life when they hanker for some of that magical, special marketing sauce that smooths every sale, has potential customers rushing to the door, and probably involves a lot of fun along the way. And why pretend otherwise? If marketing is done well, that rather optimistic vision isn’t so far from the truth.
But of course that’s one big “if”. The truth is that in growing companies hiring for a marketing role in particular is fraught with all sorts of pitfalls and opportunities to screw things up in really quite spectacular fashion.
Why It’s Hard To Hire The Right Person
There are fundamentally two approaches to hiring you might want to take. Both have fantastic potential to end in disaster. These two choices are as follows:
On the basis that you are a growing company with limited budget, you can find a growing marketing person who wants a limited amount of money.
On the basis that it’s awfully important to get this marketing thing right, you can hire a fully grown big beast of the marketing world for a sizable chunk of change.
Let’s talk about the first option. There’s certainly nothing wrong with young people. Some of my best friends are young people and those who give these whippersnappers a chance in life can be rewarded handsomely. But for a growing business by far the most important aspect of the marketing mix is understanding the environment the business operates in, and determining what tactics to employ and what tactics to forget about. You can’t do everything after all.
That process tends to be performed best by those with a decent amount of experience who have seen it all before. It also helps if they are confident enough to politely ignore helpful suggestions from the broader team (first rule of marketing, everyone thinks they know everything about marketing). Younger, more inexperienced employees tend to find that tough.
Secondly, you’ll need to a pretty fine judge of character if you’re willing to let someone with relatively little experience handle your budget and determine your marketing strategy. To put it politely, fools are cheap but they can also end up costing you everything. And there are plenty of fools out there.
Lastly, it tends to be the case that younger (cheaper) marketers are going to be specialists of some description, and while there’s nothing wrong with specialists in the right context, as a single hire they can be a disaster. It is the hammer / nail problem writ large. If you hire a Google AdWords expert, take a wild guess what they are going to spend their time doing… And take another guess as to whether they’ll stop and think if it might be appropriate.
So What’s Wrong With The Big Beast?
So if it’s not a great idea to choose a more junior marketing bod as your first hire, what’s wrong with the other approach? Well, in the spirit of bringing this piece to a swift conclusion here’s three main reasons why that might not work out for you either:
They cost more money. Not just in terms of salary, although you might be surprised how much of a dent a real, proper, thoughtful marketing leader can make in your bottom line. They will also start dreaming up wildly expensive schemes and campaigns and expect you to pay them. Don’t ask why - there appears to be some marketing school where these people are taught to spend money like it’s going out of fashion and occupy large amounts of company time arguing for more like Oliver Twist on steroids.
They don’t actually do anything. That may sound harsh but it is a truth universally acknowledged that a senior marketing man or woman in possession of a large budget is in want of someone to do the actual work. Newsflash: you’re going to end up hiring the junior person anyway.
All the good ones are taken. Unfortunately this is a fact of life. As discussed earlier, fools are all over the place. Wise old birds are thin on the ground and tend to already be working for highly protective CEOs who chain them to the desk with all manner of financial inducements and so on. It will be difficult to find the right person for the job and, with the best will in the world, you have a greatly increased risk of hiring a persuasive dud that nobody actually wants.
But If Neither Of These Options Works, What Am I Supposed To Do?
(cough) tom@greenfuse.agency (cough)
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