At some point someone says it out loud. We should hire a marketing manager.
The title is the easy part. The useful question is what work needs doing, and whether that person belongs on payroll. I see this most often with dental practices and med spas, once the owner is tired of being the marketing department. The same fork shows up in plenty of other businesses.
Before you write a job description, answer a few things honestly. What should marketing produce in the next two quarters? Who makes marketing decisions today? Is the gap a plan, follow-through, someone to watch the agency, or all three? Do you need another employee, or a more experienced opinion on where the money goes?
If those answers are fuzzy, a manager often arrives without a brief. They stay busy. You are still the strategist.
What a manager usually does
In a smaller business, a marketing manager or coordinator is the person who keeps the work moving. Campaign timelines. The website updates someone has to request. Freelance designers, writers, and the agency’s day to day. Email, social, and review requests. A monthly report you can actually read.
They are valuable when the direction already exists. Someone, often the owner, can still answer “which offer do we push this month?” without a long meeting. There also has to be enough ongoing work to fill the role. A business posting twice a week and glancing at an agency report may not have a full-time job yet.
Hire a manager when the customers you want, and the next six to twelve months, are already clear. When you can make marketing decisions without becoming the bottleneck on every caption. When the gap is reliable execution. When content, vendor follow-up, and reporting would fill a real week, every month.
If marketing is working and the team is simply stretched, a capable manager is a sound hire.
What I do instead
The other job is direction. Which offers marketing is supposed to produce. Whether the channels add up to that. Whether the report ever reaches a person who showed up. People call that a fractional CMO. I say Growth Strategist, because that is the work, not a title I need you to learn.
Fractional CMO Services is the ongoing version. If you need the plan on paper before anyone runs it, start with Marketing Strategy.
Outside support fits better when the channels and vendors are active and they do not add up to a plan. When you are still the strategist, the approver, and the quality check. When an agency needs someone on your side of the table. When posts go out and reports arrive, and it is hard to say how that supports new customers. When you need a decision about time and money, not another batch of tasks.
For a dental practice, those decisions are usually exams versus implants or Invisalign. For a med spa, a consult versus a membership. The label on the role matters less than whether someone is allowed to make the call.
You may not have to pick only one
A coordinator can publish, follow up with vendors, and keep the calendar. A strategist can set the goals, the channel choices, and the review that coordinator needs in order to do good work.
Hire a manager with no plan, and you pay for activity. Bring in senior support with nobody to carry the plan out, and it sits in a folder. Some businesses start with outside strategy, then hire for execution. Others already have a good coordinator and add a strategist for the bigger decisions and the agency.
If you are stuck on the hire, the consult is a good use of half an hour. Tell me who makes marketing decisions today, and what you wish the next two quarters would produce. We can usually see whether you are about to fill the wrong gap. Book a time and say that is the question.
