But as a business owner or executive, you probably are starting to see more and more business opportunities present themselves every month – and being “lean and mean” is hurting you. It’s common in today’s economy that businesses don’t have the resources in-house to respond as quickly and effectively as they need to.

So what are your options? Do you always have to hire extra employees to be ready to respond? How do you know what abilities do you need?

One of the services Three Hats Marketing offers is virtual marketing employees. Simply put, what this can bring your business is the flexibility, resources, and the experience your business needs, when you need them. It alleviates the need to hire full time, in-house personnel and incur the on-going expense. It is the smart answer to the peaks and valleys all our businesses have.

To learn more about how a Three Hats Marketing virtual marketing employee can help your business, give us a call.

Many businesses combine the function of Marketing & Sales. In some cases one team facilitates both needs and in other cases one person oversees both functions. In any case, it usually doesn’t work! Sales and marketing are two completely different business functions – admittedly there should be a close collaboration between the two, but still separate. If you are looking for a short definition, marketing activities feed sales efforts and support the long term vision of the company.

• Marketing is the understanding of how your service/product is unique – who the buying audience is that needs your service/product and how that target audience prefers be to be communicated to.
• Sales is understanding the potential client’s true needs, specific points of pain and how to remove any hurdles that may prevent them from buying your service/product.

To be truly effective, you must assemble your team with the right people & process in each of these business functions. Both groups need to consist of people that understand the value of what your company sells, how that value impacts the consumers you are selling it to, and how the competition stands up to your service/product.

Your marketing team needs to understand how to best communicate your Unique Selling Proposition to the target audience. This may at times require using multiple channels to communicate to multiple audience segments. The people in your marketing department need to understand the effectiveness of each communication tactic and what the expected Return On Investment is. This team needs to be able to create the communication tools which may require copy writing, graphic design, email marketing, direct mail, website development, Internet marketing, search engine optimization, pay per click, video production and much more. Your marketing team needs to know how to measure the effectiveness of implemented tactics and communicate this information to the decision makers.

An effective marketing department requires much more than just creating pretty pictures! We commonly dissect the functions of a marketing department into three categories: strategy, management & execution. Every marketing activity, not matter how big or small needs to these three elements to be effective. To do so requires a lot of experience, resources and knowledge. If you can’t afford to have all these resources, perhaps you should consider an Outsourced Marketing Department – provides all the resources, experience and skill set of an entire Marketing Department, for less than the cost of one marketing employee.

Sales – we’ll, sales sells! Sales removes obstacles and provides trust. Short and simple – I am a marketing guy after all!

You can’t afford to ignore the needs of needs marketing or sales. You can’t afford to have one resource serving both functions. Sales and marketing. Marketing and sales. Each needs the other. Each must reinforce the other.

If you think you can’t afford all the needed resources of a marketing department – use an Outsourced Marketing Department.

Even though your focus is to find a resource for one of the above roles, honestly a business’s overall marketing needs cross over into all three areas: strategy, management and execution. But most companies are hard pressed to make that kind of investment on full-time in-house employees

If you are looking to hire a new full-time marketing resource, then more than likely you have defined a list of needs you hope that an individual can fulfill for you and your business. If you are looking for a director-level role you probably need help with your overall strategy, if you are looking for a manager-level role you need help with getting the initiatives done on time and on budget and if you are looking for a designer, coordinator, or assistant-level role, you need someone to help you execute.

Even though your focus is to find a resource for one of the above roles, honestly a business’s overall marketing needs cross over into all three areas: strategy, management and execution. But most companies are hard pressed to make that kind of investment on full-time in-house employees