Obinna hired his first marketer in January. She posted every day. She sent monthly reports full of engagement figures. She was always busy, always on her laptop, always “working on content”.
By December he’d spent a salary and twelve months, and enquiries looked about the same as when she started.
C. Northcote Parkinson noticed in 1955 that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. Without a written target, a marketer’s year fills up with activity just as neatly.
Part of the problem was money. The smallest marketing budget I’ll work with is ₦1,000,000 a month, separate from any fee we charge, because below that the work tends to cost more than it can earn back. The same question applies to your first marketing hire, and almost nobody asks it. Owners budget for the salary and forget the person needs money to work with.
That’s why hiring a first marketer is one of the decisions Nigerian business owners most often get wrong, and why the mistake is so hard to spot. Usually the person isn’t the problem. They were hired for the wrong role, with no clear goal, no budget and no access to the numbers that would have shown whether anything was working. What follows is written for owners hiring their first or second marketer, without an HR department or a marketing background to lean on.
Do You Need to Hire at All?
A full-time hire makes sense when you have enough ongoing marketing work to fill a role, a clear idea of what success looks like, and the budget for both the salary and the marketing spend the person will need. A marketer with no budget can only do what’s free, and there’s a limit to what free can achieve.
A full-time hire suits steady, ongoing work, when you want someone embedded in the business and can manage and support them. A freelancer or part-timer suits a specific, bounded need, such as content, design or ad management, without enough work for a full role. An agency suits needing several specialist skills at once, or senior strategy you can’t afford to hire full-time. And plenty of businesses combine them, with an in-house generalist who coordinates and specialists or an agency for the technical work. The agency versus in-house guide goes deeper. The key question is a simple one. What exactly do you need done, and how much of it is there?
Hire a Marketer, Not a Poster
Most businesses hiring their first marketer need a generalist, someone who can handle several channels competently, organise the work and measure results. A deep specialist is the right first hire only when one channel clearly dominates your business, like a company that lives or dies on paid search.
The most common mistake is hiring a social media manager when the business needs a marketer. Social media is one channel. If your real problems are unanswered enquiries, a website that doesn’t convert, or no idea which channel brings customers, a social media hire won’t fix any of them. They may even make things look busier without making them better. Diagnose before you hire. The marketing plan guide helps you find the gaps.
The Job Description
A good job description attracts the right candidates and filters out the wrong ones. Most marketing job ads do neither. They list every channel and tool in existence and ask for a “creative, passionate self-starter”.
About us: What the business does, who it serves, and its size, in two or three plain sentences.
Why this role exists: The specific problem you’re hiring to solve. For example, “We get steady referrals but almost no enquiries from online channels, and we don’t know which of our marketing activity works.”
What success looks like after 12 months: Two or three measurable outcomes, such as “enquiries tracked by source for every channel” and “online enquiries growing month on month.”
What you’ll do: Five to seven real responsibilities, in priority order.
What you’ll need: The essential skills and experience. Keep it short, because every extra requirement discourages good candidates who don’t tick every box.
Nice to have: Skills that would help but aren’t essential.
What you’ll have: The budget, tools and support available, stated honestly.
Pay and terms: A salary range, location or remote arrangement, and hours.
How to apply: What to send, and a short task, such as “tell us in 200 words one thing you’d improve about our website and why.”
“Why this role exists” attracts candidates who solve problems, rather than those who just want a job title. Measurable success criteria signal that you’ll judge results, not activity, which deters people who prefer to be judged on activity; the written goal template helps you frame them. A salary range saves everyone’s time, so look at what comparable roles in your city are actually advertising, and adjust for experience and responsibilities. And the application task filters out mass applicants instantly and gives you a first look at how candidates think.
Finding and Screening Candidates
Start with your network. Ask trusted business owners, suppliers and customers who they’d recommend, because referred candidates often come with evidence about how they work. Use LinkedIn for experienced candidates, since many marketers keep portfolios and evidence of work there (the LinkedIn guide covers the platform). Use job boards for volume, accepting that you’ll need strong screening. And watch for people whose work you’ve already seen. A marketer running an impressive campaign for a small business nearby, or writing useful content, has shown you what they can do.
Screen every application for three things. Did they follow the instructions? Candidates who skipped the application task will likely skim briefs too. Is there evidence of results, like “grew enquiries from organic search” or “reduced cost per lead”, ideally with some detail? Be sceptical of CVs that list only tools and activities. And can they write clearly? Almost every marketing role involves writing, and the application itself is a writing sample.
