Marketing your company is crucial to the success of your business. If you have a large company, you'll probably need an entire team devoted to this. If you have a small company, one person may do the trick.

Roughly 90% of small businesses use social media. When hiring a marketing manager, extensive knowledge of social media is a must.

But there are a bevy of things necessary for having the right marketing person/team in place in order to effectively promote your brand.

What to look for in a marketing manager

There are a lot of questions you need to ask yourself when hiring a marketing or social media manager.

Do you want them to have a college degree? Do they need experience? Should they start out as an intern?

These are questions only you can answer, but some general things you should look for include:

• They're a people person - A marketing manager should be social - both at work and in their own personal lives. They should naturally enjoy speaking to and getting to know others, along with being able to get along with a variety of different types of people.

• They're detail-oriented - With so many social media websites to manage, along with having both an online and offline presence, the job is one with many details. Marketing has gotten huge thanks to the internet, so you need to have someone in place that has the ability to multitask on a daily basis.

• They're passionate - More importantly, they're passionate about your business. The best marketing managers are the ones who truly believe in the product or service being sold.

• They have knowledge of math - Marketing affects your company's bottom line, or more specifically, your return on investment. In other words, you need to be able to mathematically measure which marketing strategies are working and which ones aren't. An educated marketing manager who can keep track of this plus manage social media and other day to day tasks is a huge plus.

• They're engaging - Whether they're speaking in front of a crowd or writing a marketing brochure, what they say needs to capture the listener's (or reader's) attention. When was the last time someone boring sold you a product? Probably never.

Job outlook for marketing managers

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average marketing manager made $115,000 in 2012. Growth is expected, and there were more than 215,000 jobs available in 2012.

If you run a small business, you more-than-likely do not have over a hundred thousand dollars to shell out each year on a marketing manager. Consider hiring a new graduate of college to intern for the position, or, if you're not ready to hire someone and put them on your payroll, use a contractor from a staffing firm who will work for you on a hourly basis for as short or as long as you want.

If you work well together, you can hire them on full-time in the future for a respectable salary. If that person is helping generate a decent amount of revenue for your business, it's worth it to pay them a bit more money to keep them happy and on board.

Hiring an intern or hiring a contractor from an employment agency is a great way to test candidates out before making a long-term decision.

As a business owner that has hired marketing talent, what has your success to failure rate been in this area?

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About the Author: Sarah Brooks is a freelance writer living in Glendale, AZ with her husband and daughters. She writes on topics such as the best degree to get, marketing for small business and travel.