Whether your business experiences seasonal variations, special projects or changing market conditions, it’s inevitable that from time to time, your business or marketing team just won’t always have the resources to get the job done.
What’s also inevitable is that businesses that can stay nimble and flexible will be the ones that win out in an ever-more competitive landscape. The best way of achieving that kind of flexibility is to make temporary workers a regular part of your workforce planning landscape.
There’s certainly an abundance of workers to choose from with varying degrees of specialist skills. Plus with the rise of the gig economy, more and more people are choosing to work as independent contractors, with approximately 30% of the Australian workforce now comprised by contingent workers.
Let’s look at three key circumstances where taking in more casual on-hire workers as part of your marketing team can work for you, saving you from having to rely on expensive consultants and freeing you from the workload uncertainties around full-time hiring.
Hiring temps for one-off projects
When marketing project timelines are critical and you need all hands on-deck to get the job done, this is the time to tap into an immediate pool of qualified, available marketing talent.
What better, more flexible solution is there than a good marketing temp?
Whether you’re facing a crunch in preparation for special events, conferences, fundraising, product launches, rebranding projects, design or re-design situations or even content writing, don’t let the fact that you don’t have the available permanent staff prevent you from achieving your goals.
Not using a temp solution for these types of one-off projects can mean more than a simple missed deadline. It can cause significant delays and costs to your business, or worse yet, result in promising work being eternally put in the “too hard” basket and never getting off the ground.
In reality, the cost of a short-term marketing temp solution is far less than the potential costs of delays, missed market opportunities and revenue, loss of market share and so on, and the risks of not using them can be greater. Failure to act responsively can have significant impact on your brand and identity – and even if you do miraculously meet deadlines without a helping hand, what are the side-effects for your staff in the longer term? The stress of long work hours, the effect on your team’s morale and the prospects of career-burnout simply not worth it.
Temporary staff to fill a skill gap
Do you have a technical marketing gap in your business? Does this gap mean that your business is not getting to the next level? Are you sick and tired of paying consultant fees only to see little gain, and less control?
A pre-qualified, flexible, targeted marketing temp may be a better solution.
Whether it be to assist with web development, web management, SEO/SEM/PPC, marketing research and insights, CRM and databases, media planning and buying, telemarketing and telesales, or even a training facilitation, filling that skills gap as and when the need arises with a capable temp is one of the smartest things you can do with your budget.
Doing nothing means your business will always have that gap, and your competition may be powering forward without you. It is literally the difference between being agile, and being overlooked - or left behind. In the digital marketing world, this is an ever-present threat to your business.
The value of temps when emergencies arise
Sometimes, there is no avoiding it! There may be an unforeseen situation or event where you can’t compromise on quality, and you don’t have the luxury to train anyone up in time. Holiday leave, extended sick leave, or maternity leave situations often come to mind when a temp is called in to cover your bases. However, what about during periods of especially high seasonal activity? Or an urgent gap while you are recruiting your permanent role?
It may even be a very overloaded Marketing Manager you need to take care of! If you sense a crunch is upon you, or can see the writing on the wall where approved leave is going to cause you to reach for the Panadol, reach for the phone instead and hire a temp. Managing the ebb and flow of projects, skill gaps and unforeseen circumstances is actually the smart way of managing future growth. Temporary staff can give any industry a timely burst of targeted talent, and this is especially true of marketing.
So if you want to power through and achieve that project on time with less stress, or manage those emergency gaps in your team, then consider hiring a marketing temp as your go-to strategy.
Need help finding the right person to get you through? Talk to peoplefusion and discover the people we can put to work for you.