Featuring insights from Kelly Gunderson, Customer Experience Director
Whether you’re a Marketing, Creative, or Digital leader at a large corporation, a family-owned business, or somewhere in between, one thing is likely true: the ever-changing job market and growing economic challenges have probably caused some sort of shift in your marketing team’s workforce and output.
While, in an ideal scenario, our marketing teams would be fully staffed and functioning at maximum efficiency, that is not the case for many organizations across the nation.
For some leaders, this may leave you wondering: How do you identify skills gaps on your team, and where do you even begin to find professionals with the skills and expertise needed to fill those gaps? And, given the current market, where can you find the funding for these hires?
These are important decisions and should not be taken lightly. To support you along the way, we’ve rounded up our top five simple yet essential steps to consider when planning for the growth of your marketing team. From considering freelance talent to adding longer-term consultants to your team, this blog will have you ready to hit the ground running and create an elevated Marketing, Creative, or Digital team for the years to come.
1. Turn Marketing Challenges Into Marketing Projects
Identifying your team’s marketing challenges and translating those pain points into actionable plans can provide a clear and defined path to success for your team.
To determine your areas of challenge, we recommend starting by asking yourself a few key questions:
- Is your business currently facing any hardships? Are there any other challenges your organization expects to face in the upcoming year?
- How is your marketing team contributing to your company’s growth?
- Are there specific areas where your marketing team struggles (e.g., meeting deadlines, designing compelling content, or building materials that resonate with prospects)?
- Did your marketing team hit last quarter’s goals (e.g., did they drive the right amount of brand awareness or marketing qualified leads)?
- Are there any key performance indicators (KPIs) that need to be improved, and/or do you measure the right things?
By thinking through these questions and assessing your team, you’ll identify areas that may need additional attention. Better yet, you’ll have developed a list of ideas that you can turn into future marketing projects, and you have the opportunity to spring into action.
2. Determine Where Your Marketing & Creative Team May Have Bandwidth or Skill Gaps
Now that you’ve analyzed your current challenges and have developed a path forward, it’s time to start prioritizing your upcoming projects. Based on your answers during Step #1, determine how your team can execute your new initiatives by considering the following points:
- Are the opportunities you identified short-term projects or sustained initiatives?
- How time-sensitive or time-bound are each of the opportunities?
- Do you have the team you need in place, and with some adjusting of roles & responsibilities, can your team execute the new initiatives well?
- Could you use one or more of these projects as career development opportunities for your existing team members?
- Do you have existing team members who can take on the entire project or participate in the project with their current skill set?
- Do you have enough work to warrant a full-time hire, or would a part-time, freelance (contracted) team member be a better fit for your team, as they can provide the right support and potentially complete projects faster?
After answering the questions above, you’ll have a better idea of where your marketing & creative team lies in terms of overcoming current obstacles. If you’re finding skill gaps, you may need to consider adding a team member, on a permanent or contracted basis, who has the experience and background your team is missing to push marketing initiatives forward.
3. Resolve Skills Gaps
When it comes to resolving any prevalent skills gaps on your team, you have several options that range from elevating your existing team, bringing in short-term and contracted support, or even hiring additional FTEs.
Here are a few options to evaluate:
- Identify training opportunities: Use these opportunities as career advancement for your marketing & creative team’s high-performing members.
- Develop a mentoring program: This is an excellent opportunity for your team members to learn from each other in different skill areas while elevating both participants.
- Hire a full-time employee: Post, interview, and hire someone who has the experience and background to meet the specific skills gaps that are present on your team.
- Contract a freelance expert on a short-term, contract basis: Contract an expert who can fully execute your short-term projects and even potentially train existing internal team members on best practices – allowing internal members to own projects long-term.
- Consider a consultant to support long-term projects or ongoing needs: Keep the relationship going with a contracted, longer-term expert.
Learn more about hiring freelance talent in our article, How to Build a Bench of Freelance Talent
4. Consider All Hiring Options
You may be asking yourself questions like:
“What should I do to move my prioritized initiatives forward because I have more than one skill gap, and we do not have the budget to fill multiple roles?”
Adding team members is a struggle many businesses face, especially as the job market and economic happenings change daily. Keep in mind there are various hiring options available for consideration and that not every team member needs to be hired on a full-time or permanent basis.
By adding freelance talent or consultants to your existing team, you’ll gain the support you need to overcome short-term challenges and develop or maintain ongoing projects. As an added plus, if you find that this extra team member fits your company well and you’d like to preserve the extra pair of hands, you can hire that individual as a permanent team member.
5. Seek Out Support To Add Marketing, Creative, and Digital Talent To Your Team
Finding the right talent can take time and energy. So, having a staffing and recruiting partner can help ensure you’ve got on-demand and expert talent to enhance your team quickly.
Over the past 30 years, Celarity has helped 600+ organizations across the nation find specialized talent in over 5,000 consultants and freelancers. With our large network of talent and experienced team of recruiters, Celarity is here to help you find talent to meet your team’s unique needs, ranging from:
- Full-time to part-time candidates
- Marketing to creative to digital expertise
- Hired team members to contract freelancers
- Short-term to long-term assistance
If you need help building your team this year or beyond, reach out today; we’d love to start the conversation with you and help you find the best talent for your team’s needs!
Kelly Gunderson has been working within the staffing & recruiting industry for 9+ years. Kelly is currently the Client Experience Director at Celarity, a marketing recruiting firm that has had strong local roots in the Minnesota marketing community for over 30 years. In her time, Kelly has placed 300+ professionals into 75+ organizations as well as worked directly with Fortune 500 companies. She enjoys helping Marketing, Creative, and Digital leaders build & grow their teams.
“I love my account manager, Kelly. She just “gets us” and is a part of our extended team. She is so open to suggestions, feedback, and wants to make sure the Celarity team gets it right the first time. Compared to other recruiter teams we’ve used in the past, it’s just always such a pleasure working with Celarity.” – Kristin, Hotwire Global Communications
