Marketing recruiters are in a unique position—we are constantly exposed to the latest trends, strategies, jobs, best practices, ideas and more from the industry’s biggest brands and brightest names. And we can share that with you as we work together on determining your needs and hiring strategy.
Our broad marketing perspective and experience can be leveraged to refine your marketing strategy and get better results. This overlooked and undervalued advantage of a partnership with a marketing executive search firm could improve the way your business approaches marketing.
There are obvious benefits of working with a marketing executive search firm. You will get better top marketing talent for your mission-critical executive hires.
But you’re not just getting access to that marketing talent—you’re getting access to US. Our experience, our expertise, our insights and connections.
Case Study: Adjusting a Client’s Digital Approach
We recently took on a new search from a longstanding customer. They were happy with a matches we’d made for them in the past, and wanted the help of a marketing executive search firm in finding someone to lead their digital strategy.
This client is #1 in their industry. Naturally, they wanted to develop an online experience that matched the positive experience of their brick-and-mortar locations. And I don’t mean just a best-in-industry or annual award-winning digital presence. They truly wanted to create one of the absolute best, most comprehensive digital customer experiences available anywhere, ever.
So they decided to bring in a digital expert to step in and assist their marketing communications director in getting there.
This seems like a step in the right direction, but after taking some time to really understand the client’s vision, we knew we were heading down the wrong path. For the scope of the project they had laid out and their commitment to absolute excellence, the position they had in mind simply wouldn’t cut it. They weren’t in the right ballpark in terms of title and compensation to get the kind of talent and strategy it was going to take to make this happen.
More importantly, we knew that their marketing department was structured in a way that was not conducive to the kind of high-level integrated digital work that would be required to construct this digital experience. The core content creators, social media managers, web specialists and analytics staff were too spread out organizationally to be effectively directed. Even if we managed to find a very strong candidate for that mid-level manager position, they would not have had the power and resources to achieve the goal.
So we met with the client and convinced them of several things:
- To escalate the job to a VP position reporting directly to the CMO
- To increase compensation to a level fitting top-tier marketers in this position
- To restructure their marketing department to move essential talent under the authority of this role
Our client quickly saw our reasoning and agreed. Our ability to share with them how other best-in-class companies run digital marketing meant a world of difference in how they’ll move forward.
How We Did It
Trust
The first factor that made this adjustment possible was trust. Our consistent results have earned us a good reputation in the marketing recruitment industry. This was reinforced with the client when we delivered great candidates to them previously. That, in addition to the credibility we’ve established with their executives, led them to listen to our advice and take it seriously.
Experience
We knew from experience that this position as it was initially envisioned couldn’t achieve the desired results. And years of helping hire top marketers gave us the perspective needed to realize where it needed to be in terms of responsibility, title, and compensation.
Modern Insight
We see a LOT of companies bring on digital-centric talent lately, to varying levels of effectiveness. We know what’s working and what’s not. In this case we were able to recommend the escalation to a new position just below the CMO. Having dealt with hundreds of organizations with digital departments, we knew how important it would be to reorganize our client’s marketing resources and consolidate the client’s other digital talent for maximum effectiveness.
How You Can Take Full Advantage of Your Marketing Executive Search Firm
The next time you enlist the help of a marketing executive search firm; remember that we’re more than just a resource for top marketing talent. We also bring a lot of unique perspectives to the table.
It’s easy for you to get mired down in your day-to-day work and lose sight of your relative position in the market. Since we engage with such a wide spread of clients, we can give honest assessments of your marketing strategy and department organization that is difficult to get on your own.
