Once a company starts experiencing sustained growth, its leaders must eventually face the task of building a digital marketing team. Quality marketing is essential to bring in additional revenue over time. If the digital marketing team does its job well, the company can build additional teams in the future. It will also continue to grow. However, it’s important to know which professionals to hire before writing the first employment ad.
Five Marketing Professionals to Hire First
There will be time to create a larger digital marketing team as the company and its budget grows. When choosing who to bring onboard initially, hiring managers would be wise to consider the following:
- Content Creator: This position is essential because the content creator is the voice of the company. He or she works with the social media manager and strategist to create blog posts, videos, landing pages, and website content to spread the company’s message and reach new consumers.
- Data Analyst: This person uses specific metrics to measure the effectiveness of the company’s written and video content as well as social media posts. He or she provides this data to the rest of the team to plan future campaigns.
- Marketing Strategist: The person in this job oversees the company’s entire digital marketing efforts. To be successful, he or she needs to understand the most effective methods to reach the typical customer. It is helpful if the marketing strategist is already well-known on the Internet.
- Social Media Manager: The strategist creates a social media marketing plan and the person in this role promotes it. It is his or her responsibility to engage current and prospective customers on the various social media networks.
- Technical Specialist: The digital specialist builds campaigns and creates templates. He or she must have a firm grasp of CSS and HTML. Additionally, this person needs to stay on top of technology changes and digital media trends.
Positions to Hire in the Future
A company’s content can only be effective when people can find it. That is why leadership must eventually hire someone who is highly skilled in search engine optimization (SEO). This person researches keywords and phrases to include in copy to make it as relevant as possible. Some content creators have these skills and others do not, so it’s up to the business owner to decide if one or two people should fill these roles.
Email marketing managers, web developers, and paid marketing campaign managers are additional roles that make up a successful team. The team eventually needs its own manager as well.
Consider Behavioral Interviewing
The most effective way to find people who are a good fit for these positions is to use competency-based interviewing. Hiring managers who use this technique ask competency-based interviewing questions that uncover qualities such as adaptability, conflict management, and decision making, among dozens of others. Asking an interviewee how he or she handled specific situations in past employment enables interviewers to predict on-the-job behavior for the current position. These attributes are just as important as technical skills in ensuring a good fit between employer and employee.
In addition to hiring for the right roles, and hiring the best people, it’s important to hire individuals who can work effectively as a team. Once assembled, the whole of a marketing team should work more efficiently than the sum of it’s individual parts.