How to on-board a new marketing hire

Marketing Eye's way of working with clients is different. For a start, we have a way in which we conduct a workshop that is unlike any other company, ensuring that we walk away from this intensive workshop meeting with all the right information required to complete a marketing strategy.

Our marketing strategies are comprehensive, and tailored to individual companies. There is no cookie-cutter approach to the way we develop a marketing strategy and for a majority of our clients, this strategy is the singularly the best value they have received from Marketing Eye. It really is like no other marketing strategy you have ever read and incorporates all areas of the marketing mix.

We have to teach our marketers how to do this. They did not learn how to do it at University and most probably, they won't have the right experience from their years of working in low level marketing jobs or in sales to be able to ethically put together a strategy that is going to add value to a clients business.

Additionally, we have processes, systems and literally hundreds of case studies on every area of marketing in which we have worked. 

This can be daunting to a marketing executive who may have an opinion that because of their Degrees at University, they know what to do. 

If you are thorough enough in the recruitment process and are about to onboard a new staff member, there are a number of areas in which you can implement to ensure that your new marketing recruits are given the best opportunity to be successful.

• Ensure that your new marketing recruit knows your company: Provide all new employees with access to all information pertaining to understanding the brand, its key messages, what you do, how you do it and why you do it. As a marketer you are required to communicate the value of the company and in order to do that, you must understand it thoroughly. Include interviewing key employees, clients and industry stakeholders or partners. 
• A job description and a set of key performance indicators that come with detailed information on how the new marketing recruit can achieve these goals. A culture book will also help a new marketer understand what they need to do to fit into the team that they will be working with.
• A guide to the complete sales and marketing automation system and what information marketing provides sales in order to ensure that they are able to achieve their goals.
• Copy of the company marketing strategy and business plan.
• Overview of all areas of marketing with a 'how to guide' on implementation of tactical marketing applications. 
• Your toolbox: Each company has a list of technologies, passwords, style guides, analytical programs that are utilized to help marketers do their jobs
• Comprehensive details on what value your company gives to its clients.
• Celebration: Make sure your new marketing recruit is welcomed to your company by your team and that they quickly bond so that "as a team" they can deliver upon the company goals.

There are many ways to engage your new marketing recruit from day one of employment. It is imperative that you give them every opportunity to succeed and work with them to achieve both their goals and that of the company's. 

If you feel like they are not a good fit, or there are big alarm bells early on - then fire fast. Don't hold onto dead wood. The damage it will do to your business and brand is much greater than learning from the mistake of hiring the wrong person.

Recently, we hired a person who on day two informed us that he was taking day three off to take his girlfriend to the Dentist. This is not an employee that you want onboard. What this told me was that the job was secondary to everything else, and that they felt entitled to have what time off they pleased and were not dedicated to the job that they were employed to do. They didn't ask, but instead 'informed us'. I said, "no, I am sure your girlfriend can take herself to the Dentist for a checkup." On top of this, this particular person was unemployed and had never been given an opportunity previously to work in the field of marketing even though this was the area that they studied. If they are not engaged from day-one, they will never be.

As business owners, its important that you engage every person in the onboarding process and new recruits, marketing or otherwise are well-equipped to succeed.