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Market Smart: How to Gain Customers and Increase Profits with B2B Marketing

But the downside to junior marketing personnel is that they
often don’t have strategic marketing skills. They don’t know
which marketing tactics make sense given the company’s
overall business strategy. They must be managed and directed
by a manager in the company, which can be challenging if that
manager has a busy schedule. Junior marketing personnel
are also more likely to leave the company. If they are focused
on developing their careers, they will crave opportunities to
take on new challenges, which they may achieve by jumping
from one company to the next. This is difficult because it
creates gaps between marketers, which brings inconsistency
in execution. Management will need to dedicate time to
identifying and then orienting new personnel.

And, of course, there’s the challenge of finding good junior
talent—people with a great work ethic and the ability to fit into
the culture of a particular organization.

Senior / Junior Mix

Having a combination of senior and junior marketers is a
good way to achieve strategic marketing that is consistently
executed. The senior marketer should be responsible for
setting the strategy, determining tactics, investment levels
and the scorecard, and advocating for marketing within the
company’s leadership team. The senior person should also
handle some of the execution activities, such as setting up
strategic alliances and the thought leadership program. The
junior marketer will be responsible primarily for execution and
should be overseen by the senior.

The drawback to this approach is that many B2B companies
simply don’t need two full-time marketing resources given the
limited size of their marketing program.

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© 2012 Lisa Shepherd