What to do when you want to hire at a higher level than you can afford?

Bringing someone new into your business isn’t an easy task. And, as a small business owner, you want to make sure that the person you bring into your team not only has the skills you’re looking for, but the experience to help you continue to scale up.

But this creates a hurdle that stops a lot of business owners in their tracks… 

They don't have the budget to hire an expert Head of Marketing or experienced Marketing Manager straight off the bat. 

So, if you find yourself in this position, what are your options? 

1. Outsource your marketing

One very common path business owners take is to outsource the implementation of their marketing tasks until they can afford to bring the person you want in house. There are lots of advantages to this option, such as…

• If you’re still in the process of scaling up your business, you can be flexible in how much you choose to outsource each month.
  
• You can hire experts in particular fields of marketing like SEO, Facebook ads and email campaigns to help you get the best return on your marketing investment.
  

But, there are also a couple of drawbacks to outsourcing it’s important to be aware of: 

• They’ll only do what they’ve been briefed to do so aren’t always reactive to change and opportunity.
  
• If you don’t go in with a clear marketing strategy and a way of measuring the activities they’re implementing, you can lose control over your strategy. 
  

Outsourcing is a great short term solution for businesses looking to continue scaling up their marketing while they focus their efforts on working within the business. 

2. Training up your own in-house marketer ​

Your second option is to hire someone who is less skilled and train them up to, one day, become your Head of Marketing. 

You might consider a Marketing Executive, Marketing Administrator or even a Marketing Apprentice (like I did!) as your first marketing hire who you can train and develop into an expert in your small business.

There are many advantages to hiring a marketing employee, including…

• You’ll have complete control over your marketing strategy.
• Your marketer can be more reactive to changes in the market as they will have a really clear understanding of who your ideal customer is and what their ‘pain points’ are. 

It’s important to consider that;

• Hiring a junior marketer or apprentice will require a big time investment when they first join to build their confidence and teach them your strategy and processes, as well as how to execute your marketing effectively.
• You might still have to outsource some specialist tasks like digital advertising, which can be difficult to excel in if you’re not focussing on it day in, day out.

This is the path I chose when taking on my first marketer because I wanted someone who really understood my ideal customer and what I wanted to achieve with my marketing. 

In my free guide ‘How to turn your first marketing hire into your Head of Marketing’ I talk a lot more about this journey and the resources you need to have in place before hiring your first marketer. If you’re interested in finding out more, download my guide today.