Having an Adaptable Marketing Team and Adapting New Ways of Hiring a Team
How are you currently hiring your team? This can apply to both your marketing team and all other departments. Have you thought of how this strategy can play into adapting to rapid economic changes? In addition to keeping an ear out for new market trends building a team that can be agile and adaptive to these shifts can greatly impact the growth of your business. As a business owner, strategic priorities need to be implemented. Some businesses are having to implement these strategic priorities with either a smaller team that is in-house or a smaller team altogether due to the events of the past year. Or you are still in the early stages of launching your business. This is important to reflect on as you grow and need to add to your team.
As mentioned earlier, we need to build a flexible and agile team that is more resourceful. Your team members should have soft skills along with adaptability and versatility. But the team as a whole needs to be flexible. Ultimately able to scale up or down based upon the business environment.
Adopting New Ways of Hiring a Team
So, this leads me to market and creative teams, and your efforts should be composed of four categories. First, core employees are either remote, onsite, or a hybrid of the two. Second, freelancers and contractors. This niche of experts is brought in as needed for project needs during peak periods. Third, consultants handle high-level tasks such as reorganization, rebranding, strategic digital planning, and other priorities. Finally, it is important to partner with external resources, whether that be agencies or vendors. The reality of today and the future is having teams become diverse, dispersed, and interconnected. As a result, it allows for flexibility and adaptability based on the business needs. A great example is when the team is large, it’s large, and when projects are over, the strategic initiatives are in place, and then the team contracts. Now, let’s look at how your team can survive, whether it’s a pandemic or another event out of your business’ control.
Once you have your initiatives in place to grow, here is how your team can help you. One important way to help drive growth is to upskill your current staff. Not only will this help them develop professionally, but it will also help your team feel valued and will help your retention rate. When you have a solid core team in place, it is important to enhance their skill set so they can perform at a higher rate. This is pretty easy to implement and cost-efficient, providing a great ROI. Research shows that 82% of marketers and creatives are increasing their budget for professional development in 2021.
Additionally, 37% of in-house marketing departments want their staff to upgrade their functional job skills, whether it be copywriting with SEO/ SEM, targeted email marketing, social media best practices, etc. Finally, 43% want their team to improve their technical skills. This can vary from marketing automation software to customer relationship management systems (CRM), content management systems (CMS), customer data analytics, etc.
The top technical skills discussed today are digital strategy, content creation, marketing, and website design and development, which are critical skills to have.
You will have times when upskilling your employees is not easy. The list of reasons can vary. A few examples of this could be video production, SEO/SEM, web and mobile development, and analytics. As some of these are terribly hard to upskill, the industry is finding that hiring new employees would be a quicker way to build your technical skill toolbox among your team. 41% of marketing leaders plan to fill vacated roles or bring back furloughed employees. 52% are planning to hire new positions. The good news is that creative job seekers are out there. The downside is today, it is tough to find highly skilled and creative marketing professionals. 97% of marketing leaders have mentioned it is very challenging to find talent. Of those, 62% find it extremely challenging. Even with the current higher unemployment rate of 6.2%, finding top marketing talent is difficult. This may seem counterintuitive. It makes sense for you to consider the importance of digital and online marketing in order to survive today.
Overcoming hiring challenges
Knowing it is difficult and that there are opportunities out there, it is difficult to identify key individuals to join your team. Here are some best practices to overcome the challenges of hiring
Hiring fully remote
Most companies are more open to having remote employees. In fact, this could open the doors to more diverse and skilled talent located in other parts of the country. Anything is possible today. As a result, you can identify talent that fits your business needs and make it happen versus being stuck with the talent local to you.
Shorten the time to hire
Act quickly when you meet the right candidate. If you don’t, they will lose interest and join another organization.
Sweeten the deal
Sweeten the offer with creative professionals who have niche skills. They know they are in demand. Luring them in with compensation and a package will entice them. Perks never hurt, either, and this could be remote work, flexible work schedules, etc.
You get one chance to make the best offer. Making it right is critical.
Lastly, you may want to consider working with a recruiter that specializes in hiring that niche talent. In most cases, employed candidates who are confident are eventually looking for new opportunities are not looking or even saying they are looking to move. These recruiters will have access to a diverse talent pool you wouldn’t have on your own.
Bring in Contractors
Contractors, freelancers, gate workers, etc. As mentioned earlier, your staffing should grow and shrink alongside the business demands. When you have periods of time your workload increases, this is a great time to think about bringing in additional staff. In these unprecedented times, it is unsurprising that 70% of marketing creative leaders plan to increase the number of project professionals and contract employees in their staff in 2021.
Next, thinking of the interim staff as a smart move wouldn’t hurt. This will allow employers to scale the team as needed without affecting the full-time employees. Think about how to handle a heavy intermittent workload during peak times, or when the workload does increase; you will need additional people. When the work is done, or the project is completed on time without burning out your employees and dragging them around, you will bring in interim staff when the workload increases. Finally, determine if a full-time role is suitable and consider this as a contract-to-hire role. It is a low-risk and effective way to know if they fit your team.
Remember, to grow and adapt, you need to build an agile team—a team that can adapt to new market trends and new ways of assembling talent. Don’t continue doing what was done pre-2020. You need to keep adapting and positioning your team to be ready to take on new changes and challenges as you see them coming.
The full series of Having an Adaptable Marketing Team is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
