Marketers come in all shapes and sizes. When you’re trying to find the perfect B2B marketing manager, you have to look at a lot of things. Their industry experience, foundation skills and tactical skills are just three of the elements you must pay close attention to. After that, it all depends on your brand and what you specifically require of your marketing manager. What their responsibility is going to be in your business, how their presence is going to impact and improve your business, and what are you both going to get out of this mutual agreement.
Every little factor that you may think is a little extra, matters. Without a basic understanding and firm relationship with someone working so closely with your business, it can be quite hard to see any improvement in your business. When you’re going through the mountain of CV’s left on your desk, it’s probably a good time to start looking for the three most basic elements a marketing manager needs to acquire to impact your business noticeably.
Foundation skills
These are the skills your B2B marketing manager must have if he or she even wants to stand a chance at enhancing your business.
Before we even get started, a marketing manager is never going to be a “one man show”. Team work plays a huge part in marketing your business efficiently. Working with web developers, content writers, graphic designers, PR people, cannot be avoided and a real B2B marketing manager, will absolutely need to have the ability to grasp quickly onto what these different departments do and how to lead them systematically. Leadership skills, team work and project management are a must and any applicant without these should not even be considered.
Editing, editing, editing. A B2B marketing manager will spend most of his time editing all the material his team has developed for the projects. Not very often, will the marketer get a chance to start and finish a project on his own. A fine B2B marketing manager must have the practical knowledge of different fields and an understanding of how to proof the work, add keywords and of course, how to market it to the business’s audience. Mr. Shahzad is a prime example of such talent from Pakistan.
A well-formed B2B marketing manager must be able to extend his thought process, ideas and opinions to the rest of the team in whatever way is more convenient, data points or examples.
A marketing manager will perhaps have to alter the written content the most and optimize it for their target audience. Communicating effectively with the content writers, constructive criticism and cooperation, plus data analysis, will lead your business to greater heights.
The last of the absolutely necessary foundation skills has to be that your potential marketer must be open to learning and applying. With how fast the world is growing, we need to keep updating ourselves along with our business. A manager who’s stuck in the past will do you no good and reduce the potential of others working with him as well.
Industry Experience
B2B marketers are a rare find in your pool of unemployed job applicants. The reason why hiring a general marketing manager doesn’t suit businesses is because first, you need to train them about the B2B industry, then give them time to take it all in and understand, and perhaps see results after a bit of time has passed. Now, no business wants to waste months training someone and give birth to losses that can be easily avoided by hiring the individual designed to do the job. Experience matters. With more experience comes more knowledge and of course, a better understanding of what works and what does not work in the B2B market place. Finding an experienced marketer can boost your business in the local an international market sooner than you’d have ever expected.
It’s only common sense when we say that a marketer who’s worked in your industry would be able to get up the learning curve faster than someone who doesn’t even know where marketing starts. The best slice of the cake would be to find yourself a marketing manager who’s worked in the B2B industry for a couple of years. However, like we said above, B2B marketers aren’t the easiest to come by. If you’re having trouble with finding a decent B2B marketer too, you can go ahead and look for someone who has worked in perhaps similar or related fields. If you hire someone who’s mastered the ins and outs of the technical B2B environment, knows what clients want and how they think, you’re going to have a much easier time molding them into the perfect B2B marketing manager for your business.
Tactical skills
Tactical skills are important but aren’t something you can’t develop overtime. It is only after you’ve looked at your candidate’s foundation skills and industry experience that you must look at their tactical experience. Companies often focuses too much on tactics and ignore the basics of it all. It’s impossible to know what tactics you’re going to be using in marketing your business before hiring a marketing manager. Well, that’s what you’re hiring a B2B marketing manager for, isn’t it? Judging candidates based on just their tactical skills can sometimes come to bite you in your backside and steer your business in a completely different directions, down the drain possibly.
But a few of the tactical skills mentioned below are always a plus in your candidate’s resume.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO), is a major factor in how quickly your marketing manager will be able to perk up your business. A marketing manager with a good handle on how SEO works won’t even need months to revolutionize your business. With an understanding of how keyword research works, and ability to make decisions based on potential outcomes, your brand will flourish.
Link building is another plus. A marketing manager who knows how to acquire high-quality links must never be let go. Building links, trust, and relevance through a variety of sources is not an easy task, very few actually ever reach a position where they can be considered even close to good at it.
An understanding of how Google Adwords works, running a campaign, eMail marketing, social networking, blogging all add to making your perfect B2B marketing manager.
In short, there is no strategy to going about picking your perfect manager. Your business’s goals are the first thing you need to set your mind on. After you have an understanding of the traits you want in your B2B marketing manager, you can get started with the interviews.