Hire growth marketer vs. invest in tech: how to scale your ad operations in 2023

Are you an agency founder or head of marketing looking to scale your business? When the number of marketing channels and ad accounts under your supervision grows, you probably consider expanding your team and hiring a growth marketer. With the higher number of operational tasks, it's common for businesses to hire marketing team members to delegate ad operations. However, it's not always the best investment.

With AI and new technology being on the radar of many DTC brands and agencies, the question of scaling ad operations is not just limited to the choice of hiring or not hiring. Some of the AI tools are slowly taking away some tasks. For example, some advertisers delegate ad copywriting to ChatGPT, while others rely on software solutions for data analysis.

In this blog post, we will discuss the right time to hire a growth marketer and when it's better to choose in favor of technology. We'll look at multiple factors involved in investing in a growth marketing hire and the pros and cons of implementing technology so that you can make an informed decision. With the right approach, you can leverage technology and growth marketing to maximize your growth and success.

Are you scaling ad operations: hiring or implementing technology?

How is the growth marketing position changing over time?

In the past years, a lot has changed for growth marketers. However, the basics are still the same. Growth marketing managers are still focused on trying new channels, running A/B tests, overviewing digital marketing campaigns, and optimizing the entire marketing funnel.

The position demands a very data-driven mindset and requires a combination of technical, analytical, and creative thinking. The best growth marketers in their daily activities demonstrate the ability to think strategically, understand data-driven marketing, and stay on top of the latest marketing trends.

In 2023 a good growth marketer has hard skills

With the emergence of AI and advanced technological solutions, many growth marketers are getting more technical skills. Performing advanced data analytics makes growth marketers' work so much easier!

Technical skills are crucial in growth marketing because they enable marketers to analyze whatever dataset effectively. With good knowledge of SQL and Python, growth marketers can collect, process, and analyze large amounts of data to identify trends and insights that drive growth. This allows us to make informed decisions on campaign strategies, improve the customer experience, and increase conversions.

Finally, hard skills are becoming more critical because they provide growth marketers with the tools to measure the impact of their campaigns. Using data analytics tools and platforms, growth marketers can track the incremental uplift of critical metrics such as conversion rates, website or app events, and customer retention.

Photographer: Florian Olivo | Source: Unsplash

Learning web infrastructure is essential.

The basic web infrastructure knowledge helps growth marketers optimize the lower funnel for maximum performance. For example, it allows a growth marketer to test and implement changes to websites and landing pages, improving their user experience and driving higher conversion rates.

They can also use data analysis to personalize landing pages and create a unique experience for some target audiences.

Content is a part of the job description.

Others, on the other hand, are getting more into creators' economy and expanding their knowledge of influencer marketing or social media marketing strategy. To succeed, large companies and early-stage startups need to focus a lot on content production, both for paid ads and organic channels.

In 2023, it's impossible to outperform your competitors solely through conversion rate optimization and marketing funnel changes. A successful growth marketer will have a comprehensive creative strategy and ad testing knowledge.

Besides content production, a growth marketer needs to understand content marketing well. Content is king in 2023, and growth marketers need to know how to work with text, video, and audio material, content creators, and how to promote it.

This requires a deep understanding of the target audience, their pain points, and the type of content that will engage them. Growth marketers must also have a solid grasp of the various content marketing channels and how to leverage them to drive traffic and engagement.

NB: We've asked Dan Siepen, a Sydney-based growth marketer, what are, in his opinion, the most important growth marketing skills. Dan has founded Australia's largest growth hacker community and regularly hosts events in Sydney. He also has two great blogs, in which he shares e-commerce growth marketing ideas, and SaaS Tool Stack, to help you facilitate your marketing efforts!

SaaS Marketing Tools stack (2023) by Dan Siepen

When is the right moment to start searching for growth marketing experts?

Reason 1: You need more brainpower to boost your customer acquisition

First, if you lack appropriate knowledge in-house but are ready to invest long-term in a growth strategy, it's probably a good time to search for a growth marketing expert. This is an obvious solution to fill in your company's knowledge gaps.

