Marketing Sherpa recently conducted a survey of 1700 BtoB marketers to discover their specific blocks to success. What was their number one obstacle?  62% of all marketers surveyed identify lack of resources in staffing, budgeting or time as the greatest barrier to their marketing success.

The historical solution to that age-old problem was to hire a consultant. But put the word “consultant” at the end of anything, and it quickly gets expensive. Yet on-demand marketing expertise is exactly what Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies need in order to set the pace in today’s ever-changing marketplace. How do the successful ones do it with today’s restricted budgets?  They do it on their own terms – with Interim Marketing Executives.

Companies outsource manufacturing and tech support to work faster, better, cheaper. Finance departments have used interim executives for years. Entire R&D efforts are purchased as companies identify new markets. Ad hoc marketing expertise is  now essential is all competitive business models – Interim Marketing Executives are moving in for brief periods of time, and getting results for  smart companies.

An Interim Marketing Executive is a highly skilled, independent mid- to executive-level professional, hired as needed to quickly integrate into a company and perform a specific task, project, or transition. They are especially effective when a new and impartial perspective is desired, marketing strategy is to be developed or revamped, or when a specific skill set is needed only for  a few months, or years.

In light of this creative solution, smart companies have found a way to take advantage of new, competitive landscapes they would not have been able to in years past.

For example, MarketPro, a national placement firm, helped a multi-billion dollar publicly-held company accomplish just this task. By hiring just one of MarketPro’s Interim Marketing Executives, they were able to launch one of its most successful brands in China. Directly following the strategic development and launch of the brand, MarketPro’s Interim Marketing Executive quickly and seamlessly transferred this strategy and knowledge to the existing staff. The value of the Interim Executive’s service to the long-term business sustainability is unquantifiable in its magnitude.

A nimble workforce has been the goal for a decade. All decision makers have visions of highly qualified personnel switching gears on a moment’s notice and redirecting efforts to new projects seamlessly. What is just now being understood, however, is that these changes need to happen from the top down, and realistically, the best way to achieve this level of flexibility is with interim partners, perfectly paired to a businesses’ needs, and with an unrivaled depth of expertise.

Interim Marketing Executives are the way for businesses  to get the talent they need when they need it, and at a price far more competitive than consulting firms. Free of internal politics, Interim Marketing Executives are utilizing their proven abilities to take savvy companies to the forefront of a new competitive edge.

About MarketPro:

MarketPro is the leading interim marketing executive and marketing executive search firm in the USA.  Whether your need is interim / contract or direct placement, we provide top companies with talent that exceeds expectations both functionally and culturally.  Our recruiters know the best marketing talent, because they are experienced marketers.  MarketPro places talent in all marketing related disciplines and does so in less time with a higher success ratio than anyone else in the industry.

By Bob Van Rossum 

Building an effective online marketing team is all about creating flexibility.  Best practices dictate you bring the function in-house yet create a team that can change as fast as the market.  Best structure is to hire a full-time employee who knows enough about each area drive maximum ROI from the team and bring in contractors to execute / implement.  Contractors provide flexibility in a world that is changing rapidly.   Traditionally contract staffing has been associated with only execution/implementation as a way to retain flexibility and reduce costs.  Increasingly organizations are realizing that they can also bring in executive level interim marketing talent from a Creative Director to a Digital Strategist to maximize your online presence and / or use of analytics. 

Online marketing teams are different depending on industry but ultimately all organizations need some basic functions.  With the proper strategy and execution, your marketing dollars will go farther online than they can in any other form of media.

Digital Marketing Strategy

Strategy matters, too often the interactive world is filled with the “ready, fire, aim” approach and significant dollars and opportunity are lost in the process.  Depending on the size of your organization you may need a strategist full-time or an interim practitioner, not a consultant, to come in and move your organization forward.

Search Engine Optimization / Search Engine Marketing

It is amazing how few organizations are really doing this well, considering the potential ROI from doing it properly.  This is the most cost effective form of advertising available in any medium and the longer you wait to institute best practices, the harder it will become to get results. 

Your SEO / SEM expert(s) will provide both natural and paid search services, to maximize awareness / leads from a minimum possible investment.  Including but not limited to, keyword advertising / ranking, keyword bidding, copy optimization.  Doing so across multiple platforms, while reporting on success / ROI and managing continual improvement. 

