Many companies find themselves with smaller marketing staffs and/or less-experienced resources than they once had. Let's face it, with tight budgets, hiring the less-experienced marketing employee, or assigning marketing as a secondary responsibility to yourself or another employee (although it is not a core competency), can be critical to keeping any level of marketing going at all.

However, doing so can bring a set of challenges, including:

• Inefficiencies of On-the-Job Training. An employee who is new to marketing can burn a lot of resources, both time and money, as they "learn on the job." Tasks take longer to complete and, without experience to fall back on, they operate on instinct and use trials to test effectiveness.

• Increased Overhead to Manage. New marketing employees, even the most driven, require additional overhead to guide them through the ins and outs of company processes. This can divert valuable resources, including managers and practitioners, from other departments.

• Employee Burn Out. Thankful to have a job, employees will eagerly sign up for just about anything they've been asked to do, and without much thought about whether they are actually capable of doing it. The sharp and determined employee can likely struggle through and get the job done, but not before they've burned themselves out or the quality of work begins to suffer. No matter how well intentioned or bright, employees given responsibilities outside their skill set can become incredibly overwhelmed.

The good news? There are things you can do to help address the above challenges and better utilize your resources effectively.

• Hire a Marketing Coach. For a small amount of money, per meeting, you can hire an experienced marketing professional to come in (we suggest a weekly marketing meeting) and guide and mentor you, or your lesser-experienced employee, through the marketing process and provide advice on how to achieve marketing objectives within given budgets. Contact us if you'd like to hire one of our sales and marketing coaches!

• Purchase Marketing Resources. Spend some of your budget on marketing training . Buy some key books on marketing planning and implementation and make them required reading.

• Provide Marketing Tools. If you have marketing experience, but have a lesser-experienced employee executing marketing, provide your employee with a set of templates and tools that will make their job easier, and therefore more efficient. If you don't have the experience or time to develop such a kit, we recommend you hire someone to do it for you, or purchase a kit, such as The Sales and Marketing Toolkit™ from Go-To-Market Strategies.

Finding the diamond in the rough and giving them the opportunity to step up to the plate can be a great way to provide professional growth, while maximizing your budget. But don't just throw your employee, or yourself, to the wolves. It will ultimately be detrimental and cost you more money in the end. Instead, provide much needed tools and training and watch your employees and your company excel.