If you want your marketing department to be successful, you need to have excellent leaders and other marketers in place. That means you need to find people who are skilled, experienced, and capable. But how do you find and recruit that marketing talent to your organization reliably?
The Value of Better Marketing Talent
It’s hard to overstate just how valuable better marketing talent can be. Your people are at the heart of your marketing department, no matter how much technology you use to automate the various processes within it. Your people are the ones responsible for generating new ideas, coming up with new strategies, working through issues, and ultimately pushing your return on investment (ROI) higher.
The right people will be able to come up with new ideas consistently, motivate themselves to achieve new heights, and collaborate with others both in and outside of their department to keep pushing things forward.
With better marketing talent, your department is going to achieve more, become more efficient, and even become more enjoyable to be a part of. In many ways, this is a self-perpetuating process, as a stronger and more desirable marketing department is naturally going to attract better marketing talent. Even a temporary role like a fractional CMO can make a big impact in how your marketing department functions, how it appears, and how it can grow in the future.
Sweeten the Pot
One of the most straightforward approaches to finding better marketing talent is to sweeten the pot, making jobs on your marketing team much more attractive to talented, qualified individuals.
These are some of the strategies that can help you do it:
· Salary. As you might imagine, talented and experienced marketers expect to be compensated fairly for their expertise. Increasing salaries for your most important positions within the department can make those roles stand out to true experts in the industry. Obviously, not every business will have the budget to do this, but it’s a tactic that’s well worth considering.
· Benefits and perks. You may also be able to attract better marketing talent by offering more benefits and perks. Standard benefits like insurance and paid time off are given for prominent roles, but remote work, flexible scheduling, and other peripheral benefits can also make your positions much more attractive.
· Culture and environment. These days, many experienced candidates are willing to take a pay cut if it means getting access to a better culture or environment. What makes for a good culture is going to vary from person to person, but if you make a concentrated effort to build an authentic workplace and showcase that culture consistently, you’ll naturally attract better talent.
· Reputation. The reputation of your brand and business also matters. Work proactively to make sure prospective candidates see your brand in the best possible light.
Improve Your Recruiting Strategy
You can also make a concentrated effort to improve your recruiting strategy, with tactics like what follows.
· Tap into your network. Consider leveraging your existing network to find more qualified individuals. Ask the best marketers on your team if they know anyone who’s looking for a job for which you have space available.
· Leverage more recruiting channels. Your existing network is only one of dozens of channels that you can leverage in your recruiting efforts. Taking advantage of more channels means making your brand and open positions visible to more people in more contexts.
· Don’t be afraid to poach. Don’t be reluctant to poach talent from other businesses. This strategic move can give you access to candidates who have already been able to prove themselves valuable – and it can weaken your competition at the same time. Just be aware that not all prospective candidates will be willing to leave.
· Work on your recruiting brand. You probably have a strong brand in place already, but how does it apply to your recruiting efforts? What are you showing off in your recruiting and hiring materials? How does the general public see your brand?
· Streamline the interview process. A streamlined, effective interview process is going to make a great first impression on prospective candidates. It’s also going to help you hire talented people faster. Work out the kinks of your interviewing system if you want superior marketing resources.
· Facilitate better onboarding. Similarly, facilitate better onboarding. This will also help you tap into your best candidates faster and more consistently.
· Keep watch for new industry trends. Pay close attention to industry recruiting trends if you want to keep pace with your competitors.
Finding and hiring better marketing talent can be challenging, especially if you’re not sure where to start. But with such incredible potential benefits, you owe it to your business to meaningfully invest in the recruiting and hiring strategies you need to attract the right people.
