Signs You Need a Marketing Director

Signs You Need a Marketing Director 

Deciding when to hire a new marketing director can be one of the most difficult decisions you can make as a business owner. Not only are you committing a large amount of money to this person’s salary, but you must be prepared to split leadership duties. Yet, if your business is successful, the time will come when you should expand your team with a marketing director.

There are various indicators for when you should hire a dedicated marketing executive. In some cases, your branding and marketing might be lacking the expertise of competitors. In other instances, you simply can’t keep up with the demands of a growing business. 

Hiring a new marketing director at the right time is critical for bringing your business to the next level.

Lack of Consistency in Brand Messaging 

One of the key signs you need a marketing director is a lack of consistency in your brand messaging. That being said, quality brands have consistent designs, logos, colors, and messaging across all marketing channels. Without executive leadership in marketing, it’s easy for your brand aesthetics and messaging to get mixed up by employees.

To ensure your brand is represented in a uniform fashion, a marketing director will keep your whole team on the same page. This is important because your brand strategy was developed specifically to appeal to certain demographics. If your messaging does not align with customer needs, it can have a negative impact on sales.

Absence of Structure in Marketing Efforts 

It’s impossible to scale a business if you don’t develop processes and systems that can be recreated. Oftentimes, new startups have a “figure it out as you go” mentality. This view is okay in the very early days of your business, but a lack of structure can cripple growth when your business expands to a certain size.

A skilled marketing director can step into a disorganized startup and give form to chaos. When coupled with employee training, standard operating procedures (SOPs) layout concrete directions for each department. Likewise, a skilled marketing director will develop job descriptions for every marketing role – so each person knows exactly what they should be doing.

Growing and Realizing Goals

With startups and smaller businesses, marketing duties are often spread out among several team members. However, there is no single person spearheading branding and marketing initiatives. While this arrangement might work fine for a while, such a patchwork of ideas, perspectives, and personalities is bound to clash at some point. Hiring a marketing director can soothe tensions in a growing business by putting responsibility in the hands of a single person.

Consistent quarterly revenue growth is one of the clearest signs you need a marketing director. According to the Corporate Finance Institute, “quarterly revenue growth refers to an increase in the company’s sales from one quarter to the next.” If your financial statements clearly show a healthy company, that’s a good indicator that you should move forward with hiring a marketing director.

Need for Discernable Return on Investment (ROI)  

Return on investment (ROI) is an important metric that is applied to a variety of business practices. According to the Marketing Evolution website, “by calculating return on marketing investment, organizations can measure the degree to which marketing efforts either holistically, or on a campaign-basis, contribute to revenue growth.”

While marketing is typically one of the easiest ROIs to track, oftentimes it takes executive-level talent to employ and assess ROI initiatives. Yet, without clearly discernable ROI, you are literally “shooting in the dark” with your marketing efforts. In turn, you aren’t able to justify your marketing budget with tangible numbers – which will only hurt your ability to create new campaigns moving forward.

What Qualifications Should a Marketing Director Have?

While certain qualifications related to communication, organization, and management apply to all marketing director jobs, the positions will vary with different industries and company sizes. According to Forbes, marketing directors often “have a mixture of creative and analytical skills.”

Common qualifications you will find on a marketing director job description include:

• BA or MBA degree in business, marketing, or a related field
• Knowledge of your specific market segment and/or similar goods/services
• Experience using marketing data analytics tools
• Ability to create and direct the workflow of multiple marketing campaigns
• Comfortable generating market reports for the C-suite and investors

What Types of Projects Do Marketing Directors Oversee?

Since marketing directors hold high-level jobs, they undertake important executive tasks. An example of a marketing director project might be an audit of current digital marketing campaigns to assess ROI and profitability. In another instance, a marketing director might oversee rebranding efforts or the overhaul of critical marketing assets like websites.

Need Help Recruiting Marketing Management?  

At CulverCareers, we know how hard it is to find the perfect marketing director to fit your company. Whether it be sourcing, interviewing, or offer negotiation, only the very best recruiters can handle the challenges of executive search. When you work with us, you get 40 years of experience and an expert team of recruiters behind your brand.

CulverCareers has gone to great lengths to develop programs that ensure new hires are happy and productive at their jobs. While recruiting new team members is of utmost importance, we also remind our clients that employee retention is just as valuable. As such, CulverCareers will help you develop competitive benefits packages to attract and retain C-level talent.

Ready to hire a marketing director? Contact Us to get started!