[msredmond]

There's been a lot of layoffs in technical company's marketing departments over past few years, so there's PLENTY of candidates out there that understand tech and can market well (and should be affordable). Some tips:

- What KIND of marketing do you need? Sales? Leads? Branding? PR? Know what you want and what kind of marketing skills in general would provide that (e-mail campaigns, buying ads, working with press, A/B web testing, etc.) so you can ask for specific experience in those marketing approaches.

- Make sure the person can WRITE well. There's a lot of good marketing people out there (great at developing campaigns, analytics, etc.) who can't write -- and you don't need that at a small shop; you won't be able to afford outsourcing every project to a freelance writer. Ask for samples and give a writing test.

- Marketing is all about results -- if they can't go into detail about how this project they did compared to that project they did compared to industry average, walk away.

Just like any other job, references are big. Talk to people you trust; they probably know someone who knows someone who is perfect and is just out of work right now because of the downsizing.