How to hire a digital marketing team for your IT or Telecom business
Digital marketing brings in customers like clockwork. But it takes a strategic analysis of your market and internal data to target the right audience and nurture leads into customers effectively.
However, the last thing you’re worried about is learning the ins and outs of running Account-Based Marketing campaigns.
Outsourcing your marketing needs can be a powerful strategy for growing your IT business and freeing up the time and resources to shift your focus to core business activities and growth.
In this blog, we’ll break down how to hire a digital marketing team.
Read on to find out:
- The digital marketing channels that increase sales.
- The different types of roles to hire on your digital marketing team.
- Why hire a digital marketing team instead of individual marketers.
- What to look for when hiring a digital marketing team.
How IT and Telecom companies increase sales with digital marketing
Digital marketing contributes to your bottom line. It’s no surprise that IT and telco companies want to hire a digital marketing team. Here are the various channels that you should consider:
Email Marketing: Email marketing is the most effective way to nurture leads and drive conversions. B2B email marketing involves sending emails out so subscribers can respond and become customers. Proper lead scoring and segmentation can help identify which leads are ready to buy. According to a survey by Litmus, email marketing has a $42 ROI for every dollar spent.
Paid Social: Building social campaigns targeting executives, stakeholders, and c-suite positions is a great way to generate leads and sales. If you’re looking for B2B leads, 80% of B2B leads from social media are from LinkedIn.
SEO: Search engine optimisation helps you rank your pages on Google. SEO can reduce customer acquisition costs by up to 87.4%. This is done by providing useful information that solves your customer’s problems. Let’s say your customers want to learn how to build a secure cloud-based infrastructure for their company to operate under. Your job is to create content centred around their concerns.
Key members of a digital marketing team
A digital marketing team, have some key roles to focus on:
Content team: People responsible for creating, sourcing, and managing your content. They handle social content, blogs, white papers, content curation, and other valuable assets.
Acquisition team: People responsible for acquiring customers, including lead generation and acquisition strategy.
Monetisation team: People focused on maximising the revenue your assets and team generate. They may focus on email marketing strategies like lead scoring or split-testing landing pages to optimise conversions.
There’s no hard rule on the number of people you need for your team. Instead, look to use an agency that has at least one person for each area.
Why hire a digital marketing agency
Hiring a team of digital marketers can be a costly endeavour for most organisations.
On average, the base salary of a digital marketer costs $58,510. Imagine paying an entire staff of employees along with providing health benefits, insurance, and paid time off!
Instead, we recommend outsourcing key functions of marketing to an agency.
A digital marketing agency is a team of skilled marketing professionals, each with a focused area of expertise, that collaborates together to provide a full-service marketing program.
Some agencies are specialised, offering 1 or 2 services that they’re highly experienced in. Specialised agencies provide higher-quality services than full-service agencies.
Here are the advantages of working with a specialised digital marketing agency:
- Access to a team of experts in several topics
- Provide the best results without paying for expensive full-time employees
- A completely hands-off approach without needing to manage the team yourself
What to look for when hiring a digital marketing agency
Not all agencies are created equal. Some agencies can end up wasting your money, while others can completely transform your IT or telco business.
Leave no stone unturned by properly vetting the agency you’re considering. There are several boxes to look for when you hire your digital marketing team, including:
Sizeable portfolio
Smart digital marketing agencies are proud of their work and who they work with. They often display their partnerships for the world to see.
At virtualROI, we present our case studies front and centre for the world to see.
Each case study explains our client’s problem before working with us and the result they’ve achieved based on our recommended solution and implementation.
You can review our case studies and gain trust knowing we’ve worked with some of the top IT companies on the market and delivered verifiable results.
Experienced team members
It’s essential to ensure the digital agency you hire has the right members to suit your project. Look through their about page or search on LinkedIn to find people who work at their company.
It’s also worth looking for an agency with experience in the IT and Telcom field. Not only will they understand your pain points, but have the expertise and strategies to help you craft high-converting marketing campaigns catered to your target audience.
For example, virtualROI has been around for over ten years and has a total experience of over 30 years in B2B digital marketing. Since 2009, we’ve helped IT companies like Google Cloud, MarkMonitor, and Lumen solve their digital marketing challenges, working with businesses across Africa, The Middle East and Europe.
Specialised agencies
Avoid digital marketing agencies that claim to be jack-of-all-trades. Unless the agency has plenty of specialists within its team, it’s unreasonable to expect any individual can be well-versed in SEO, Google Ads, and Paid Social and content marketing.
The best agencies are specialised and focused on driving results. That’s why virtualROI specialised in ROI-driven activities like email marketing and paid social. Rather than social media management, which only gets you a lot of likes, paid advertising and email marketing directly put money into your pockets.
Social proof and strong industry reputation
Social proof, like past client reviews and testimonials, can provide insight into what working with that agency is like. Search for in-depth reviews on Google, BBB, and other industry-related review sites to see what clients have said about their experiences with the agency.
The best digital marketing agencies are an extension of your team
As an IT company, wearing all the hats won’t get the job done. The best way to grow is to put together a team of proven digital marketers with specialised skills to scale your business.
Digital marketing agencies are the best way to outsource your marketing. They act as an extension of your existing marketing team.
Since they are results-oriented, their sole mission is to hit the KPIs and metrics you’ve set forth. They typically have more specialised skill sets and can operate in a more consultative role than freelancers or hiring employees.
virtualROI is a paid social agency specialising in solving social media marketing challenges for IT and telco companies. Our team provides personalised strategy and implementation on all facets of social media marketing, from data to campaign monitoring. Contact our team to learn more about how we can help!