15 Clever Questions to Ask When Hiring a Marketing Manager

Marketing managers are the frontline warriors of a marketing team. They possess various skills in their resumes and are responsible for overseeing the well-constructed marketing operations of a business.

When hiring such an important employee for your organization, you must assess them based on their nonflexible and soft skills. Moreover, they must be efficient in leading a team to work on your marketing goals and bring ROI to your business.

We’ve compiled a list of 15 interview questions to ask your next candidate when hiring for the role to find the right match.

1. What do you understand well-nigh our target audience?

This shows their eagerness to grasp everything your merchantry does and their dedication to dissecting a brand’s marketing efforts.

What to squint for

• Check their conviction while they answer—how at ease they are.
• How in-depth can they go well-nigh the audience? Do they understand what variegated kinds of audiences you’re catering to?
• Does it seem like they’d be worldly-wise to get the ownership psychology of your customers and implement it in their work?
• What kind of regulars persona do they picture while considering your brand? This gives you an idea well-nigh their research capabilities.

2. What do you think makes us unique from our competition?

Competition research is a huge part of the job. When a candidate is worldly-wise to wordplay this well, it shows how far they’re willing to go to get their facts right.

What to squint for

• Observe their understanding of how your trademark is variegated from the competition.
• How well-spoken are they well-nigh your USP?
• Are they worldly-wise to identify the strategies that are working for your competition?
• How will they replicate those strategies for your brand?

3. How would they lead a diverse team as a marketing manager?

When asked how to rent a marketing manager, hiring managers often mention the technical skills they squint for in their candidates. What they goof to unclose is how hair-trigger leadership skills are for such roles.

What to squint for

• How do they envision managing teams with people from variegated ethnicities, races, or ages?
• What’s their thought process overdue keeping everyone on the same page
• How would they plan tasks to meet deadlines
• Would generation-gap be a hurdle for them?

4. How quickly will you be worldly-wise to pivot your strategies with waffly requirements?

Marketing isn’t a straight path—there are obstacles, roadblocks, and often setbacks. If something doesn’t work out, a marketing manager must be worldly-wise to adapt and pivot to new strategies.

What to squint for

• Were they worldly-wise to socialize this question with a previous wits they had? This shows they know how to tackle such situations.
• How wifely do they seem while answering this question? This tells a lot well-nigh the temperament they’re likely to project during the very work.

5. Describe the most successful marketing wayfarers you’ve been a part of

This has to be one of the most important questions—this is where their experiences and learnings will show. You’ll understand the kind of responsibilities they’ve taken up in the past.

What to squint for

• How well they’re worldly-wise to explain the specimen study.
• Do they take all the credit or see the success as a team effort?
• How well they had examined their previous clients or companies they worked with.

6. What is your process for kickstarting a new wayfarers from scratch?

As a marketing manager, the candidate will be responsible for ideating, planning, and creating new campaigns to unzip variegated marketing goals. You need to ensure that your potential rent can take up that kind of responsibility.

What to squint for

• Assess their unstipulated understanding of the variegated types of marketing campaigns—how much ground they’ve covered in their previous role.
• How would they set goals and upkeep for the campaign?
• How do they decide on the content formats and channels for the campaign?
• How would they decide on which creative resources to include?

7. How would you ship a unique idea or strategy to stakeholders and upper management?

One of the job’s most challenging parts is ensuring everyone is on the same page—especially the high-end decision-makers and stakeholders. When assessing your candidate, requite them a tricky scenario wherein they are to propose an unconventional idea as part of your company’s marketing efforts.

What to squint for

• Try to unriddle if they’ve been in a similar situation before. If yes, ask them to describe the specimen study.
• Understand how they would proceed with the proposal, what data points they would include, and how they would present it.
• Know how they would present their treatise in favor of the idea and how far they’re willing to stand by it.

8. What are your learnings from a failed campaign?

Failures are a part of life. A marketer who knows how to learn from failures and move on from them is the one you’re looking for. Ask them well-nigh a failed wayfarers they’ve been a part of and what went wrong.