Interview Questions and What Good Answers Sound Like
The best interview questions ask what candidates have actually done. Anyone can describe an ideal strategy. Far fewer can describe a real one, including what went wrong.
| Question | A strong answer… | A weak answer… |
|---|---|---|
| Tell me about a campaign you ran. What was the goal and what happened? | Names a specific goal, the result in numbers, and what they’d change | Describes activity (“we posted daily”) with no outcome |
| How did you know whether it worked? | Explains how results were measured, and mentions the gap between platform numbers and real sales | Cites likes, reach or followers as proof of success |
| Tell me about something that didn’t work. | Gives a real example, what they learned, and what they did next | Can’t think of one, or blames others |
| If you joined and found we couldn’t tell which channel brings customers, what would you do first? | Prioritises measurement and tracking before spending more | Jumps straight to posting more or running more ads |
| Looking at our website, what would you change first, and why? | Identifies something specific, linked to how it affects enquiries | Gives vague aesthetic opinions |
| How would you decide how to split a limited budget between channels? | Talks about testing, measuring cost per customer and shifting budget toward what works | Names a favourite channel without reasoning |
| What would you need from us to succeed? | Asks sensible questions about budget, access, goals and decision-making | Has no questions |
Listen for how often candidates mention customers, enquiries and sales, compared with impressions, engagement and content volume. That ratio tells you a lot about how they’ll judge their own work.
Then give shortlisted candidates a short task that looks like the real work, and keep it to a few hours at most. For anything longer, pay them. Asking for substantial free work is unfair, and the best candidates, who have other options, will walk away. Ask them to review one of your real landing pages and recommend three changes, write a short follow-up sequence for people who enquired but didn’t buy, sketch a 90-day plan for one channel with how they’d measure it, or analyse last quarter’s enquiries by source and say what it suggests. Talk the assignment through afterwards. How candidates explain their reasoning, and how they handle questions and pushback, tells you more than the assignment itself.
Score Them the Same Way
Score every finalist on the same criteria, on your own, before you discuss them. It keeps the decision about the role instead of about who interviewed best. Weight results orientation, measurement ability and the practical assignment most heavily, at three points each. Ask whether they judge their work by business outcomes, whether they can set up, read and act on data honestly, and whether the assignment showed sound reasoning and good judgement. Give writing and communication, relevant experience, and openness about mistakes two points each.
Walk away from anyone who promises specific results before understanding your business, measures success only in followers, likes and reach, can’t describe a single thing that didn’t work, wants to set up ad or social accounts under their own name, or can’t explain their own portfolio in detail, which can suggest the work wasn’t theirs.
Speak to at least two previous managers and ask specific questions. What was the candidate responsible for? What results did they get? How did they handle a setback? Would the referee hire them again? The pause before that last answer is often the most informative moment of the call.
Get the Business Ready, Then Plan 90 Days
Plenty of marketing hires fail because the business wasn’t ready for them. Before their first day, give them access to the website, analytics, CRM, social accounts and ad accounts, as users on accounts your business owns; never let marketing accounts be created in an employee’s personal name. Tell them the budget in advance, even if it’s small, so they can plan realistically. Share your sales data, customer insights and what’s been tried before. Name a decision-maker who can approve work quickly, because marketing stalls when every post waits a week for sign-off. And agree clear written goals within the first month.
Your employment contract should also cover confidentiality, ownership of work produced for the business, and responsibilities for handling customer data in line with the NDPA. Take qualified legal and HR advice on the terms.
In the first 30 days, they should learn the business, the customers and the current marketing, and audit the tracking and accounts. By day 30 you want a clear written summary of what’s working, what isn’t, and what’s unmeasured. Between days 31 and 60, they fix measurement, agree written goals and start the highest-priority improvement, so by day 60 enquiries are tracked by source and goals are signed off with baselines. Between days 61 and 90, they execute the plan and report on the agreed numbers, and the first report should show honest results against the baseline, including what didn’t work.
One question predicts success better than anything else here. Does this person judge their own work by whether it produced customers? A marketer who does will find ways to measure it, will tell you when something isn’t working, and will keep adjusting until it does. A marketer who judges their work by output will stay busy, report activity and leave you guessing. Hire the first kind, and give them the goals, budget and access to prove it.
Not Ready Yet?
If this suggests you aren’t ready to hire, because the work isn’t defined, the budget isn’t there or you don’t know what success looks like, that’s worth knowing before you commit a salary. Start by finding out where your marketing leaks, then decide what help fits. The guide to choosing an agency and the agency brief template cover the other route.
The free 2-minute diagnostic is a good first step. It shows which of your four walls is weakest, which tells you what kind of person, or partner, you actually need.
P.S. If you already spend ₦1M or more a month on marketing, you also qualify for a free 30-minute Leak Check. Use it to write the “why this role exists” line in your job description.
Obinna’s story is illustrative. This guide is general business information, not legal or HR advice. Have qualified legal and HR advisers review employment terms, contracts and data protection responsibilities. Set salary ranges using current, real job postings for comparable roles in your area.
This article covers one part of a bigger system. Our guide to digital marketing in Nigeria shows how the four walls fit together, and the order to build them in.
