How To Attract And Retain Top Digital Marketing Talent

Many executives and CMOs are learning the hard way just how crucial an effective and reliable digital marketing team is when it comes to the success of their business and marketing efforts.

Many executives and CMOs are learning the hard way just how crucial an effective and reliable digital marketing team is when it comes to the success of their business and marketing efforts.

How much thought have you put into filling the talent gaps on your digital marketing team? How can you ensure you are reaching the top tier of applicants and qualified individuals to fill those gaps? And most importantly, how can you guarantee they will want to stay once you’ve brought them onto your team?

Finding the digital marketing talent your business needs is one of the hardest tasks CMOs face. As all industry experts know, marketing is constantly evolving; however, the rate at which marketing is evolving has risen dramatically thanks to technological developments.

Qualified marketing professionals are harder to find as marketing evolves because their areas of expertise are becoming increasingly blended with other departments, like IT, so the applicants with all of the skills and experience you need are few and far between. In addition, these individuals recognize the high demand for their positions and often receive offers or interviews from various businesses, making it that much harder to convince them to join your marketing team.

If your hiring manager has yet to bring in or find a digital marketing candidate capable of fixing the problems with your UX or crafting an effective content strategy, then it’s time to use one of the following methods to attract new, quality talent:

1. Innovation Is Key

Innovation is critical for any business looking to attract talent from the highly competitive digital marketing marketplace. Any business can contact a recruiting agency or search popular job posting sites to fill a position. However, the only way to attract the top quality talent that will go beyond just getting the job done is to become known as an innovator.

So how do you start building an innovator persona for your business? It’s more than just creating an innovative product or service. You must work to be seen as an innovator by outsiders.

Have your top executives share their insights on the industry and current or future trends by contributing articles detailing these insights to authoritative, reliable sources. Contact summit and event organizers for major events in your industry and see if they would be interested in having a thought leader from your business speak. It’s not enough to just be innovative with your business plan and products. It’s about proving to the world what makes your business innovative.

Top digital marketing professionals want to be employed by a company that innovates, so they can continue to learn and enhance their own skills, which in turn will boost your marketing capabilities. Being interviewed or hired by a company that lacks innovation and makes no attempts to become a thought leader guarantees quality hires will look for employment elsewhere.

Although being innovative is an important aspect for any business looking to attract top talent, it’s especially important for companies seeking digital marketing talent. A majority of digital marketing roles revolve around being creative and innovative, but the level of innovation they are capable of depends greatly upon the work environment, culture, and reputation of where they work.

How can you expect your digital marketing team to come up with original concepts and feel comfortable pursuing new, creative directions if the companies they work for lack innovation at a fundamental base? An innovative business reputation inspires further innovation, which attracts digital marketing individuals capable of such.

2. Get Social And Contribute

Our growing reliance on social media as a culture is not exclusive to solely social interactions; it extends into the business world as well. Before the application process even begins, most interested applicants will be checking out your company’s social media pages.

Lack a Facebook or, even worse, a LinkedIn page? You will most likely cost yourself interested digital marketing talent right there. For companies who have various social media pages already, the next priority should be evaluating the effectiveness of those channels and sharing the right, impactful content on the right channel. You should be sharing what makes your work culture unique on places like Instagram and Snapchat and highlighting major business initiatives and expert content on LinkedIn and Facebook.

In line with being innovative is leading by example on social and authoritative news websites. Regularly contributing quality marketing content and insights to websites like Forbes and having an active, engaging, and innovative social media presence can greatly enhance your ability to connect with hard-to-reach talent.

Social media marketing is a key component of several digital marketing roles, so these individuals place greater significance on the effectiveness and appearance of potential employers’ social pages. If your social pages lack quality content, engaging posts, a look inside company culture, and a connection with the audience, digital marketers will often submit their applications to a company that appreciates the importance of an effective social presence.

Don’t drive away the hard-to-reach digital marketing talent that can be found via social. Prioritize a social media marketing strategy to entice the talent you’ll need tomorrow.

But Can You Keep Them?

Now that you have the strategies to attract the talent you need, you must be able to retain that marketing talent as well. Given the demand for highly skilled digital marketing talent and the small pool to choose from, potential applicants have much more power than in other sectors.

Because of this, it’s important you find talent that meets your expectations, but also that you offer these applicants what they need in terms of salary, benefits, work culture, and more.

1. Transform Into A Business Worth Working For

To retain top marketing talent, you must become a business worth working for. Besides offering competitive salaries and benefits packages, you must also focus on providing an interactive, highly functioning work environment and an engaging work culture, as well as an appreciation for a job well done.

If you feel your business is lacking the ability to really call itself a business worth working for, then evaluate how you can get there. What changes can you make now to limit turnover and create an environment that people enjoy being at both professionally and socially? Identify what changes are right for your business and implement a realistic timeframe to allow these changes to take shape.

Be open and honest with potential applicants about what you are striving for. Although you may not be at the place you want to be right now, break down how you will get there and what you will be able to offer them in the future.

One excellent example of this is from none other than Google. While the company is known for being a business worth working for and having the ability to recruit top digital marketing and tech talent, the company is open about the mistakes it made when transitioning to massive global growth. It decided to hire a large number of managers during the transition period, which ended up being the wrong choice. Employees felt underappreciated and micromanaged under the new system, which resulted in negative feedback to the company and led to employees pursuing employment elsewhere. The company lost the spark that made employees want to work there.

Because of this, Google immediately started working to correct the problem and once again returned to the innovative business model that motivated individuals would do anything to work for. However, the company was transparent with current employees and those interviewing about the transition period it was working through and thus had better chances of retaining both groups.

2. Invest In Your Employees

A key component of your company’s ability to retain top digital marketing talent is whether or not you invest in your employees.

Today, digital marketers are looking for employment at businesses that are willing to invest in them. They want to work at a business that understands the importance of allowing them to build upon their skills and work toward more advanced job titles and responsibilities. If you have limited opportunities for growth internally, then you won’t be able to retain the top marketing talent you worked so hard to attract in the first place.

Evaluate the marketing roles you are looking to hire for and map out what this position will look like three months, six months, and a year out. How can the individual hired for each role evolve and grow with the business? What educational opportunities can the person pursue with your help? Businesses lacking internal growth opportunities will find it difficult to retain top talent, no matter how great the work culture or benefits are.

Attracting and retaining top digital marketing talent for your team is a time-intensive process. However, it is one of the most important decisions you’ll make as a CMO. On the flip side of that, it will be the most expensive mistake you make if the process is rushed and you onboard a bad hire, which proves the value of establishing a clear strategy for attracting and retaining talent ahead of time.

Incorporating these strategies and practices will help CMOs not only attract top digital marketing talent, but also retain that talent as well.