How to hire a marketer
Hire a plumber, not a digital ninja
Marketing
Hire a plumber, not a digital ninja
Let’s do a small quiz. You are the founder of a food delivery brand. You are about to hire a marketer in the team. Who would you hire?
A digital marketer, who can manage all digital media channels and tools.
A traditional marketer, knows nothing about the digital media.
A food influencer, who has a million followers.
The correct answer is none of the above.
Salad Days wants a ninja marketer
Salad Days , a food delivery brand is hiring a ‘growth marketing manager’ or the first option: a digital marketer. The founder posted the job requirement. It is seeking a multi-multi-multi tasker. It starts with the vague objective of increasing sales, revenue and meeting ROI & company goals. It contains all the buzzwords such as CAC (cost of acquisition), funnel, content campaign, social media platforms, Whatsapp, Google analytics, Photoshop etc. That’s a profile for five professionals, not one. Even if it manages to hire one, it will not help to solve the problem of slow growth. Instead, it should hire someone, who can identify the market, the customers and then strategise to meet the specific objectives such as percentage increase in sales, increase in awareness etc.
Take a step back and reorient
Let me run a quick back of the napkin analysis. It started in 2014, before it was cool. It serves salads, sandwiches, beverages, desserts at premium prices. It grows its own vegetables. It runs four kitchens in Gurugram, Delhi and Noida. As per reviews (Google, Trip Advisor and Zomato) for every customer liking the brand, there is a customer who does not like the brand. Unhappy customers are complaining about delivery time, quality of ingredients, quality of ingredients, high prices. Happy customers love the brand for its healthy ingredients, taste and packaging. It also has competitors such as Salad Days, restaurants in Delhi-NCR and other health food delivery brands.
Salad Days needs a plumber
The job of the marketer is to diagnose the brand and the landscape, it is present. Then, the job is to identify the right market and the competitors. It could be other health food alternatives such as baked snacks. The marketer has to position the brand such that the consumers find it more appealing than the competing brands. Then, thas to pick the SMART objectives, which should not be more than 2 or 3. The last step is to be able to move the tactical levers such as promotion.
Salad days has many a leeks happening in the purchase funnel, from many a people not being aware about the brand, to people not thinking about it, to people preferring competing brands to people not recommending others for the brand. That’s the primary job of a marketer.
Mark Ritson said in a video of Mini MBA, “A plumber who arrives at the job with only one tool is a bad plumber. A good plumber looks at the job and goes back to the van to get the right tool.”