The bottom line for any business is consistent and scalable growth, ideally achieved through creating impeccable products or offering unmatched services while expanding the market and maintaining high quality. However, building a great product or service is just the beginning. In today's competitive landscape, standing out to reach the right customer is crucial.
Effective marketing enables companies to differentiate themselves from competitors and offer unique value propositions that attract customers. Yet, as the world evolves rapidly, many companies face challenges in assembling the right marketing team for their business.
What are Typical Responsibilities in a Marketing Team?
What exactly should your marketing department do? What should you expect from your marketing team? Regardless of whether your team is in-house, fully outsourced, or a blend of both, there are core functions your marketing team should fulfil:
1. Understanding Your Target Market and Competitors
Effective marketing starts with a deep understanding of the market. Your marketing team should provide you with detailed, specific descriptions of your target markets and the key competitors within those markets.
You might think you already know all about your competitors and clients, but unless you're conducting systematic, structured research, you're likely missing critical insights. Relying on anecdotal experiences can lead to misguided conclusions.
Companies that engage in objective market and client research tend to grow faster and achieve higher profitability. The ability to identify and define target audiences by refining and segmenting data to ensure that marketing efforts are targeted at the most relevant groups.
2. Crafting a Strategy to Drive Growth and Profitability
After gaining a research-based understanding of your firm's market position, your marketing department should help develop a strategy aimed at driving growth and profitability. This strategy might involve adjusting your target market, refining service offerings, and revising marketing plans.
The strategy should clearly outline your competitive advantages (differentiators) and establish a distinct market position (whether as a premium-priced leader or a value-driven alternative). These elements serve as tools to shape your brand identity. Consider how you want your firm to be perceived in the marketplace. Expect to be challenged with innovative ideas and bold choices during this process.
Additionally, you will need a detailed marketing plan. This plan should outline how you will enhance your brand's visibility and generate new opportunities for your business development (sales) team to convert into new clients.
3. Determining Services to Offer and Pricing Strategy
Traditionally, decisions about which services to offer and how to price them have often been left to operating executives or the finance and accounting departments.
However, these decisions are crucial elements of a growth plan and should be informed by a comprehensive, research-based strategy rather than individual client requests. Why? Because attempting to cater to every client can lead to overextension, loss of focus, and increased costs as you struggle to provide an expanding array of services.
Innovation and client responsiveness can easily turn into undisciplined experimentation. A strong marketing department helps maintain the balance, ensuring that service lines and pricing strategies align with the overall growth objectives and market realities.
4. Ensuring a Steady Flow of New Leads and Opportunities
Everyone desires a continuous stream of well-qualified business prospects. This is precisely what you should expect from your marketing team. Although some firms delegate lead generation and nurturing to the sales (business development) function, this is often not ideal. Lead generation and nurturing typically require a long-term approach, taking months or even years. In contrast, sales teams usually operate on shorter cycles, focusing on immediate closings.
Your marketing team should translate your overall strategy into a comprehensive plan designed to generate new leads and nurture existing prospects until they become well-qualified opportunities.
Avoid the temptation to constantly introduce new "marketing ideas" or underfund campaigns, as these can derail your plan. If you succumb to these pitfalls, the plan is unlikely to succeed, and your marketing team cannot be held accountable for its failure.
Patience is essential in lead nurturing—it can take a considerable amount of time. Focusing solely on immediate results is a mistake. Remember, you will need new clients not just now, but in the coming years as well.
5. The Ability to Monitor and Optimise Implementation
This piece is essential as it enables everything else to happen. Without the ability to measure your results, you may lose track of your progress during the marketing process. It takes time to build a strong brand and a full pipeline.
With the right tools and cooperation from the team, marketing should be able to track lead generation, lead nurturing, lead opportunities, your proposals, and close deals. The entire pipeline can then be optimised over time.
If you're not tracking results, it's easy to continue unproductive programmes or unintentionally stop efforts that are actually working. Tracking will allow you to make the most of your limited resources.
6. Harnessing the Power of Marketing Technology
Because marketing departments deal with a lot of different metrics, marketing technology will make all the difference. If possible, a marketing department should utilise technology to track, analyse, and optimise all aspects of the marketing process.
From CRM systems to marketing automation tools, the right technology can significantly enhance your marketing efforts. This also leads to more informed decision-making and a deeper understanding of customer behaviour, wants, preferences, and market trends.
How to Structure a Marketing Department
How to structure your team is greatly influenced by the size of your business. It's crucial to have a marketing team that aligns with your company's size, complexity, and goals. An effective marketing team structure should be flexible enough to adapt to market changes and the industry landscape.
Here are some structure options based on the size of your business:
Small Businesses: The marketing team in small businesses is typically lean and multifunctional. A few individuals often manage multiple marketing responsibilities. Cross-functional skills and versatility are essential, as team members may handle various tasks such as social media management, content creation, and campaign execution.
