How to Add a Marketing Coordinator to Your Small Business
As a business owner, your list of roles and responsibilities goes on and on. And these things add up quickly. Most entrepreneurs suffer from the belief that they can do it all. But eventually, there will come a time when you’ll have to admit that doing everything yourself is no longer effective. You can only get so far doing things alone.
Marketing your business is a full-time job in itself, and it’s one part of the business that many people often let fall by the wayside. The four symptoms below are telltale signs that it’s time for you to hire someone to help you with your internal marketing:
1. When you just can’t seem to find enough time
When you’re spread too thin tending to every other aspect of your business, your days start to get longer and longer. Your to-do list becomes more than just a list—it becomes pages. And things start to get put on the back burner—like your marketing efforts.
2. When you’re constantly fixing mistakes and putting out fires
When you’re strapped for time and in a hurry, the quality of your work suffers. Mistakes happen—and you’re busy fixing things instead of creating. Marketing mistakes can cost your business a lot of lost revenue. When this happens, it’s time to take a step back and look for additional help.
3. When you find yourself doing repetitive tasks
As the business owner, your attention should be focused on leading, pitching your products/services, and managing your big picture operations. If you're finding yourself working on a laundry list of repetitive tasks like social media scheduling, managing clients, or preparing marketing reports, it’s time to bring in help to allow you to focus on the big picture. The job is too important to do in your spare time.
4. When you lack consistency in your marketing efforts
If you want your campaigns to produce results, your marketing needs constant attention and consistent effort. Writing a random blog post every couple of months, sending a one-off email promoting a new product, or following a content calendar sometimes—isn’t going to cut it. You can’t expect the garden to grow if you don’t water it. If you can relate to any of these telltale signs, it’s time to bring in someone who can tend to marketing your business, regularly—like a Marketing Coordinator. The job is too important to do in your spare time.
What Does A Marketing Coordinator Do?
So what does a Marketing Coordinator do?
A Marketing Coordinator helps with the daily marketing activities and initiatives of a company. They work on building brand awareness, managing social media, planning and implementing marketing campaigns, creating content for SEO and traffic growth, tracking and analyzing performance data, and the list goes on.
To be sure you’re hiring the right person for the job, you need to know what to look for in a Marketing Coordinator.
Skills you should look for when hiring a Marketing Coordinator
When you’re hiring someone in-house to help with marketing, these are the core skills you should look for:
Creativity—they’re creative. They use out-of-the-box thinking to ideate and develop strategies on how to drive growth for your business.
Writing—they’ll be responsible for creating a lot of content. It’s imperative they understand how to write for audiences in a way that captures their attention and connects with them on a deeper level.
Research—they’re investigators. They need solid research skills to keep up with new trends in the industry as it relates to your business's target audience.
Omnichannel and social savvy—they’re a versatile marketer. They understand that the customer journey isn’t linear. They should know how to implement marketing tactics and strategies across all marketing channels: email, social, paid, SEO, and content.
Critical thinking—they’re inquisitive and analytical. They should be able to understand and leverage data to guide marketing decisions and the overall strategy.
Project management—they’re a project management pro. They should know how to juggle and manage multiple projects and initiatives at once.
What a typical day looks like for a Marketing Coordinator
Each day can be different, but some of the most common activities you can delegate to a coordinator are things like:
Creating content for publishing on your blog
Managing and engaging with social media accounts
Writing newsletters to send out to your list
Designing collateral and assets for social media
Writing landing page copy to support promotional campaigns
What a job description for a Marketing Coordinator position should include
The job itself varies based on the needs of your company. Here’s an example job description including the core responsibilities and qualifications you should include in your Marketing Coordinator job post:
Responsibilities:
Research and analyze customers’ behavior and insights, consumer trends, market analysis, and marketing best practices to build successful strategies
Plan, create and implement strategic marketing campaigns that align with company goals
Organize promotional assets and campaigns for new products/services launches
Set up and maintain tracking systems for online marketing activities
Write content for campaigns across various channels such as social media, email, and blogs
Manage all online channels of production, including website, social media pages, email campaigns, and responses
Create, maintain and strengthen the organization’s overall brand through all media avenues
Create and distribute content on key channels to reach new audiences
Requirements:
Proven work experience in digital marketing and knowledge of content management, creative writing, advertising concepts and vendor negotiations
Demonstrable experience with social media marketing, email marketing, advertising campaigns, marketing databases and analytics, and SEO/SEM
Knowledge of traditional marketing tools
Critical thinker with strong problem-solving and research proficiencies
Solid knowledge of website and marketing analytics tools
Highly creative with experience in identifying target audiences and planning digital campaigns that engage, inform, and motivate
Knowledge of various Content Management Systems (CMS)
Solid organizational skills and detail-oriented
Ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines
Superb written and verbal communication skills
Ability to simplify complex information into a user-friendly format
Where to find world-class marketing candidates
Luckily, there are many places where marketers hang out. Social media, networking sites, job boards—since most marketers have an online presence, there are a lot of places you can look to find talent. Here are a few places to start:
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a great place to start. You can post your job there as well as search for candidates based on their title.
Facebook groups
There are many Facebook groups that are made up of people with specific skill sets (e.g. Content Marketers, The Copywriter Club, Remote Marketing Jobs). People often add posts about jobs to groups, and these kinds of posts typically get a ton of engagement.
Job boards
Larger job boards like Indeed, CareerBuilder, or Monster have a plethora of candidates with all levels of experience. There are also marketing job boards you can check out like VentureBeat, CrunchBoard, or Mashable.
Three steps to quickly onboard your new Marketing Coordinator
If you want to get your Marketing Coordinator productive quickly, here are a few things you can do to set them up for success:
Give them access to your marketing tech stack—you want to be able to manage the tasks and projects your coordinator is working on. Giving them access to the programs and tools your team uses is important for transparency and accountability.
Integrate them with your team—most people work best where they feel ‘part of the team’. They’ll communicate better with you and your team. This is especially important for marketing roles where collaboration is key.
Get them to interview a few of your best customers—a quick way for your new team member to learn about your business quickly is to learn directly from your audience and have them interview your customers.
Two things are almost always in short supply for small business owners: time and money. Is it worth it to spend money on a Marketing Coordinator if it frees up your time and contributes to the growth of your business?
The answer is most likely yes. By hiring a Marketing Coordinator, you get to take some things off of your plate and focus on the big picture. Not only do you get some of your time back, but now you have someone whose job's main purpose is to focus on efforts that will grow your business. Pick the right one, and your return on investment should outweigh the initial cost.
Kris Winter is a marketing strategist and speaker translating complex marketing concepts into actionable takeaways for all audiences. She gets a kick out of training small businesses on how to chart a clear communication path to their most profitable customers. Kris managed corporate marketing departments for 10 years before running her full-service marketing agency for 17 years. She is now leading marketing strategy for a financial institution and speaks nationally on marketing and small business development.
Contact Kris at kristine@kristinewinter.com