#1 Trait to Look for in Your Next Inbound Marketing Hire: Logic

Laura Sheptoski
Posted by Laura Sheptoski on October 21, 2015
Person holding a tool and intently looking at it.

Whether you’re a marketer by training or you just happen to be working in a marketing role, generally speaking, marketers are characterized as a right-brained, creative bunch. Sales reps are infamous for calling their marketing colleagues "arts and crafts" folks—people who create nice graphics, but don't really get what it's like to be in the trenches of business operation.

Instead, our friends in finance and operations get all the credit for being the logical ones. People tend to think they deal with all the numbers, logistics, and long-term planning while marketers sit in their cubicles painting on easels.

This article is about debunking everything you thought about hiring a marketer. Sure, so-called right-brain characteristics are important, but in this day and age, the most effective marketers are just as often logisticians and engineers as they are artists. As marketing strategy has become steeped in data-based approaches, no company can afford to hire marketers who identify solely as creatives. Instead, the modern marketer is one that understands the role logic plays in building effective marketing campaigns.

Today, the best inbound marketers are those who understand the nuanced, logical steps required to deliver content to the right audience at the right time. They have to maintain their creative know-how while distributing their marketing campaigns with the finesse of skilled engineering.

Why You Should Hire Marketers with Logic Skills—in 3 Examples

To start with, the best marketers today use marketing automation to drive their inbound marketing campaigns. This fact has helped redefine the job description of modern marketers. Today's inbound marketers need to be qualified to create high-quality content, while driving that content through the channels an automation system helps to coordinate.

If you're thinking about using marketing automation software to advance your inbound marketing efforts, you too will be seeking one of these logical, creative types. Here are just a few instances of why, in today's world, logical, nuanced planning abilities are such important characteristics.

1. Distributing Content Requires Advanced List Segmentation Based on Logical Criteria

List of smart lists in HubSpotOne of the most basic elements of any marketing automation software is the ability to create and segment lists of contacts, so that you can send precise, relevant messages—via email, social media, and other outreach tactics.

While you could simply keep a running "master list" of every single one of your contacts—old and new—in today's world, that only leads to unnecessarily spammy messages. You'd be missing out on the opportunity to target contacts based on who they are and where they are in their journey toward purchasing.

Let's say you're an insurance company with a master list of 145,000 contacts, including prospects, brokers, and current customers alike. Consider the logic and organization required to segment those prospects into sensible lists based on key criteria. In HubSpot and other marketing automation platforms, segmentation criteria don't come out-of-the-box; it's up to your marketers to customize lists the way that matches criteria specific to the company's targets.

By applying some logic to divide and segment your master list into main categories, you'll be able to better target your marketing content and provide every prospect with more robust context. The logic doesn't have to stop there, either. You could further your list segmentation into subcategories: prospects who do business in a certain region, prospects who have already engaged with your content, prospects who have shown interest in a specific plan type, and so on.

But you can't underestimate the organization skills a process like this requires. Every segmentation list harkens back to the central strategy, so your ideal marketer is somebody who both understands logical systems and also grasps the big picture.

2. Capturing Leads More Effectively with Advanced Form-Building Tactics

One of the more advanced features of using marketing automation software is the ability to create advanced submission forms with dynamic, personalized components.

For instance, HubSpot offers progressive forms that recognize when contacts are returning to the site, and thus, ask a different set of questions in each form presentation. The system remembers the contact's IP address and, based on the form progression that you, the marketer, have built, the website will present a new set of fields that ask different questions—helping you to further qualify their lead status.

Of course, the trick is to actually build this kind of advanced questioning setup. Deciding on a progressive "smart" form strategy requires logical thinking and a deep understanding of how the data will be used, in order to properly identify what set of questions should be asked throughout a visitor's experience.

For many of our clients, we suggest having 3 progressions: the first should consist of basic contact information; the second should be more detailed information about the contact and/or the company; and the third should be very targeted qualifying information. Take a look at the progression in the Smart Form below:

Forms with progressive fieilds. First form shows First Name, Last Name, Company Name, and Email. Second form shows Job Title, Phone Number, Industry, and Annual Revenue. Third field shows Current Situation and How Satisifed are You With Your Current Optoin

3. Delivering Content to the Right Targets at the Right Time By Building If/Then Email Workflows

Email workflows—i.e. drip email schemes, email automation, etc.—demand higher order logic abilities because you have to plan for, and predict, human behaviors in addition to logically ordering the timing of marketing actions.

Because a marketer's goal for email workflows is to nurture leads toward sales-readiness, it's critically important to have a strong command of the logic flow. Usually, good email workflows involve If/Then sequences that provide fork-in-the-road pathways for your contacts to follow. One email will be sent if criterium A is fulfilled; a different email will be sent if criterium B is not fulfilled.

Being able to logically decide what nurturing paths should look like is a critical part of ensuring your leads get as much valuable information about your company as possible—thus, increasing their likelihood to buy. Without logic, your nurturing workflows would just be random pieces of information sent to your contacts at random times, which surely wouldn't do anything to help guide your prospects through the sales funnel.

Email workflow that looks for when a contact fills out a form on a dempalte, waits for 5 days, and then sends a followup email.

Balance Your Marketing Team with More Logical, Analytical Thinkers

As they currently stand, most company's marketing teams don't have the logic skills necessary to produce powerful inbound marketing results. Too often, they are too heavily weighted with communication and marketing backgrounds, and too light on strong analytical, logical, and technology people.

As I've demonstrated, the hiring mindset is and should be changing. As you think about your next step in improving your marketing plans, consider whether you need to write a new job description for your next hire.

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Topics: Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation

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