How to Find a 10x Marketer – Part 4: It’s a Wrap!

Once you determine that you need a 10x Marketer, its time to figure out where to find one. Do you try to hire and onboard or do you train from within the organization? Plan to build up the skill set in house. Here’s why:

While there is no hard and fast data, multiple independent studies report that hiring a new employee is much costlier than training from within. Some predict that every time a business replaces a salaried employee, it costs 6 to 9 months’ salary, on average.

This means, for example, to replace a manager making $40,000 a year you can anticipate about $20,000 to $30,000 in recruiting and training expenses.

When hiring a new employee, consider the following:

• The cost of advertising, interviewing, screening and hiring
• The cost of on-boarding a new employee, including training time and management
• Loss of productivity when ramping up a new employee
• Loss of morale as current staff take on more while training up the new employee

That said, the desired skills of 10x Marketer are still relatively new to the digital marketing industry.  In the last post, we looked at the number of people reporting the necessary skill set and found that of the 42.9 million digital marketers on LinkedIn, only 0.0042% currently have the desired skills of a 10x Marketer. These skills include in Google Analytics, AdWords, Lean Six Sigma, Agile, and SEM, among others.

Starting with a skill gap analysis determines what training you’ll need for your 10x Marketer. By aligning the necessary skills with the business goals your organization, you set yourself up for greater success. This is a good exercise to do annually as your business goals evolve. A skills gap analysis will give you a better understanding of where your teams strengths and weaknesses are.

The model for a basic skill gap analysis is the following process:

Once you’ve done your analysis, start executing your training plan. A great place to start is with digital marketing foundational skills such as Google Analytics and AdWords certifications. You can plan to have your employee invest roughly 20 hours in these trainings. 20 hours of training a current employee versus a potential multi-month process to hire a new employee seems like a better choice. On top of that, those particular certifications are free.

Next, move onto the problem solving and management skills. A Lean Six Sigma certification is a good option because the focus of the certification is on process development, process improvement and problem solving.  With this particular certification there are different options that you and your employee could explore. Depending on your needs your employee could do concentrated course that spans a couple of days or a weekend. The other option would be a self-paced online course. A Lean Six Sigma certification can cost upwards of $2,000 but does not need a renewal and is a highly coveted skill.

Another great resource is the Project Management Institute (PMI). PMI offers a variety of in-person and online courses focused on everything from general Project Management techniques to more advanced methodologies, such as Agile Project Management. This would also be a time and cost investment but with the ability to tailor the trainings you would be able to start building the skillset your company needs.

Having a 10x Marketer on your team is a huge asset. That resource will be able to switch gears on a moments notice, quickly solve problems, get into the weeds but also see the big picture. It might sound like a large investment to get someone trained to be a 10x Marketer, but given that its still such a rare skillset, it is well worth the time.

Katie Lioy
Manager, Marketing Technology

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