How do you know who you need on a marketing team to boost your brand's presence and increase revenue?
Hopefully you'll realize it long before you find yourself working more hours in a day than what's good for you, or neglecting other parts of your business because you're doing nothing but marketing tasks full time. There comes a time when you can no longer market your products and services on your own ad hoc manually.
I've done some thinking about what makes a marketing team - one that supports your goals and objectives and works with the sales team to achieve a common goal - increasing sales and profits. The functions I've listed below aren't completely inclusive; there could be more granularity or fewer positions to achieve a flatter organization structure that could be agile to make changes faster as necessary.
Chief Marketing Officer
An executive in charge of ensuring all marketing functions are achieving milestones in an integrated program. It's your CMO's job to make sure you have the people and tools necessary to put together a marketing program that is focused, has clear goals and is has clear goals and is revenue focused.
Marketing Automation Manager
The software and tools necessary to create and operate a robust marketing program are often complex and require an investment in training and learning how to make the technology work with the marketing personnel. Not only that, the Marketing Automation Manager should be able to build custom data reports that can be interpreted and traced back to specific goals and objectives, to see if they're achievable. The automation manager gathers technology and user requirements for technology refresh, as well as arranges for demonstrations on new software.
CRM Manager
CRM systems are just as complex as marketing automation tools, and the programming between marketing automation and CRM technology needs experts in both systems. The CRM manager works with the sales staff to understand how they can use the software quickly and efficiently to act on the sales qualified leads the CRM generates. The CRM manager also works with the IT lead to provide continuous access to the technology by ensuring computers and servers are operating constantly.
Blog & Social Media Lead
Distributing content via social channels should be an integrated function to ensure consistent messages describing the content is achieved. It's not enough to publish great articles and blog posts on your own platform; our prospects and clients expect us to participate in social sharing on the sites they use to keep up with their industry and specialties.
Content/Web Design/ SEO/ IT Lead
Each of these are an individual who is responsible for the program area he/she is assigned to. Close coordination between design, SEO and the content teams is critical for getting the best online visibility possible over the competition and for getting highly focused traffic to the site and blog.
Specialists
Blog, social media, content, web design, SEO, PPC, IT - These specialists work with their assigned Lead to perform the everyday tasks and work for the marketing program to succeed. These in-the-trenches people write content, optimize it, organize the content distribution, create/monitor paid ad performance and keep the machines running to support overall marketing operations.
Data Analysts
The data that marketing automation/CRM technology collects is vast and has become a full-time job. Measuring ROI, conversions, opportunities and reach involves increasingly sophisticated data analysis. While it sounds like a luxury to have a data analyst, this person can save time, effort and eliminate guessing as to what the data really means.
PR/Communications
Representing your business in both on and off-line opportunities through consistent messaging via news outlets and social media is a critical function that shouldn't be done as needed. Increasing your brand awareness for services and products is a key part of your marketing program, so get the right people to do this function full time.
Honestly, there are more functions that could be considered part of a marketing department, such as product lead, a marketing VP and more. However, if you can gather the resources to fill these functions, you can develop a robust, competent marketing department that can boost your sales and revenue.
If you need help identifying critical skills and abilities for an ideal marketing team, Measured Results Marketing can assist you. We know the skills and functions that are necessary for identifying marketing program requirements and implementing them. Call us at 571-606-3106 or take a look at our services to learn more.
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