Running a successful business involves delegating responsibilities to the right person. Each department has a unique function that requires specialized skill sets to get the job done right.
You wouldn’t ask a teacher to work on your car or your mechanic to teach your kids, right? Then why would you ask your office manager to do your marketing or vice versa? You wouldn’t, or at least your shouldn’t.
Unfortunately, some businesses make the mistake of merging these roles, creating a division of labor that impacts their business growth and limits their employees’ potential. Let’s discuss why your office manager should focus on administrative tasks, and your marketing staff should focus on marketing.
Marketing Tasks Often Passed to Office Managers
Social Media
Social media is an essential aspect of any marketing campaign, but it requires a specific skill set. Creating engaging content, targeting the right audience, and tracking results are all crucial to the success of a social media campaign.
A marketing manager with experience in social media marketing will have the expertise to create and implement an effective strategy that will help your business reach its goals.
Website Manager
Your website is often the first point of contact between your brand and potential customers. It’s essential to have a website that is visually appealing, easy to use, and optimized for search engines.
A marketing professional with experience in web design and optimization will be able to create a website that will attract potential customers and generate leads for your business.
To achieve your goals, you must have someone who understands the marketing industry’s ever- changing trends, tactics, and technologies, not simply someone posting on your channels for the sake of posting.
Top Reasons Office Manager and Marketing Roles Need to Be Separate
1. Growth Limitations
A business needs to find opportunities to grow, but this can’t happen if you restrict your team’s bandwidth.
Suppose your office manager or administrative assistant is handling marketing duties in addition to their administrative tasks. In that case, they may not have the time or capacity to take on more significant opportunities that could drive business success.
By allowing them to focus on their tasks, you create room for them to tackle bigger responsibilities, which could benefit the business’s growth.
2. Specialized Skill Sets
Your office manager and marketing staff have different skill sets and specialties that make them excellent at what they do.
An office manager has administrative and organizational skills that allow them to handle company meetings, scheduling, and paperwork. On the other hand, a marketing director possesses creativity, data analysis, and content marketing skills to drive awareness and generate leads. By stretching these employees thin, you are not maximizing their full potential.
3. Career Satisfaction
If you expect your office manager or secretary to handle your social media accounts or your marketing staff to schedule weekly meetings, you are not valuing their time and skills. This leads to job dissatisfaction and can result in poor performance and eventual burnout.
Every employee wants to feel appreciated and know they are making an impact. By delegating tasks and allowing them to focus on their area of expertise, you show your team you value their contribution to the business.
4. Buy-In Starts at the Top
Your marketing efforts won’t gain traction with the rest of your employees if you don’t have a dedicated person or team focused on it. Investing your time and resources into marketing shows the rest of your team that it’s a priority.
Marketing efforts require creativity, analysis, strategy, and implementation. Having a marketing person or team dedicated to these efforts increases the chances of creating and implementing a successful marketing strategy that grows your business.
When should you hire an agency vs. an in-house marketer?
The decision to hire an in-house marketer or outsource to a digital marketing agency ultimately depends on the size and nature of your business, budget, and goals.
For small to medium-sized businesses with limited marketing budgets or needing a specialized skill set, outsourcing to a marketing agency may be the more cost-effective option.
On the other hand, larger companies with a more extensive marketing budget may benefit more from a full-time in-house marketing department.
That being said, partnering with a digital marketing strategy agency, no matter the company size, can be beneficial as it gives you specialized experts that can work alongside an in-house person or team.
Merging administrative and marketing roles might seem like a good idea in the short-term, but it creates long-term limitations for growth of the business and your employees.
By allowing your office manager to focus on administrative responsibilities and your marketer to focus on marketing, you create room for growth, give your employees the chance to utilize their specialized skill sets, and increase the likelihood of building and implementing a successful marketing strategy.
If it does not work for you to have a dedicated internal marketing employee, outsourcing to a digital strategy agency can be incredibly beneficial.
Remember, your investment of time and resources signals your team that marketing is a priority for your business. So, rather than blending roles, invest in a dedicated person, team or agency for marketing and another for administration to achieve optimal business success.