Online Media Buying and Planning

The complexities of online media buying, planning, tracking and reporting are daunting, here there is no substitute for experience.  The latest in online advertising options include geographically and behaviorally-targeted marketing.  The challenges of building and launching a successful online ad campaign have grown as have the rewards of doing it properly. 

E-Mail Marketing

A well thought out e-mail marketing team, starts with the realization that subject matter experts are needed and in great demand.  The ability to take outside lead lists or an internal database and design, test, deploy, measure results and make necessary improvements is critical to long-term success.  And that’s not all, reviewing creative to make sure messaging is consistent with core brand and CAN-SPAM compliant, while being a project management guru is a lot to handle.  So in a nutshell: bring in the best to set strategy, plan and measure to maximize revenue.

Public Relations (Online)

This is much more than someone to write, manage and publish online content.  This position is responsible for online messaging, including using guerilla marketing to leverage social media.  It is also important for organizations to have someone who can help them to understand what makes content newsworthy.  In a rush to be online, too many organizations are publishing content for content’s sake. 

Analytics

It is vital to measure, adjust and ultimately continually improve.  Proper analytics gives you the knowledge and power to increase revenue and build a better online brand.  Proper analytics programs include, online tracking, predictive analytics and segmentation, strategy, execution and reporting.  Big question is do you have someone who can interpret the data and merge your online and offline analytics to properly focus your overall marketing mix?

By Bob Van Rossum

Now is a great time to give your company a Talent Advantage.  At a time when most companies are scared to make permanent headcount additions, you can hire an interim CMO on a full-time or part-time basis for less than you can imagine.  Need someone to set online marketing strategy, no problem.    Top companies are not running scared but using the opportunities available in the marketplace to strategically improve their marketing programs for years to come.

Outside experts bring valuable experience to your company.  Now is the time to move your company forward not sit idly and wait out the tough times.  It is time to utilize contractors / consultants to evolve your business. 

Top reasons to move your company forward with outside talent:
Many companies are finding that they get more bang for their buck by consulting with outside experts instead of hiring new staff people. Here’s the logic:

·    Executive Level Talent without a long-term commitment. Most companies avoid hiring the senior level talent they need due to the long-term overhead commitment.  Bring in an executive to set a new course and when they hand over the new plan you existing staff can execute.  If you are expecting your existing staff to get you any farther than they already have, you are likely expecting too much.

·    Ability to insert an entire team.  Many organizations have an area of their business that is behind the competition.  People on your team are already too busy to fix this, but you can easily insert an outside to completely revamp an area of your organization.  We have found many companies have failed to keep pace with web / online marketing.  Good news is help can be on the inside of your organization in about a week.   

·    Ability to scale up or down at will.  Having contractors on staff is much more like dating, as opposed to marrying a full-time employee.  If your needs change, so can the people you have working for you.   

·    Fresh Ideas.  The new team comes from a variety of experience and backgrounds. All companies suffer from group think and limitations based on what they see.  Outsiders avail you to an entirely new set of thoughts and ideas.  They will provide a unique perspective that will increase the productivity of your existing workforce.   

·    Peace of mind.  Would you like a chance to try before you buy? The risk of hiring someone into your organization is significant.  The reality is you can try before you buy at most any level of the organization.  Hiring an employee into your organization means you have made at least a short-term commitment.  If you hired your CMO or web designer on a contract / consulting basis and they are not a culture fit, making a change is fast and easy.   

The concept of outsourcing your CMO is new, while outsourcing your CFO or CIO is more common.  Ultimately outsourcing the CMO function makes more sense.  Companies with more than $ 1B in revenue must have a CMO, about half of smaller companies are better off with a strong VP and they bring in an interim CMO for 3 months a year to set strategy.  The quality of your marketing will increase and the cost saving is tremendous.  

By Bob Van Rossum 

www.marketproinc.com

By Bob Van Rossum 

Gone are the days when throngs of salesmen in penny loafers knocked on businesses’ doors one by one in hopes of introducing, educating, and converting those “blind” prospects into long-term customers. Thirty years ago, there were only a handful of ways prospects could get information from anyone other than your sales force. Now, your marketing department has assumed the role of educating your customers, and your sales team’s role has shrunk to simply converting interested and educated prospects into buyers. Plain and simple, marketing has trumped sales in the corporate hierarchy.

Marketing today is a complicated game. Back in the 1970’s, your company might have spent almost its entire marketing budget on television commercials to run during I Love Lucy, or bought up a bunch of newspaper ads or radio spots. These choices alone would allow you to reach your target audience. Not anymore. Focusing your marketing efforts with laser accuracy has replaced broadcasting. Now your marketing department needs to know where and how they can reach your targeted demographic.

