Working with a Lean Marketing Team to Drive Demand
For Sofie Westlake, Head of Marketing at Quartix (LON:QTX)— a GPS vehicle tracking and fleet management company — one of her key challenges was ensuring that her small marketing team was driving enough demand to meet the company's growth expectations.
"What keeps me awake at night is driving enough demand for the business that it meets our growth expectations. So really what that boils down to is whether we get enough leads for the sales teams in all countries" explained Sofie.
Quartix has offices in different countries, meaning that its marketing operations are localized. With a six-person in-house marketing team across multiple languages, regions, and responsibilities, the team was stretched too thin.
To drive enough demand and meet growth expectations, the six-person in-house team would have to be specialists in all aspects of digital marketing.
To get around this, Quartix has been working with freelancers. “We have tended to use freelancers for two reasons. The first reason has been where a very deeply specialized skill is required, which, you know, we don't have the setup to be able to either afford to hire somebody like that full time.” Sofie explains.
Quartix also required additional specialized skills, but not to the extent of justifying a full-time hire. For instance, tasks such as graphic design or design-related work do not warrant a full-time position.
Sofie hired a PPC specialist, but after 2-3 years, she felt they had maxed out what they could learn from that consultant and wanted to take the program to the next level.
At this point, she considered a full-time hire and worked with a recruiting agency to identify potential candidates. After several rounds of interviews, she found someone who was capable of not only PPC but also had broader digital marketing skills.
Her mind wandered to hypothetical scenarios that played out time and time again. "If I hire this person, they're so talented that in 6 months, they'll get a better opportunity elsewhere. Then I'm stuck paying the recruitment company's huge fees, only for them to enjoy that money while I'm back at square one."
The candidate's bilingual capabilities and being based in an expensive city like London were a double-edged sword. While checking critical requirement boxes, it also meant aggressive competition and higher pay opportunities that could lure them away.
As they evaluated the situation further, it became clear that her marketing team was under-resourced.
She didn't have a concrete organizational chart mapped out for the ideal team structure. With their limited budget, they couldn't afford to pay the required salary and hiring fees for a permanent hire.
So, after carefully considering all of this, they pulled out of the hiring process.
