Digital marketing has created newer avenues for businesses to grow and reach out to a wider audience. Be it generating quality leads, managing communities, improving brand reputation, or boosting campaign performance, marketers have to engage with customers at different stages of the customer journey funnel—and this is an uphill task for businesses of all sizes, whether it is a start-up, small to medium-sized business, or an enterprise.
That’s why structuring a digital marketing team is critical to the success of your business. For hiring the best talent, you need to be aware of the skill set for each role. For instance, when hiring for a start-up, wherein you have only one or two positions in marketing, it can be helpful to know about transferable skills so the people you hire can grow into bigger, future roles.
No doubt, as markets evolve, so does the team structure as well as the job responsibilities. Let us deep-dive into structuring a winning digital marketing team!
How to Structure a Digital Marketing Team
The Digital Marketing Institute, suggests that modern marketing teams should be structured to align with the people, partners, and processes. Identify functional expertise and structure and organize your teams as per the common job functions. In such a scenario, c-suite executives act as’ ‘orchestrators” and bring on board employees with different focus areas. This type of model is known as the “Orchestrator Model”. As per DMI, with the increase in social and digital media teams, you can group the marketing expertise into the following three areas—”think”, “feel” and “do”.
People
Image source: B2B Marketing Experiences
Here are some of the important areas of expertise that are essential for today’s marketing landscape.
- Insights and analytics: Offer product, customer, channel, and market insights to drive analytical or data-driven decision-making.
- Customer experience and marketing innovation: Determine customer segments, customer experience strategist and customer-driven marketing innovation.
- Strategy and planning: Develop a marketing strategy and determine budgets, campaign calendars, etc.
- Marketing operations: Program management, marketing tools management, agency management, process excellence, reporting, etc.
- Marketing technology: With the increasing complexity in digital marketing, expertise is required in both marketing and marketing technology.
However, this model may have certain drawbacks. For instance, there can be siloed units which will develop their own tactics and strategies which may not work together as a whole.
To overcome this challenge, experts suggest hiring T-shaped marketers. These marketers have broad knowledge and in-depth specialization in one or more areas. You may hire new talent or upskill your in-house talent to achieve this goal.
Image source: Buffer.com
Processes
For the success of marketing efforts, collaboration is a must. Different departments should work together and adopt agile processes for seamless workflow and information exchange. Since data is the new king, structuring data-savvy teams is another strategy to bring your marketing team into the modern, digital world.
According to ThinkwithGoogle, there are three ways to structure a data-driven marketing team.
- Center-of-excellence model: A central digital expert or a team outlines all the required guidelines and processes. This model works well for companies that cannot involve an analytics team in every department or division.
- Distributed-team model: In this model, instead of a central team, product or marketing analysts can be embedded in teams and locations throughout the organization. This allows the senior management to focus on bigger goals rather than micromanaging data.
- Hub-and-spoke model: This model is a combination of the first two models and works well for organizations that have adequate infrastructure and budget. This model also improves and encourages collaboration between divisions and central management.
Partners
Third-party players can help evolve your marketing team. Digital marketing agencies or consultancies that work with marketing teams can help support process transformation. The agencies should fuse creativity and technology to encompass customer journeys and not treat social media as just a campaign tool. Even for in-house teams, the marketing department should align with the customer journey.
Team Structures Based on the Company Size: An Overview
Here’s what a typical sales funnel looks like. Based on these steps, let us try to unravel team structures based on company sizes.
Image source: Novelus
Entrepreneur or Solopreneur
In such a case, with little or no budget, one person is the jack of all trades and works as a full-funnel marketer.
Image source: Hubspot.com
Small to medium-sized businesses
Businesses of this size may have a marketing team of three to four individuals and the structure may appear as follows.
Image source: Hubspot.com
Mid-sized businesses
The digital marketing team size can be up to 9 members and may look like this.
Image source: Hubspot.com
Large enterprises
For large businesses, the marketing team can be 18 to 20 employees strong with each handling roles such as bloggers, long-form content creators, SEO specialists, designers, etc. Many organizations may hire a leadership role at this stage of growth.
Image source: Hubspot.com
Here’s an example of Hubspot’s digital marketing team structure.