Read more: http://www.marketproinc.com/success/why_marketing.html

Client Side Best Practices – Adopt a Hiring Methodology

By Bob Van Rossum

In today’s increasingly competitive world, leaving mission critical positions open longer than absolutely necessary is unacceptable. The lost productivity and opportunity costs are staggering. Following are two practices you can implement to limit these costs by getting better talent into your organization more quickly.

1. Make sure you and your search firm adopt a hiring methodology and hiring focus, as opposed to having a perpetual search focus. It’s important to understand how your executive search process is impacted by you, your hiring methodology and your search firm. Unfortunately, having great candidates does not always result in making a great hire. The ability to take those candidates and move them through the hiring process quickly – from initial client interview, to follow up interviews, to offer – in a short window is very important not just to getting someone hired, but getting the right person hired. At MarketPro, we are known for getting a short list of candidates to our clients faster than anyone else in the industry. How do we do this? We have a team of experienced marketing professionals screening talent. Additionally, we benchmark every position at the start of the search process. This goes far beyond a typical search intake process conducted by most firms. In addition to the typical assignment study, and a position and candidate brief, we benchmark the position’s key deliverables necessary to move the company forward. Try this in your own company – develop functional, leadership, commitment and cultural benchmarks to maximize your success. Then, as we do, benchmark your candidates against these criteria and create a success profile. Only candidates for whom you can make a business case for clearing the mark move forward in the process. This is continually reevaluated as the process goes along and additional data is gathered.
2. Send a clear message to your top-level candidates that your organization is one that values talent. More and more in today’s marketplace, a passive candidate puts himself or herself out into the search process and begins to do some comparison shopping. With unemployment at an all time low, and with top quality talent getting harder to find, I would be disappointed if the top candidates were not smart enough to do this. If you conduct a slow interview process or are viewed as having a weak employment brand, you will continually find yourself losing top candidates to your competitors. If you want to successfully onboard your next top performer, send a powerful message during the interview process about how your company values talent. The good news is that it’s a very easy and powerful step to incorporate.

To illustrate my points, let’s look at two client examples from our experience at MarketPro.  Read More:

http://www.marketproinc.com/success/adopt_a_hiring_methodology.html

Wow, information is accumulating at an amazing rate.  With great opportunities that exist with LinkedIn, Twitter, FaceBook and all the strong individual blogs out there, how can you possibly get hold of the best information and be able to utilize to allow you company to make more money.  Yes, all this social networking is great, but at the end of the day we still have a responsibility to our shareholders.  How do you define if the time you spend in the wonderful world of Web 2.0 is productive or not.  Quite simply, if what you are doing is making you more money than it is a good use of time and if you cannot quantify the value of it then you need to spend your time on something that has impact on profit.  The simple question to ask is:  Did my time help me acquire a customer, grow my relationship with a customer or reduce my cost?  If you cannot answer yes to at least one of these questions, move on to something that does.    

Please do not get me wrong, in the fast food world we live in I certainly understand and subscribe to the importance of blogging, article marketing, etc. and the time investment that this takes.  Ultimately you need to understand intrinsic value of your online presence and how it will impact your business over time.   You also need to understand what others are doing online and make a place for those ideas in your execution of an online marketing program.  But I also know how easily you can get caught in the massive amount of information that is coming at you on a daily basis and lose sight of what is you end goal, money. 

In addition to constantly asking the three questions outlined above, I recommend the following actions:

1.       Stop letting your inbox run your day.  On the average day I receive 200 e-mails that require my attention.  It is easy to become tied to my inbox, but this does not maximize my productivity and profit.  It is easy for me to go to Outlook to look for a piece of information to complete a task and on my way to that data I see I have a new message and get sidetracked from the reason I went to Outlook in the first place.  I have now set limits on when I will check my e-mail.

2.       Organize the information overflow.  Receiving a lot of data at the time you need it least is useless.  If you come across something interesting, save it to a folder for later reading.  What you will find is if you are not willing to spend the time saving and categorizing the data is was never worth looking at in the first place and would have just gathered dust on the corner of your desk.

At the end of the day if you keep focused on your goals and driving the right results, the decisions are easy.  They key is not to lose sight of the goal while data is coming at you at an alarming rate. 

www.marketproinc.com