You’re a lone ranger Marketing Director that can’t afford to hire?

The very e-book stimulating this blog has been downloaded a significant number of times in the past fortnight.

Its contents paint a picture of an epoch in the rapidly developing landscape for the marketing professionals engaged by it.

One characteristic that has emerged – at least evidenced by demands on specific educational content prepared by our company – is the lone ranger marketing person tasked with breaking open new opportunities for overseas companies expanding into Australia and New Zealand.

What is clear now is how many marketing managers are working on their own to set the foundations of a new empire for their employers.

But budgets are restricting their efforts, primarily because the holding company overseas lacks knowledge about the true costs of running staff here.

For instance, if you, as a lone ranger marketing manager, were to acquire just one more in-house staffer, you employer would have to at the very, very least, factor in the following:

• Annual salary: $78,000
• Workers compensation insurance: $1,000
• Superannuation: $7,000
• Annual vehicle costs: $12,000

Already, this is around the $100,000 mark. Then add recruitment fees, on-boarding and training, implementation, effect on colleagues etc, and many other mandatory and incidental cost incursions and the true figure begins to emerge.

Consider the findings by Quay Appointments: ‘the average investment associated with finding, recruiting and up skilling new talent to a minimum performance standard exceeds $100,000 per new employee over their first 3 months of employment’.

Then in reality you are already pushing a quarter of a million dollars just as a starting point. (you can see this excellent post by clicking here).

The point we highlight is lone ranger marketing people are being set lofty goals, but additional in-house employees are unaffordable.

What’s needed is a shift in dynamics; in a way where control of the circumstances ends up in the hands of the lone ranger. Outsourcing is often the only way to achieve this.

But it’s no point just outsourcing for the sake of it. Seek a solutions provider capable of scaling a solution that suits you now but has scope to incrementally grow with your own requirements.

It allows pretty much everything to be performed within a set budget that will not blow out.

Furthermore, make sure whoever you use can set up a structure so that it will always operate and expand and never disappear with an individual who moves on from the role.

In simple terms, buy what you need from a specialised supplier and have it now at your price rather than spending huge sums and risking it on training someone who might leave within a few months.

This speaks the language of most overseas companies actively moving into the Australian market, yet struggling to identify with our many extraneous, mandatory costs which they view as a cultural imposition.

In cases like this, it is fiscally impossible and impractical to hire someone in-house. At times like these partner with an external supplier which can cross reduce the burden and give you added control.