Digital Marketing Team Structure: Important Roles and Responsibilities
Let us now go into detail about the essential teams, the roles, and the skill set required for creating a winning digital marketing team.
#1 Social media
Skill set:
- Project management
- Social media management with working knowledge of creating, scheduling, and publishing posts as well as performance measurement
- Content ideation
- Graphic design with knowledge of design tools
- Basic knowledge of SEO
Potential roles:
- Account manager
- Social media manager
- Digital marketing specialist
- Content creator or content media strategist
- PPC manager (especially for paid advertisements performance)
Responsibilities:
- Managing day-to-day social media activities
- Building an online social presence
- Understanding the company’s voice and ideal customer
- Creating and managing content that helps generate leads, increase brand awareness and improve audience engagement
- Measuring performance and competitor benchmarking
- Managing online reputation
For PPC
- Creating and executing paid advertising campaigns
- Managing campaign budgets and bids
- Monitoring campaign KPIs to make changes
- Optimizing campaigns to improve conversion rates and return on ad spend (ROAS)
#2 SEO (search engine optimisation) team
Skill set:
- Analytics and metrics
- Problem-solving
- Writing and editing
- Programming and technical knowledge
- Storing, organizing, and analyzing data using tools or spreadsheets
Potential roles:
- SEO Specialist
- SEO strategist
- Historical optimization writer
Responsibilities:
- Managing SEO projects
- Driving traffic to web pages by optimizing content for audiences
- Understanding of keywords and topics that are required to rank the brand and visibility on search engine/SERPs
- Developing and executing strategies for link building
- Analyzing performance using various analytical tools to support decision-making
#3 Content creation team
Skill set:
- Ideation and writing (including creative copywriting or technical writing)
- Editing
- Creative problem-solving
- Collaboration
- Multimedia production
- Graphic design
Potential roles:
- Writer
- Content Creator
- Head of content
- Video production specialist
- Video Editor
- Web Editor
Responsibilities:
- Telling compelling, cohesive stories about brand/product/service etc.
- Creating useful content that fulfils the needs of marketing functions including blogs, videos, infographics, videos, podcasts, whitepapers, ebooks, etc.
- Writing and editing content as required for organic social media as well as paid content
- Ensuring content aligns with brand voice brand guidelines
- Measuring the performance of the published content
#4 Web design team
Skill set:
- Website and email design
- User experience orientation
- Programming
- Creative suite and content management software and programmes
- SEO
- Web standards/strategy and best practices
Potential roles
- Web developer
- UI/UX designer
- Web designer
- Visual UX developer
Responsibilities:
- Creating and maintaining the website
- Working closely with the content creation and product marketing team
- Fixing technical issues that may arise
- Improving and optimizing the overall user experience to engage visitors
#5 Acquisition team
Skill set:
- Communication (verbal and written)
- Customer service
- Customer-facing skills
- Attention to detail
- Customer-oriented mindset
Potential roles:
- Lead or customer acquisition specialist
- Content acquisition manager
- Acquisition Editor
Responsibilities:
- Delighting and engaging customers through every step of the funnel
- Introducing audiences to the brand, communicating with them to advocate product/service
- Creating compelling content offers with attractive CTAs, etc, for driving growth
- Identifying and addressing customer pain points
- Sourcing, contacting, and onboarding customers
#6 Product marketing team
Skill set:
- Market research and analysis
- Market strategy planning including pricing, budgeting, campaigning, communication, etc.
- Customer service
- Creative problem-solving
- Technical knowledge of product/service
- Cross-functional
Potential roles:
- Brand specialist/manager
- Product Manager
- Product marketing specialist/manager
Responsibilities:
- Creating strategy for pricing, communication, reach, etc,
- Organizing, communicating, and driving messaging for product/service
- Planning campaigns/ events
- Researching and analyzing metrics, market data, etc. for data-driven decision making
- Helping create effective product pages
Apart from hiring in-house talent, you can also look for a hybrid approach wherein you outsource some of the skills and talent as per your business needs.
Final Thoughts
The best digital marketing teams are a combination of the right skill set, vision, and strategy. Depending on your business size and budget you can hire a complete in-house team or outsource to a professional digital marketing agency. These agencies not only offer you the required talent but also flexibility and cost savings.
To know more about how we can work together on fueling your digital marketing growth prospects, get in touch with me today!
