How does a small business or start up know when or what, or how, to hire for marketing needs?

It’s not easy hiring for marketing roles. Lots of grey matter. I’ve spoken with many decision makers for small biz & start up’s over the years. They need help but aren’t sure if it’s a full-time role, freelancer, or an agency.

And it’s hard to hire if you’re unsure of the work involved. What questions do you ask to know if someone’s good for the job, and how should things be priced?

So… spend some time with me. I’m a generalist who was once a specialist, and knows how to scale up, and when and how to hire for specialists.

Quick hits on the other ways.

A full time person. Do we hire someone to just do our emails? Do we hire entry level or higher up? Who’s going to lead, mentor, and manage them? After some growth, then what? How will they learn and stay satiated? If they’re good and hungry, they’ll leave. If hiring higher up, they’ll need players on the field to run the plays, and they’ll cost more. It’s a big commitment.

A freelancer. Many places (too many) to hire from these days. But can you give them specific direction and instruction on what’s needed? And, like a mechanic, if you don’t know what goes into the work being done, you won’t know how long it should take and could be paying for inflated hours. Also, commitment swings the other way. They might not be with you for long and can leave with short notice. When they leave, did you get all the project files and know which ones to ask for?

An agency. Do you need the police or a detective? Do you need some specialty marketing tasks managed or someone to figure out what your ideal marketing should be, and then also manage it? Is the agency selling you on services they make nice margins on and it also just happens to be what your business really needs right now? Is that paid agency also a “creative” agency? Are they offering copy & design work that is aligned with your brand guidelines or just best practices? Do you even have brand guidelines? If not, do you really need a branding agency, or a creative agency? Or could that be a freelance person?

Whatever the case, You Can’t go wrong with a free consult call with me.

Tell me what’s going on. Goals or problems. AMA. I never talk about areas I don’t have experience in. You can see all the PX [professional experience] on the main page or Linkedin.

btw, below are all good Examples of thoughts or issues that may not be easily categorized in “official” marketing categories.

No one knows who we are.

How would you sell this particular thing?

We think we should start working with influencers.

We’d like some fresh perspective from someone who’s not afraid to tell us the truth.

We’re a start up just beginning to allocate marketing dollars and would like thoughts on what to put where.

We’d like a second opinion of the work our agency is doing.

We’d like an outlier point of view on our product offering and how we are positioning it.

Please just breakdown a few things for us about creative, branding, and marketing strategy in general without trying to sell us on a retainer.

Could we do a brainstorming session with you? (Yes.)

We're spending too much time telling people about our product, so we know we need something for this.

What’s a good org chart to start our marketing operations, and how do you scale marketing anyway?

Do I need a “creative” agency, a “marketing” agency, a “branding” agency, and honestly what's the difference these days?

What “brand guidelines” do we actually need right now? What’s the least we need to do here, really?

What are the best platforms for us to start using now?

We have a mixed bag of high level “stupid” questions we just wanna hear quick takes on.