Structure a marketing team
Structure a marketing team
1. Use your company's size, budget, and goals to determine your marketing team size.
The percent of revenue model can help establish your marketing budget. Begin with the industry standard for allocated marketing expenses and tweak to best fit your business needs: Business 1-5 years old should allocate 12-20% of revenue. Businesses older than 5 years should allocate 6-12%. List all other marketing expenses, such as software, advertising, and website, to determine the remaining amount available for labor to effectively choose the best team size for your budget. Examples: For a startup, hire a minimum of one to two marketing roles for their marketing expertise to create a strong branding foundation to build on as the company grows. When starting a business, especially in a competitive industry, marketing is the key to getting noticed. If your goal is to publish 10 blog posts per month, ensure you have the marketing budget and in-house talent to meet those goals.
2. Create an org chart by pinpointing the functional areas in marketing, including product marketing, demand generation, marketing operations, social media, and content creation.
An organizational chart (org chart) clearly shows the company’s reporting structure for all positions and the relationships between related ranks. Aim to create a cross-functional team where employees’ roles may fall under several departments by prioritizing marketing areas when building your team. Product marketing: Hire someone with expert knowledge of all marketing processes and a buyer’s journey to develop the copy and presentation for promoting a product. Demand generation: Hire someone with effective communication skills, especially concerning product benefits and issues a brand solves for consumers. Marketing operations: Hire someone who understands how to build an effective marketing strategy and has experience scaling as the company grows. Social media: Hire team members with basic marketing knowledge and expertise in building an online presence that aligns with your company’s marketing strategy. Content creation: Hire a talented writer who can effectively communicate your brand’s story and voice.
3. Prioritize skill sets needed for each marketing area to create job descriptions and build the team's structure.
There is no one-size-fits-all team structure because the goals for B2B differ from B2C. Once you determine the marketing areas needed, you can build a team to achieve those goals by identifying the best candidates for each role with clear job descriptions that include desired skills listed. As your company grows, ensure you have team members with varying specialized knowledge, such as content writing, social media, or video creation, for an effective marketing team. Examples: If your marketing strategy includes ABM, ensure you provide this information in the job description. If your company is expanding focus on video content, ensure you prioritize hiring team members with knowledge or experience in producing videos, editing, and sharing online.
4. Establish specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely goals or revenue targets for the marketing team.
Setting clear and realistic goals or revenue targets using the SMART framework helps avoid chaos because everyone will know their tasks, resulting in a more efficient workflow. Since many marketing teams consist of in-house full-time employees and freelancers, establishing goals builds cohesion to the company’s overall strategy. Examples of SMART marketing goals include: Boost Facebook engagement by 5% in 30 days by publishing 3 posts per week using high-quality images and videos with captions tailored to your target audience. Increase website traffic by 25% within the next 6 months by publishing 4 high-quality blog posts each week.
5. Write a list of tasks the marketing team needs to complete to achieve your company's goals.
Preparing a list of tasks upfront will determine the roles needed for an efficient marketing team. It will identify the knowledge that team members require to do their job effectively and allow you to build on their strengths as the company grows.
6. Define the rules of engagement among the marketing team and other teams in the company.
Marketing teams often work closely with other teams within a company, so defining the rules and priority of the tasks upfront leads to clearer communication and collaboration that increases the company’s overall performance. Rules of engagement can address: The decision-making process. How to share information. Who reviews work. Prioritization of tasks. How to handle conflict.
7. Use a roles and responsibilities matrix to map out every task for your marketing team.
A RACI matrix clearly outlines the roles, responsibilities, and milestones for each team member. The chart is an effective method for improving employee accountability and the team’s success. Use Excel to quickly create a roles and responsibilities matrix. List the team member’s name or role across the top and the tasks on the left side. Use the inner columns to determine who is Responsible (R), Accountable (A), Consulted (C), and Informed (I) for each task.