Summer holidays – the time of year for annual leave and those left in the office wondering where all this work has come from, as it’s supposed to be a quiet time of year, right? No, not always the case.
So you may be thinking about how to cope with this welcome workload, and how to further expand your business in coming months. You need to promote your business to new customers, take care of your existing customers, yet still deliver the goods and services that you do so well.
If you’ve recognised that you need a marketing function within your business, but are unsure of how this could work for you, you’re not alone. Many businesses know they need to communicate better with their customers, but don’t know how much effort they need to put into this, or who would be the best person for the job.
The choices are many – full time, part time, no marketing background, experienced and proven marketer, strategic or tactical? Whatever your business, odds are that you need a combination of skills, to differing degrees.
You may wish to utilise some available time within your current team, and incorporate a marketing function into an existing role – this is a great way to retain and develop employees who have shown an interest in gaining marketing experience, without the expense of an additional employee.
Or you may wish to recruit a more junior person into your team who you can hep develop into the marketing role – great for them, they become a true ambassador for your company, and you’re giving a young person an opportunity to develop skills in their chosen career. They’re likely to stay with you for quite a while too.
So how do you help an inexperienced staff member develop marketing skills when you have no existing marketing function?
Easy. It’s great to nurture young and home grown talent, investing in our future workforce, and this should be positively encouraged. And by bringing in an experienced freelancer to mentor that person takes the training pressure off – you know that they are getting the best guidance, learning skills and knowledge that is relevant to your business and how it works, and will be more immediately of value. You agree to the support package that suits your requirements – be it a day a week, two days a month, for as long as you need. And when your talent is skilled up, your freelancer can move on (or pop back for reviews if required), but you get to keep your talent in-house – trained, trusted, capable.
Nurturing talent – bespoke support – retained skills in-house.
If you’re interested, please do get in touch for a chat about how I could help provide mentoring to your marketing people.