What to squint for

• Notice how in-depth they go well-nigh it. This shows they don’t shy yonder from talking well-nigh failures.
• Observe how they finger well-nigh their failures—do they squint stressed?
• Aim to identify a winning vein in your candidate—one that knows how to convert a setback into an opportunity.

9. How can we modernize our trademark awareness?

Good marketers are unchangingly hungry for unconfined insights. They’re unchangingly studying brands and their strategy. They’ll always have an opinion on improving their strategy and brand awareness if you ask them. You want to rent such curious souls to manage your marketing team.

What to squint for

• See if they know what channels you’re currently targeting.
• It’ll requite you an idea if they’ve worked on campaigns with variegated marketing goals—awareness, conversion, sign-ups, etc.
• You’ll understand how your regulars currently perceives your trademark on various channels.

10. How do you ensure a smooth collaboration with the sales team?

A marketer’s job doesn’t limit to overseeing marketing efforts—many decisions and strategies come from the sales context. For example, to proceeds a deeper understanding of customers, they often need to talk to a sales rep to know the kind of queries and tickets customers are logging.

What to squint for

• Assess their knowledge of the sales cycle.
• How they would ensure a smooth collaboration between the teams.

11. What’s your goal-setting process?

Goal-setting is essential not only for a marketing wayfarers but for teams in general. Setting goals at the whence of a quarter or year helps employees plan their work in a systematic and disciplined order. As the team leader, your marketing manager needs to be capable of motivating the team in this department.

What to squint for

• Analyze if they have a process for this. If not, how do they usually go well-nigh it?
• How they would ensure that the team is right on track.

12. How do you handle conflicts between team members?

Conflicts are normal in a workplace—especially in a dynamic process such as marketing. You need a marketing manager capable of managing difficult situations without letting them hamper team productivity.

What to squint for

• Have them describe any past similar situation they’ve been through. Talk well-nigh their role in it.
• Give them an zipped scenario and see how they handle it. Observe their reactions to the scenarios.

13. How do you decide which tasks to consul and which to take up yourself?

This is what decides the productivity of a team—and a marketing manager must know their way virtually it. Provide them with a list of fake tasks and ask them how they would delegate them to a social media manager, a content head, a lead generation expert, and a sales funnel builder.

What to squint for

• See if they’re worldly-wise to categorize these tasks into urgent and non-urgent, and important and not-important.
• Do they randomly assign tasks or based on each person’s skill set?
• How they track the progress of each task.

14. How would you proceed if you were to start towers our brand’s online presence from scratch?

The beginnings are unchangingly hard—and with this question, you’re trying to understand their thought process and mindset of towers something from the ground up.

What to squint for

• What’s their step-by-step tideway to trademark building?
• Are they considering multiple channels or going on one waterworks at a time?
• How their wordplay aligns with what you once do or did for your brand

15. How do you alimony up with emerging trends?

To stay superiority in the marketing landscape, one must constantly upskill and learn well-nigh trends in the industry. This will help you provide them with the necessary resources to help them wilt their weightier versions.

What to squint for

• Do they have the hunger for increasingly knowledge?
• Ask well-nigh the number of certifications or courses they’ve taken in the past year. This shows their interest in upskilling.
• Discuss what areas they want to upskill in and their plans for the future.

Hire the weightier fit for your organization

With an elaborate process and well-planned interview questions, you’ll see only a few candidates making the cut toward the final round of selection. But be assured, these are the top creamy-layer candidates who will know how to outperform themselves and bring real ROI to your business.

Your weightier fit is someone who can relate your questions to their past experiences and wins and answers with practical examples and scenarios.

Author’s Bio

Deepali is an engineer-turned-freelance writer for B2B SaaS, writing violating long-form content for marketing, Cybersecurity, and HR-Tech companies. When she’s not writing, she’s engrossed in a cozy murder mystery novel with a cup of hot chocolate!