Upskilling your staff to support your marketing

I built my marketing experience working in-house for multiple brands - leading and being a member of several marketing and communications departments.

My role as a Marketing Consultant sees me working with small business owners who don’t typically have a dedicated marketing function. With their limited marketing expertise, I provide direction and support to drive their business forward while they focus on Business Development, Leadership and networking, amid everything else.

I’ve been in the marketing game for ~20 years and I've seen first-hand the power of a well-oiled, in-house marketing department. So, while my clients don’t have the budget for a four-person marketing team, say, they do have the budget to outsource their marketing (to me), help develop their staff in areas of marketing (I help with this) and work towards recruiting a dedicated marketer when the time is right (I help with this too).

There’s something amazing about having your team on board when it comes to Marketing – a team that knows your business inside out, shares your vision, and is aligned with your objectives. There’s real value in upskilling your team and empowering them to contribute to your marketing activities to help develop their career and raise your company’s profile.

Upskilling your staff to support your marketing

You might have untapped marketing talent within your organisation waiting to be discovered – a creative writer, a social media wizard or someone who has the best ideas. Equally, you may have a team member that has the interest and desire to do more when it comes to marketing but lacks the confidence and skillset to take ownership of tasks.

Most of my clients’ teams contribute to the marketing campaigns I produce by creating content and generating social media engagement; some update webpages or build marketing emails.

Their input is great for the brand – employee engagement is heightened and besides their clients, they’re their best advocates. They’re not marketers but together they utilise their interests, strengths and skills to help raise the company profile and build their personal brands.

Marketing upskilling for your team

Unlike most senior consultants, I offer a marketing support service and deliver staff upskilling and coaching, where it's needed most. To give you a flavour I’ve recently helped my clients with:

• Writing for the web – best practice and how to do it

• Helping with blogpost writing – from generating ideas to structuring a blogpost and factoring in SEO

• Explaining ways to work LinkedIn to raise your personal profile

• Showing how to utilise a LinkedIn Company page to increase brand awareness

• Talking through how to best plan your marketing activities across a campaign and why it’s important

• Breaking down SEO so it’s understandable ahead of a website redesign

• Feeding back on email copy and helping make improvements with best practices in mind

• Explaining how to use Twitter (or “X”) from a brand perspective, what Threads is all about and how the two platforms are different to Instagram and Facebook.

I collaborate with your team and provide 1:1 support to educate and upskill, sharing my knowledge and developed experience, and empowering them throughout. We create a learning culture and positive environment that encourages growth and innovation.

Upskilling your existing team members can be a game-changer.

For most of my clients, this balance of outsourced Marketing support and team input with effective upskilling is what they need to drive their business forward.

On a medium to long-term basis, keeping budget in mind and the impact consistent marketing can have – raised brand awareness, increased demand and growth – there comes a point when my clients are better off recruiting a dedicated marketer. But that’s for another blogpost.