4 Steps to Finding and Onboarding the Best Sales and Marketing Employees

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By Gloria Martinez

By Hiring new employees — especially new workers whose job it is to sell your products and services to the outside world — can sometimes feel like a gamble for business owners. If you’re considering hiring new sales and marketing employees, use the four steps below to locate and hire the best employees for your enterprise.

  1. Know Your Weak Spots

When you’re looking for a new employee, begin by asking yourself what gap he or she is filling. Do none of your current employees understand how to run a successful email marketing campaign? Or, do you simply need someone who understands social media? There are many types of marketing. Choosing to hire a sales analyst is quite different than opting for the social-media-savvy digital marketer. Ensure that you (and your hiring team) understand the benefits and the drawbacks of these common types of sales and marketing fields before posting an online job ad.

  1. Understand How New Sales and Marketing Employees Can Benefit Your Business

Perhaps, after completing the first step, you’ve decided to seek out someone with marketing and sales knowledge in addition to general business skills — including asking others for money. Maybe you’re looking for a newly-minted MBA grad who can whip up a business plan and apply for grants for your company. Finding the right grants can be difficult, but they can help small businesses stay on track. Securing one may depend on developing an airtight business plan and looking for grants specifically for your industry.

  1. Hire Your Favorites

A “full-stack” marketer could be a good choice for a fledgling business without any current marketing experts on staff, but if you need someone with more specialized experience, stay away from those who claim to know how to do every aspect of marketing. You may need to narrow your choices down to a social media manager, a content strategist, or a media buyer. Similarly, a professional who specializes in building brands by curating photos, content, and creating a narrative for your company may be in order if you wish to project a new image to your customers.

  1. Know the Benefits and Drawbacks of Full-Time and Part-Time Employees

If you’re running an extremely small business or a startup on a shoestring budget, hiring several new full-time employees may not be the right choice. Full-time employees have the advantages of being daily members of your team who are on-site (or available for remote meetings) whenever you need them — but they’ll cost you a lot more in salary and benefits than would a few freelancers or multiple part-time workers. According to Inc.com, part-time workers can fill the gaps and work as few as five hours a week.

Who you hire should ideally depend on what your company needs at this time. If you find a person who can juggle multiple sales and marketing roles and has a great grasp of what your company needs, you may opt to hire this person as a full-time member of your staff rather than hiring many freelancers.

Choosing your new staff members is not a task to be taken lightly, and selecting the right candidates can often help revitalize and rebrand your small business. Using the steps above can help you to simplify the process of hiring and onboarding new full-time or part-time employees.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Content Strategy Alliance.

 

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A Guide to Taking Your Brick-and-Mortar Business Online During COVID-19 and Beyond

 

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By Katie Conroy

Online and e-commerce-based businesses may be a dime a dozen, but the fact is, there are still countless small businesses that have held on to their brick-and-mortar roots without a hitch. That is, until COVID-19 came into the picture. With new rules on social distancing and widespread lockdowns, a great many SMBs that rely heavily on walk-in traffic now find themselves in dire straits.

Thankfully, all hope is not lost. But it does mean that many entrepreneurs must look online for survival. If you suddenly find yourself in that boat, it can be all-too-easy to feel out of your  element. But fear not—so many successfully did so even before the pandemic, there’s no dearth of information to show you the way. Let’s begin.

Why It’s Time to Go Online

First things first—before you can take your business online, it’s important to understand why it’s potentially one of the best decisions you will ever make. The fact is, this actually goes beyond just being a knee-jerk reaction to the pandemic. Rather, for several years now, e-commerce has proven to be advantageous for many businesses as it expands your reach while keeping overhead low—not to mention, it’s easy enough to maintain and execute.

As you move toward taking your business online, you might even find that it’s overdue. But don’t fret; it’s not too late to accelerate your business’ digital transformation, especially given COVID-19’s effect on consumers’ online shopping behavior and habits. Truly, there’s no better time than now to ride the waves of change.

How to Take Your Business Online

You will likely find that taking your business online is quite straightforward. You’re already an old hand at setting up a business (albeit a physical one), so creating an e-commerce version may actually prove to be an easier transition. To dive in, The Balance suggests leveraging some simple e-commerce tools. There is everything from tools to help with naming your domain to simple marketing apps that perform a variety of functions, ranging from customer service to performance reporting.

Probably the most important initial decision you will make is to sell your products through a stable and trustworthy platform. As Let’s Talk About Money points out, not all platforms are created equal. It’s more than prudent to do some research to find a good match for your small business.

How to Achieve Online Success

Finally, as your brick-and-mortar business makes the transition into an e-commerce one, you’ll want to get the word out in a manner that is enticing to consumers. Doing so will not only guarantee that your loyal customers continue to invest in your products and services, but also help new clients find you.

This essentially boils down to having a good marketing strategy, as well as having the right marketing tools in your arsenal. Content Strategy Alliance explains current trends indicate avenues like niche content, vlogging, and content for voice activation should all be on your radar. Along those same lines, for many online businesses, simple email marketing is a great way to touch base with your customers on a regular basis through promotional newsletters and the like.

And of course, social media marketing is just as important—maybe even more so, in certain niches. After all, everyone’s on social media these days, so it’s more than wise to make great use of your social media properties to reach the appropriate eyeballs and, by extension, tug at the right purse strings.

Indeed, it can be argued that offline businesses are not dead yet, but it won’t serve you or your small business to sit still during this current impasse. Taking your products and services online may even spell the difference between death and survival for your small business. You know very well which outcome you prefer, so start your digital transformation today.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Content Strategy Alliance.

 

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