Medium-Sized Businesses: As businesses grow, marketing teams usually expand, and roles become more specialised. Medium-sized businesses may have dedicated positions such as social media managers, content writers, graphic designers, and digital advertisers. Effective collaboration and coordination between team members are important to ensure a cohesive marketing strategy.
Large Companies: The marketing teams in large organisations are generally structured hierarchically and divided into specialised departments or units. This allows for greater focus and expertise in specific marketing areas. Large marketing teams may have separate divisions for social media, paid advertising, SEO, content marketing, brand management, and more. Ensuring collaboration and alignment between different teams and departments is essential for overall marketing success.
How to Build a Marketing Team to Suit Your Business
Building an effective and high-performing marketing team is important for reaching your target audience and driving business growth. This process requires strategic planning and a thorough understanding of your business needs. The marketing team roles, skills, and structure you require will depend on your business goals, budget, and current capabilities.
Here are some tips to build a strong marketing team that drives growth and success:
Foster a Culture of Collaboration
Encourage open communication, teamwork, and creativity within your team. This environment promotes innovation and motivates team members to share new ideas and contribute to the company's growth.
Understand Your Customer
The most effective marketing strategies are those that listen to and understand the customer. By gaining insights into your current customers, you can improve retention and increase profits. Hiring individuals who can empathise with and address customer needs will help solve key challenges and boost conversions.
Keep the Team Small
A smaller team can often be more agile and effective. Too many members can lead to increased communication complexity, bureaucracy, and longer feedback loops, which can hinder the team's efficiency. A small marketing team supplemented with on-demand talent can drive rapid growth.
Focus on What Works
It's often said that 20% of the work generates 80% of the results. Identify the channels and team members that deliver the highest ROI and concentrate your efforts there. This focus ensures that resources are allocated to the most effective strategies.
Access to Expertise
Regardless of your company's stage, leveraging outside perspectives from those who have faced similar challenges can accelerate growth. Tapping into marketing leadership allows your business to overcome obstacles more efficiently and effectively.
Role of Marketing Leadership in Building High-Performing Marketing Team
Marketing Leadership plays a crucial role in building a successful, high-performing marketing team. It can help with the strategic direction of the business and ensure the effective implementation of marketing initiatives. Additionally, marketing leadership guides both marketing strategies and the development of a strong marketing team.
Vision and Strategy
Marketing leadership sets the vision and strategy for the marketing team. It defines the long-term goals, establishes the brand's position in the market, and develops a strategic roadmap to achieve these objectives. This clear direction ensures that all team members are aligned and working towards common goals.
Talent Acquisition
Identifying and recruiting the right talent is a crucial responsibility. Marketing leaders must understand the skills and qualities needed to build a diverse and effective team. They look for individuals with expertise in areas such as digital marketing, content creation, search engine optimisation (SEO), social media, and analytics.
Team Development and Training
Once the team is in place, marketing leadership focuses on development and training. It provides ongoing education and professional development opportunities to ensure team members stay current with industry trends and technologies. This continuous learning culture fosters innovation and keeps the team competitive.
Creating a Collaborative Environment
Marketing leadership cultivate a collaborative and inclusive environment. It encourages open communication, idea-sharing, and teamwork. This culture of collaboration enables the team to leverage each other's strengths, resulting in more creative and effective marketing campaigns.
Resource Allocation
Effective leadership allocate resources wisely. It ensures that the team has the necessary tools, technology, and budget to execute their strategies. This includes investing in marketing automation, analytics platforms, and other technologies that enhance efficiency and effectiveness.
Performance Measurement and Accountability
Marketing leaders establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to measure the team's success. They regularly review performance data, provide feedback, and make adjustments to strategies as needed. This focus on accountability ensures that the team remains goal-oriented and results-driven.
Adaptability and Innovation
The marketing landscape is constantly evolving. Businesses must be adaptable and open to change. Marketing leadership encourage the teams to experiment with new ideas, embrace innovative technologies, and stay ahead of industry trends. This adaptability will ensure that the team remains competitive and can quickly respond to market shifts.
Success doesn't come from adopting a one-size-fits-all structure. Instead, it hinges on selecting the best structure fit for your business. By carefully evaluating key factors and tailoring your marketing team dynamics, you can build a well-structured and effective marketing team that drives growth and achieves a higher return on marketing investment (ROMI).
gigCMO's Fractional CMO Service seamlessly integrated into the company, providing marketing leadership, mentoring the internal marketing team, and delivering the infrastructure to ensure the alignment of marketing efforts with business goals. Our Growth Playbook is a comprehensive guide that encapsulates years of industry expertise and best practices. It has been instrumental in helping companies like yours gain the skills, insights, and confidence needed to execute effective marketing strategies.
To further enhance your ability to build a high-performing marketing team, contact gigCMO today for FREE consultation.
