So you’re looking to hire a Marketing Executive. This is an important role, so you need to make sure you hire the right person. But how do you know who the right person is?
Finding the perfect candidate when hiring for executive and manager roles can be challenging. Marketing encompasses a lot of different skills and backgrounds. But which ones should you look for in your candidates? Let’s take a look at some of the key Marketing Executive skills to look for in your candidates.
Strategy
One of the most important features of a quality marketing executive is the ability to strategise. Strategies drive your marketing content output and if implemented well can give your business a serious boost.
Without a solid marketing strategy your efforts lack direction. Your candidates should have involvement in developing and implementing marketing strategies.
They should be able to provide you with examples of strategies they’ve devised in the past, both long and short-term. The strategies should be creative and successful, achieving positive results for the business.
Communication
Communication is one of the keys to success in all roles. For senior marketing roles, communication is extremely important. Your Marketing Executive should be able to communicate with others both in and outside of your business in an effective manner.
They need to have a good understanding of your business in order to create and implement marketing strategies. To do this, they need to be able to hold professional dialogues with colleagues and clients. They also need to be able to gather and distribute information in an efficient manner. These skills include relationship building, namely the ability to identify barriers to communication.
Creativity
Marketing is a field where creativity can thrive, and creativity is one of the essential Marketing Executive skills. Applying creative approaches to marketing practices can reap great rewards when done right. You should look for candidates who successfully apply creativity to their role. How have they used their innovation and outside the box thinking to drive business for their company?
Ambitious marketers will be proud of their creativity and eager to tell you how they apply it day-to-day.
Not only will creativity help you stand out from competitors, it’s also a good sign of drive and forward-thinking. Marketers who show day-to-day creativity and enthusiasm are likely to be ambitious and driven.
Literacy
It goes without saying that any senior marketer should be highly literate. Your candidates should be excellent writers, with strong written communication skills. This is especially true for content marketing focused roles.
If your Marketing Executive is going to produce large amounts of content, you want to make sure they’re a skilled wordsmith. Language is vital to good marketing material, and even the smallest sentence carries a lot of weight. The first bit of your content that each customer reads determines their impression of you as a business and what you’re offering, you'll notice this when looking through CV's.
Market Knowledge
One of the key skills of a Marketing Executive is market knowledge. A deep understanding of your market can be the difference between a good marketer and a great marketer. Your candidate should be experienced working in your industry, marketing to similar audiences.
Think about it. How is a marketer supposed to develop successful strategies when they don’t fully understand the ins and outs of the group they’re marketing to? Market knowledge can be acquired, but it’s always an advantage to have pre-existing knowledge of your industry.
- How well do they know your market?
- Do they know your business, your competitors, and their standing?
- Do they have a good understanding of the client and customer-base and how to beat appeal to these groups?
- What about the products or services you’re offering?
- Do they have experience working with these?
These are questions you should ask when considering candidates for your Marketing Executive role.
Technology
Technology is becoming more and more essential in the workplace. Every industry utilises technology in some way. In regards to marketing, technology is vital. Any marketer worth their salt is making full use of modern technology. They're taking advantage of the internet, social media, and state-of-the-art software to form bespoke, effective marketing strategies.
Sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter allow marketers to gain a better understanding of the market than ever before. You should look for marketers who have extensive experience using a range of technologies in their day-to-day work.
Look out for those who’re particularly enthused about new technology. Technology advances at a rapid pace. Marketers who keep abreast of developments give their business an advantage over their competitors. Also, make sure that your candidate is familiar with or able to adapt to the technology and software you have in place.
Are you willing to change or adapt? If your ideal candidate is used to using different software and processes, will they be able to adapt to yours? Or will your business be able to adapt to them?
If neither of these changes can be made, you could encounter issues with integration.
Forward Thinking
The modern marketer needs to be ambitious and forward thinking. Depending on your market, there can be a lot of competition, especially in the world of online marketing.
Standing out from your competitors and promoting your brand image can be difficult. It’s something that takes a lot of planning, strategy, and time. Conducting successful marketing for your business doesn’t happen overnight, after all.
Your candidates should be able to put in the time and effort to reap rewards. They should be able to analyse the business and the market, and create solid but unique plans for the future. Patience is a virtue. They should understand the importance of long-term planning, and always be looking to the future.
Research and Analysis
The research and analysis stage is one of the most important parts of marketing and one of the most key skills of a Marketing Executive. Without quality research and reliable findings, your marketing campaigns and strategies could be a waste of time and effort. You need to know exactly who to target and how.
Your Marketing Executive should be able to form innovative marketing strategies. These strategies should help keep your business ahead of the curve and give you an advantage over competitors. But in order to form such strategies, they need to be excellent researchers.
Your Marketing Executive should be adept at researching business aspects such as competitor practices, market trends, technology advancements, social media, and your business’s strengths and weaknesses.
Having a well-researched base for your marketing campaigns can lead to great success.
Negotiation
Strategies and campaigns don’t always go as smoothly as planned. Negotiation skills are a must for quality Marketing Executives. Marketers work with a number of people to launch and implement strategies, and as such they need to be able to negotiate.
This includes colleagues, clients, customers, and anyone else involved in the implementation of strategies such as designers and developers. They need to make sure that the strategies are implemented to their vision, and within the budget.
Time Management
Senior marketers often have to wear a lot of hats. Marketing can be very broad and encompass various different tasks and responsibilities. Often these can involve different forms of marketing like digital, traditional, email, outbound, inbound, content, and so on. With so much to do and keep track of, strong time management skills are essential.
Your Marketing Executive should have the ability to manage their own workload and deliver content and strategies on time. They should make sure not to neglect their various responsibilities. After all, neglecting certain areas of marketing can lead to less publicity and customer/client engagement for your business.
Keeping on top of everything is hard, which is why your candidate needs to be talented. If they don’t have the time to do everything themselves, they need to be able to assign responsibilities to others such as Marketing Assistants. This is where individual and team management skills come in.
As Marketing Executive, your candidate should be able to manage people and delegate tasks in order to keep everything on schedule and manage workflow. This includes maintaining the work-life balance of themselves and their team.
Budgeting
You should also remember to consider money-management and planning ability in your candidate. High-quality marketers can take control of the budgeting for their campaigns and strategies.
By doing this they can maximise the effectiveness of their marketing whilst avoiding overspending. It’s important that your candidates understand how to negotiate money matters with outside parties in order to work efficiently with others.
Marketing Executives need to be ambitious with their plans, but they should always understand how to budget sensibly and stick to their limits.
Experience
Of course, strong experience is essential to any role. It’s the first thing many employers look for when recruiting. But for senior roles, you need to go a bit more in-depth.
Exactly what experience are you looking for? What type of experience? Are you looking for candidates with Assistant experience, or pre-established Marketing Executives? This will have a big effect on what you look for in a candidate.
Think about the industry you’re operating in, and the product or service you’re offering. Ideally, you should want your candidates to have experience working in similar areas. Hiring candidates with a solid base of market/product knowledge and experience helps greatly with onboarding and adjusting to your role.
Great Marketing Executive Skills Means Diversity
A diverse skill set is perhaps one of the most desirable features of the modern Marketing Executive.
There are a lot of different forms of marketing. The title ‘Marketing Executive’ can encompass several responsibilities. Marketing can be digital, content-based, outbound, inbound, email-based, etc. Ideally, your candidate will have strong experience across the board.
That means they can adapt when necessary to form dynamic strategies and campaigns that utilise a multitude of marketing aspects. You shouldn’t have to pick and choose between the above Marketing Executive skills. You should look for candidates who possess every one.