It doesn't have to be a full-time commitment in the beginning. Before hiring your first growth team member, you might as well start with a consultation with one of the freelance growth marketers to understand how to structure your process and allocate resources. A good candidate will inform you about your current growth opportunities and marketing tactics that could be worth trying.

Reason 2: You consider hiring a growth marketer as an investment in talent

If you believe you have a product market fit and are ready to scale, consider hiring a growth marketer full-time and be willing to invest in their development. However, before you make an offer to someone, create a development plan and allocate resources to help the growth marketer train and acquire the skills necessary to succeed.

It should also include access to the essential tools and resources, training and coaching, assigning them a mentor, or offering opportunities for professional growth.

It's a good idea to ask during the interview process which soft and hard skills a candidate wants to improve, to see whether it's aligned with your company's business goals. Remember that, unlike traditional marketers, growth marketing specialists need more training since growth marketing is a very dynamic field that is changing quickly!

Reason 3: You are setting up new growth goals

If you are scaling to new markets or launching additional products, you might need extra support with new business strategies. A growth marketer can be responsible for all marketing activities related to recent strategic decisions.

It could include testing acquisition channels, constantly improving customer experience, optimizing the entire funnel customer journey, or setting up and figuring out a new marketing channel.

An expert growth marketer could be the best investment you can make to boost your business and acquire new customers. Having a growth marketer on your team can help you stay ahead of the competition and remain agile in a constantly changing marketing landscape. With their innovative ideas and data-driven approach, they can help you identify new growth opportunities and execute strategies that deliver results.

Whether testing new acquisition channels, optimizing ad spend, or creating effective social media marketing campaigns, a growth marketer can significantly impact your business growth.

When can I scale by implementing technology?

Reason 1: You hire growth marketers to delegate operations

If you want to hire a growth marketer only to delegate operations, you better invest in marketing automation. There is no benefit from adding team members that will soon be overwhelmed with manual, non-value tasks and lose their motivation throughout a couple of months.

Why would you invest in growth marketers with a growth mindset and a proven track record to make them copy-paste data from google analytics to a spreadsheet?

The manual operations will quickly become mundane and tedious, and the growth marketer will soon be searching for new opportunities with marketing agencies and brands. However, growth marketing is so much more than just manual operations!

Considering that the hiring process is usually quite expensive and time-consuming, it's not worth the cost and effort if growth marketers cannot work on something exciting and fulfilling.

Reason 2: You have standardized the most important processes or willing to do it

Do you run multiple ad accounts? If so, do you have a standard procedure for executing repetitive processes? Standardization is considered to be the first step towards automation.

If you can describe a step-by-step process of, for example, optimizing your paid search campaigns, you can automate it.

Automation enables organizations to scale ad operations quickly and efficiently without adding team members. Moreover, automating repetitive processes usually means fewer human errors since all processes are executed following a standard template.

Therefore, businesses should consider the benefits of marketing automation before hiring growth marketers to avoid wasting resources. Many marketing automation solutions are designed to automate manual processes and free team members to focus on more strategic and value-added tasks.

Scaling paid social media marketing efforts

If Facebook and TikTok ads are an important part of your growth strategy, and you are getting overwhelmed by the number of tasks you need to do daily, look into Kitchn.io. We've helped businesses reduce manual ad operations such as creative testing, reporting, and optimization by 80%!

Automate paid social creative testing with Kitchn.io

Summary

In conclusion, the growth marketing role is changing with the emergence of AI and advanced technology. While growth marketers still need hard skills, such as knowledge of SQL and Python, and soft skills, such as content creation and marketing strategy, technology can help them facilitate daily tasks and save time on repeating processes.

Cost, time, and business goals must be considered when hiring a growth marketer or implementing technology. If you are ready to invest long-term in a growth strategy, have a product market fit, or are scaling to new markets, it's an excellent time to consider hiring a full-time growth marketer. However, if you have limited resources, consider starting with a consultation.

On the other hand, if you want to decrease the number of operational tasks, technology can help automate and streamline repeatable, standardized processes, making them more efficient and consistent. Ultimately, the right choice will depend on your specific business needs and goals.