So you’ve hired a marketer – here’s how to support them

A step that many small to medium-sized business owners take as their business grows and evolves is to hire a marketer. But there’s a bit more to it than simply hiring an in-house marketer and tasking them with bringing in more business.

You need to ensure that they have a respectable budget to work with, as well the support, understanding, and trust of the entire leadership team.

Six steps to empowering your in-house marketing manager

Here are the six key things you must do as the business owner to ensure that you get the most out of your in-house marketing manager, and that they get the most out of their new role with your business.

Fail to do any of these six things and you risk clipping their wings and hampering their efforts to actively affect change and grow your business.

Include them in strategic decision making and information sessions

As the CEO or business owner, you need to make sure that marketers are involved from the strategy phase forward, assessing the market and customer needs from day one. The specific level of involvement will depend on how senior the marketer is within the organisation.

As the business leader, the best way you can help your in-house marketer is by ensuring big-picture business goals — and how those goals are measured — are clear. If your marketers know what the target is, they can use their expertise to determine the best strategies and tactics for hitting those targets.



In doing so, they will innovate, test, adjust and continually report on progress until the goals are met, or exceeded.

Provide them with a budget

If you expect your in-house marketing professional to achieve tangible results, you need to provide them with a tangible and realistic budget. As the old adage goes, you get what you pay for.

It may be that you already have some funds set aside that you have previously spent with a marketing agency, or on marketing activities and this could be the starting point for your new marketing recruit.

It’s likely that the first job your new marketer will undertake is reviewing your existing marketing strategy and refining, restructuring, or overhauling it. Once developed, this strategy will lead to marketing plans and activities that will require an investment and a proposed budget.

Make marketing every employee’s support role

In many ways, marketing is the responsibility of every person you employ. Every employee’s elevator speech, social media update, communication with customers, and sales presentation is as much a marketing function as the activities generated by your in-house marketer.

So it’s important to ensure that your employees work together in cross-functional ways so they all share the same vision, and project the same company image.

As the leader in the business, you need to buy into the marketing strategy and lead by example. Do that, and then others will follow, helping your marketer accomplish their goals sooner due to everyone in the business pushing in the same direction.

Value creative ideas

If you allow your marketer to try new things and value creative ideas, you will be making the most of their expertise. When employees are not afraid to fail and are allowed to spread their wings, they will push themselves further.

In short, supporting innovation and creativity will drive growth in your business. Not every idea will be a winner, but by letting your marketer take calculated risks, you will foster a culture of innovation that leads to success and employee retention.

Set realistic metrics

Ask your marketer to track, analyse, and report on the impact of all their activities. Make it their responsibility to look for ways to improve their efforts and better engage with prospective customers. This should also include the evaluation of competitors and industry trends.

As their efforts to grow your busines through marketing start to take root, your marketing manager may need some outside help. It could in digital marketing, content creation, web development, graphic design, or something else.

A full-service marketing agency can work with your in-house marketing manager to enable them to deliver truly meaningful growth in your business through strategic marketing activities. Importantly, this is not about your in-house marketing manager not being able to fulfill their duties; it is about empowering and enabling them to take your business to the next level.

As a full-service marketing agency, Icon works with in-house marketers client-side to help them bring to life the creative marketing plans that they may not have the bandwidth to deliver on their own.