The right marketing team can make or break your business. Find the right people and your leads will skyrocket. Make the wrong call and watch your business plateau—or plummet.

Whether you’re ready for your first marketing hire or are looking to expand your team, intentionally crafting your interview process is key to hiring marketing professionals who will take your business to new heights.

Keep reading to discover some of the best questions to ask in a marketing interview, along with hiring tips and common mistakes to avoid.

The Ultimate Guide to Hiring Marketing Professionals

Hiring phenomenal marketing professionals is one of the best things you can do to ensure your business thrives. When you’re supported by an individual or team who knows what they’re doing, you’ll have a clear brand vision, a trusted presence within your market, and a funnel of leads ready to experience the magic of your sales team.

With such huge potential on the line, fine-tuning your hiring process is crucial to bring marketing you can rely on to your organization.

In this guide, we’ll help you develop a process that takes the stress out of hiring—making it smooth, easy, and enjoyable for everyone involved.

1. Establish Marketing Goals and Priorities

First things first: why do you want to hire marketing support?

Maybe you’ve never worked with a marketer before and need an expert to develop a marketing strategy for your business. Maybe your current team is overloaded, and you’re looking for a specialist to come in to take on a portion of the current workload. Or maybe you’ve been perfecting your marketing process for a while now and want to expand to a new area, like social media ads.

What do you hope your marketing team will accomplish—better brand awareness? Increased lead generation? A social media presence that more effectively targets a younger audience?

When you know where you want to be, it’s a lot easier to get there, so build your vision before you dive into the hiring process.

2. Determine Budget and Roles Needed

Now that you’ve established your goals, it’s time to take a look at your budget. Realistically, how much support are you able to bring on? Do you plan to rely on contractors, or do you have the budget to expand to a full-time marketing team?

Depending on the goals you have in mind, your team member needs will vary. If you’re a small business bringing in your first marketing hire, you’ll want a generalist who’s able to wear many different hats and jump in headfirst to assess your current needs. On the other hand, if you’re running a large organization in need of strategic leadership, you’ll want to bring in a Director of Marketing or Chief Marketing Strategist with a whole team of marketers underneath them.

If you’re somewhere in the middle, you may want to hire 2-3 experts with a range of skills who are able to work together to craft campaigns and strategies that convert. Types of marketers to consider include:

• Content Creators
• Graphic Designers
• Email Marketing Specialists
• Copywriters
• SEO Strategists
• Automation Specialists
• Digital Ad Managers
• Out-of-Home (OOH) Advertising Experts
• Project Managers
• Event Coordinators
• PR Experts
• Brand Strategists

3. Develop a Strategic Hiring Strategy

These days, the job market can feel like a landmine. Hiring teams and applicants alike are wary, and the application process is dreaded by all. Turn the process around with a strategic, intentional strategy that curates a great experience for all involved.

Craft a Clear Job Description

By laying out your needs and expectations up front, you’ll save both yourself and potential applicants time and energy by being as straightforward as possible in your job listing.

• Clearly define the role, its scope, and required skills
• Determine responsibilities and expected outcomes
• List necessary prerequisites
• Share the salary or hourly pay rate
• Highlight room for growth

Remember, you want to write a job posting that your ideal hire won’t be able to help themselves from applying to.

Be sure to avoid:

• Vague job descriptions
• Uncommunicated expectations
• Copy and pasted job descriptions that lack specificity

Streamline the Hiring Process

You don’t want to rush the hiring process, but you also don’t want to drag it out to a point where applicants feel strung along or lose interest. Maintain clear communication throughout (no one likes a company that ghosts their applicants!), and establish a timeline with potential hires as to what the steps moving forward look like.

4. Interview Your Marketing Candidates

You have a great pool of applicants—but how do you know which hire is the right choice for your organization?

Prioritize an interview process that evaluates technical skills, creative thinking, and a knowledge of the current marketing landscape. It’s also important to pay attention to whether or not the candidate seems like a good culture fit for your organization. After all, you want to hire someone that you and the rest of your employees will enjoy working with!

Questions to Ask in a Marketing Interview

If you don’t have a background in marketing, it can be tricky to know the best questions to ask marketing professionals. Here are a few go-to interview questions to help you get to know potential candidates better:

• What has been your favorite marketing campaign to work on in your career? What did you love about it?
• What marketing channels do you currently feel are the most valuable for businesses in my industry?
• Tell me about a campaign that didn’t go as planned. What did you do?
• How do analytics inform your marketing campaigns?
• What are your favorite tools to use in your position?
• What is your preferred method or system of communication when working collaboratively?
• How do you organize campaigns when working with a team? How do you ensure a project is completed to the highest standard across the board?

You also might ask potential hires to complete a test project or share examples from their portfolio so you can see what their work is like in the real world.

Should I Outsource to an External Team?

If you aren’t yet ready to hire a full in-house marketing team, it might make sense to outsource specialized areas to a team of experts. Maybe you want an SEO audit without fully hiring an SEO expert, or maybe you need a one-time brand refresh from a branding studio you love.

You also could keep your digital marketing team in-house while outsourcing your out-of-home advertising needs to an outdoor ad agency that can effectively act as an extension of your marketing department without being in-house. You’ll be able to launch outdoor ad campaigns that convert with ease while allowing your in-house team to prioritize digital efforts.

Enhance Your Advertising Campaigns With OOH

At Alluvit Media, we’re proud to play a key role in your advertising efforts. As out-of-home advertising experts, we love coming alongside your marketing team to develop coordinated marketing campaigns that allow your organization to expand, grow, and increase leads and sales.

Contact us today for a custom billboard proposal and to learn if out-of-home advertising could be the missing component your marketing campaigns need to succeed.

FAQs When Hiring Marketing Pros