Are you overloaded?
Yeah, a lot of us are.
So, is it time for you to hire a marketing assistant?
Well, it depends.
In this guide, we take a look at how to hire a marketing assistant and drive growth to your organization.
Should I Even Hire a Marketing Assistant?
Before you go even further.
Do you even need one?
Think about it.
There are still a lot of things that you should do before hiring anyone.
First of all, if you can automate your processes, don’t get a human to do it. This is not because it’s more affordable to go along this route, but you want to eliminate as much human error as possible.
However, this only applies to your menial and repetitive tasks, if you’re talking about a high-level task or something that’s creative, then nothing beats a human on the other end of the chain.
There’s a lot of software out there that can help you with automating digital marketing tasks with some being heavily feature-packed that could take the roles of two or three new hires.
Next, think about optimizing your processes. In our personal experience, we’ve found that – half the time – simply retooling processes can work wonders for efficiency and ensure that you’re not wasting time and resources.
The easiest way to do this is to take a step back and identify the bottlenecks that you’re having and maybe improve on those areas before making a bigger decision to do something about it.
Other companies opt to take in consultants to help them out at times to make sure that they get a third party’s perspective on things.
Once you;ve exhausted these two options, only then should you consider hiring a marketing assistant.
How to Hire a Marketing Assistant?
Job Description and Roles
Marketing assistant roles different from one organization to the next, and it’s critical that you know exactly what your needs are.
Divide these up into three categories:
Responsibilites
These should be an exact list of things that you expect the marketing assistant to do on a regular basis.
Here are a couple of examples:
- Book appointments for the principal
- Get SOPs prepared and enforced
- Help with ideation
- Assist the marketing department in various tasks
- Proper communication and reminders to the principals about marketing matters
You can add more or remove from this list depending on your organization’s specific needs.
Outcomes
Outcomes refer to what the end result should be when you add them to the organization.
You can also refer to this as expectations.
This could be anything from better communications with the team regarding marketing activities, getting marketing commitments done on time, or ensuring that lead generation databases are up to date.
You need to be very clear about this area because this is where you can really hammer down what you want from your new marketing assistant. I strongly suggest that you prioritize this section.
Requirements
These are the things they’ll need to be able to do the job correctly.
Do they need knowledge in particular tools and online applications? Should they have a particular level of education? What languages should they be speaking?
You can use these requirements in your applicant screening process to make it easier to qualify people that work better in your organization.
Posting the Job
Now, all that’s left is for you to post the job onto a couple of job boards.
You can do it on Facebook in your groups or pages, however, you will want to make it clear that you want someone to come in and tell them where your organization is located.
Other ways to get it out there is LinkedIn and or course through word of mouth.
It it’s a remote position you can use a job board like Upwork, Freelancer, or OnlineJobs.ph.
If the posting was made online, you should be prepped, because you’ll probably get a lot of offers coming in.
Screening Candidates
Screening candidates depends on the job description and roles that you’ve put down, and there are a lot of guides on the right questions to ask your candidates at this point in time.
Check out these articles if you want to check questions you can ask:
However, keep this in mind.
Look for attituide.
Skills you can train, education you can impart, but attitude is something that’s so hard to come by.
If you find that they have a mindset and vision towards growth, but lack one skill or requirement that you could teach or do without, give them a chance.
The results will surprise you.
I’ve worked with a lot of people in the past.
And, here’s the thing.
The people that have made the difference for BAMF over the last couple of years were people who didn’t have the crazy credentials of current marketers, they were the ones who had potential and hunger for more.
Those are the people you’re looking for.
Now, drop a salary offer.
Is it enough? What can you offer as an added perk?
These things are important because they put food on the table, so make sure you clear this out with your candidate.
Lastly, paint them a picture of what career path they’ll be going on. Growth-oriented candidates want to know where they’re headed.
That’s critical.
Onboarding
Once you’ve got the perfect person for the job, it’s time to get them onboard.
However, onboarding is more than just introducing them to the people that they’ll be working with, there’s a lot of things you have to hammer down.
First of all, you need to have an SOP ready for the role that they will be undertaking, these should be detailed with enough room for them to bring out their own creativity.
During this process, they should also be given employee manuals and drilled in the company culture, give them a day or two to adjust and meet everyone.
Communication and project management protocols are also important, they should be familiar with the platforms you’re using whether it be Slack, Asana, Notion, etc.
Since this is technically a creative position never stop them from bringing out their own ideas. This will benefit the organization in the long run and it’s a great way for them to express themselves.
Once you’re done with this process, you’re pretty much good to go.
Alternative: Promoting In-House
Promoting in-house would be a good idea – if the manpower is available.
You already know the capabilities of your current staff, and relationships have already been built.
However, this isn’t an option for smaller teams.
And, there’s the added cost of training that has to be factored in.
Alternative: Outsourcing
Another option that you should consider is outsourcing.
And, yes, I know, sometimes it can be a scary option but hear me out.
Sometimes, you don’t need to create a new role to get tasks done, more often than not they could just be human tasks that are better outsourced somewhere else.
We’ve all heard about the different horror stories when it comes to outsourcing, but that’s not often the case.
Outsourcing allows your team to focus on their competency while you hire experts to take care of other tasks that they’re great. This gives you significant leverage when it comes to specialization and allows you to access a pool of expert talent.
Costs might be an issue but if you think about it, it’s more expensive to hire for a full-time position or train in-house, the costs of training and onboarding specialized software should also be considered.
A lot of our clients outsource most of their lead generation to BAMF because it’s more affordable for them and they get to take advantage of our specialization in lead generation and our team.
A win-win for everyone.
Takeaways
Hopefully this solves the question of how to hire a marketing assistant.
But, you still need to be able to determine if you need one in the first place.
If you do need one, get one that’s not just going to fill up someone’s shoes.
You need one that also wants to grow.
Remember growth isn’t one-sided.
If you get a marketing assistant that wants to grow
