Consumers have been taking more of their shopping online for years now, prompting brands to shift an increasing amount of their marketing spend to digital channels. That makes sense. But when paired with the massive spike in unemployment due to COVID-19, it’s easy to see why many of these companies no longer have the time, resources, or expertise to develop comprehensive digital campaigns internally.
That’s not to mention the stress many retailers will soon face due to shipping bottlenecks during the holiday season. While worrying about how they’ll move merchandise between stores and cover increased delivery fees, they don’t want to wonder whether their marketing campaigns are being deployed successfully.
As a result, they’re hiring digital marketing agencies. This is welcome news for firms, but there’s a catch: some agencies lack the staff to keep up with the influx of new clients. The looming holiday season also means marketing budgets for existing clients should continue to climb—potentially even higher than in previous years due to the need to improve top-line figures.
The timing couldn’t be better for agencies to add top talent to their teams. Ramping up your recruitment efforts to handle the increased business is a smart move (even during a pandemic). You can recruit top talent who may not otherwise be available under “normal” circumstances while increasing your bandwidth to bring on additional clients.
Of course, recruitment involves so much more than hiring people who have marketing talent. Anyone can learn how to communicate the value of a given product or service to consumers. The focus of recruitment should be on finding people who are reliable, trustworthy, eager to learn, motivated, and, above all else, curious. Curiosity helps people better adapt to uncertainty because it allows them to think deeply and rationally about situations and arrive at more creative solutions.
But how do you find such a candidate? While recruitment isn’t a perfect science, it’s essential to make sure each step in the process helps you reach a specific goal. Recruitment can be broken down into three phases, based on fit: culture, expertise, and client-facing.
Then, during each phase, sprinkle in a handful of culture-focused questions, which will help you find the right person to join your marketing team. Each phase should take two to four weeks.
Finding the right fit can be a struggle even during normal times. COVID-19 has made everything more challenging, but that shouldn’t prevent you from going forward with your recruitment efforts.
Here are a few suggestions to help you adjust your hiring approach:
The uncertainty of the current environment may have you questioning whether it’s a good time to add to your marketing team, but as brands move more and more of their marketing focus to digital channels, employees can be your greatest asset. You just need to be sure you have enough of the right people for the job.
Sam Sherman is a co-founder of Socium Media, a direct response marketing agency based in NYC. Sam has been on the agency side of the digital world for more than eight years, playing a pivotal role in digital strategy and execution in industries across the board. At Socium, he has helped manage more than $30 million in paid media in its first year while co-leading its business trajectory for years to come. All strategies and tactics at Socium are backed by data and executed with more than 10 years of direct-response digital marketing experience.