Please Stop Posting This Marketing Job - a plea from a digital marketer

There is a real trend happening here. Companies are trying to couple digital marketing roles with other random roles in the office. The result? A multitude of missed opportunities. Give one person that many jobs and even with the best of intentions they’re only going to be able to give each one about 60%. It’s basically like setting them up to fail.

I get it. We are all trying to minimize costs and maximize efficiency. As a working mother, I too want to accomplish these things. There are certainly days where the laundry’s overflowing, my car is making a strange noise and I’m in need of a serious root touch up, but I’m not about to hire a single person to handle all three. My stylist would kill me.

My plea: please stop doing this. Stop posting jobs like, “IT/Accountant/Marketing Coordinator.” I mean, C’mon. It’s not realistic, and you won’t be happy with the outcome. What’s worse, your employee is going to feel like they fall short each month on various tasks.

Marketing, especially digital marketing, is its own role. I’m not talking about playing around on Facebook and pinning pretty photographs. This takes real insight and strategy. Marketing in the digital space is about making calculated decisions, collecting data, and optimizing your outcome (yes, the pretty pictures help). Hiring a college student as a marketing intern or an entry level “Jack of all Trades” isn’t a great idea either. Yes, they probably know more than you when it comes to social media and “internet stuff”, but you’re probably going to get a few posts a week with no real plan, little insight, and zero ROI.

Yes, it can be tricky to measure digital marketing ROI. I get that. It can seem like you’re putting money into something you don’t understand and hoping that it somehow works out. A lottery of sorts. However, this is a very common misconception among many of my clients.

The truth is, hiring a contract marketing company is going to save you more time and money in the long run. You’ll know specifically what your employees are working on, how those efforts are impacting your business, and where to invest more time and budget.

In today’s market your online presence is key to the success of your business. Wouldn’t it be nice if you knew who was buying your product/service, what their interests are, how they found the your website in the first place, and what products/pages are most visited on your site? Well guess, what? That information is available to you. If you know how to capture the data, you can use it to make informed decisions to grow and support your business. The question is, do you?