Master the Role of Marketing Manager

In the recruitment marketing industry there are plenty of opportunities to take on the role of Marketing Manager. On Episode 17 of The Skill Point Podcast we spoke to Jade Brar-Haase, the Marketing Director of Murray McIntosh & Associates, about her experiences in the sector. Her expertise lies in helping companies with their employer branding, but she has also held multiple marketing manager positions, giving her a wealth of insights into the topic. 

So, how can you become a master Marketing Manager?

Starting a New Role

Whether you’re moving up the ladder or joining a new company, the first thing to do is assess the current state of play. Are there already marketing channels that the company is using? What tools do they have set up? Is the marketing budget being used well? 

Once you have an idea of what’s going on, you can start to make changes. Don’t try to overhaul everything at once, that’ll be jarring for your colleagues and customers. A good place to start is by getting rid of any money drains. Those paid ads on LinkedIn that aren’t converting? Time to turn them off. Those expensive graphic design tools nobody uses? They can go. 

Jade’s next step is to get to know your consultants. What do they think is missing in your marketing? Which questions are they answering all the time? Does the website work for them? They’ll know which touchpoints people are coming through and where conversions are happening, which is invaluable information for marketing. 

Creating a Strategy

Once you’ve got to grips with your new position and you’ve got some ideas of where to go, you need to build a strategy. Work with your consultants to figure out what kind of content would help them generate sales. Maybe a salary survey would be really useful for opening conversations with prospective clients. Maybe a social media campaign about one of your customer’s pain points would help answer their most frequently asked questions. Jade recommends using marketing as a “hybrid firefighting” method, where you put out fires before they spread by addressing your customer’s issues in your content rather than during consultants’ calls. 

Your strategy should have a plan for the next three, six and twelve months, with a clear goal at the end. As you evolve, the details of that plan can change to address new challenges, but your end goal should always stay the same. Take the time to review, monitor and measure your conversion rates and hone your content as a result. 

Managing Multiple Campaigns

Once you’re running multiple campaigns, Jade recommends using lists and spreadsheets to keep track of everything. Organisation is key to running successful campaigns, and allows you to work less reactively. Having structure in your day will help you to provide more value to your stakeholders by providing rapid turn-around times on ad-hoc jobs like creating insight documents. You can then leverage that by going to board meetings with the metrics from that piece of collateral and showing that your input helped generate X amount of revenue. Jade said that ultimately, “being organised and structured allows you to respond to those last minute opportunities that marketing gets all the time.”

Lots of people see sales and marketing as opposing teams within a company. The opposite is true; they’re allies. When marketing and sales work together, the output is exponentially better because everybody’s contributed to creating a meaningful piece of collateral that speaks to your consumers. 

Building Your Own Rewards

She also said that “You need to reward yourself for having that progress, because if you’re waiting for somebody to say, ‘That LinkedIn poll was brilliant! Did you see how many people were engaging with it?’ you’ll be waiting a long time.” Particularly if you’re a solo marketer it’s important to build in your own reward system, such as grabbing a brownie for every five tasks you tick off. Until you get a seat at the table with the leadership team, you could be the only one recognising your milestones. 

Getting Into Leadership

So, how do you get that seat at the table? 

As a marketing manager you’re probably working with at least one other person within the business. However, if you want to start taking part in meetings with the executives and become a valued member of the senior leadership team, you have to be able to present your work as valuable and insightful to everybody. 

Jade’s advice is to keep pushing. “You’ve got to be self propelling and you’ve got to have the dedication to educate others around you as well as yourself.” Make sure you’re informed of the latest developments in your industry, on social media and in the world at large. Prioritise your personal development as much as you can. Beyond that, gather as much data as you can on how your work is improving the business. If you can present your strategies to senior leadership with proof of their effectiveness, you can position yourself as a valuable partner in the business. 

Want to know more about working as Marketing Manager in the recruitment industry?

Tune into The Skill Point Podcast here to hear the rest of Jade’s insights.