The Ultimate Guide To Building A Marketing Team Structure

Your Digital Marketing Team Structure Needs To Reflects Your Business Goals

A well-functioning digital marketing team is key to the success of any business – no matter how big or small. But, creating the proper digital marketing team structure for a marketing team can be daunting for business owners and marketing directors.

This blog post will walk you through how to set up the perfect marketing team structure for your business. We will explain what to look for with marketing needs in each channel and how to organize your team members to get the most out of your marketing investment. We will even look at how your marketing team structure needs to change based on the size of your business.

How to Build Your Own Marketing Department

No matter the size of your company, if you want to be successful, you need a marketing team. Marketing is responsible for creating and executing campaigns promoting your products or services, generating leads, and building brand awareness.

Creating and organizing a marketing team can be daunting for business owners and directors. This blog post will walk you through how to set up the perfect marketing team structure for your business. You can build an internal marketing team or turn to an outsourced marketing agency to help you fulfill your marketing needs.

While we always recommend going with an outsourcing option, we want to provide you with the information you need to build your business.

We will explain what to look for with marketing needs in each channel and how to organize your team members to get the most out of your marketing investment.

But before you start thinking about how to structure your marketing team, you must consider a few items.

1. Your Business Goals

The marketing team structure you create should be based on your business goals. You need to know what you want to achieve with your marketing efforts to create the right team to help you reach those goals.

Some common business goals that marketing teams help businesses achieve are:

• Increasing brand awareness for your business.
• Generating leads to grow your email list and fill up your sales pipeline.
• Drive more sales and close more deals with qualified leads.
• Improving customer retention after an initial sale.
• Increasing the lifetime value of your customers.

The type of digital marketing you need will be based on your business goals. To increase brand awareness, you will need a team specializing in marketing channels that reach a broad audience, such as social media and content marketing.

You may have one or all of these goals specific to your business. Once you know your goals, you can start developing your digital marketing team around the channels that will deliver results and help you reach the goals that you outlined here.

Different business goals require you to build a team to deliver different marketing strategies. It’s essential to think about what you want your business or marketing department to accomplish before you think about the channels you need to dominate to achieve those goals.

2. Prioritize Marketing Channels

Now that you understand your business goals, you can start thinking about who you need to reach and where you need to reach your audience in the areas they frequent. At its core, marketing is all about reaching the right people with the right message at the right time.

The only way for you to reach the right people with the right message is to know how your target audience consumes content so you can create content that reaches them on time.

Many marketing channels are available, and it can be tempting to want to be active on them all.

However, this approach is only sometimes the best use of your resources because it takes a lot of time and energy to build content across multiple channels.

Your goal in marketing should be to use the proper channels to reach the right people at different stages of their customer journey as they look to purchase from you. The entire customer experience needs to be wrapped into the idea that you will deliver the content your customers need to engage with your brand or make a conversion when they interact with your content.

It would be best to prioritize the marketing channels that will significantly impact your business goals.

To do this, start by evaluating your target audience. Where do they spend their time? What type of content do they consume? Answering these questions will help determine which channels to focus your marketing efforts on and what your marketing operations (and, by extension, your marketing team structure) will look like.

Once you understand where your target audience consumes information, you can begin building a marketing team that specializes in those channels. Since your initial focus was on your business goals, you can build a marketing team structure that focuses on those channels that will help you achieve your business goals moving forward.

3. Identify Needed Roles Based On Channels

At this point, you have defined your business goals and aligned those goals with the channels that your target audience frequents. This information will help you find individuals who specialize in each role.

Now that you know which marketing channels you need to focus on, it’s time to build a marketing team that can create content and executes strategies in those channels.

Depending on the size of your business, you may have a marketing team of one or two people or a marketing department with dozens of employees.

The marketing team you build will be based on your prioritized marketing channels. For example, if you sell a B2B product or service and want to drive traffic through SEO, you will need to build a team of writers and SEO specialists to support this goal.

However, if you sell a B2C product for teenagers, you will want to invest in a marketing team specializing in social media marketing.

Here are some typical marketing roles that businesses need to execute their marketing efforts in each channel:

• Social Media Manager: Oversees all social media accounts and creates content to be published across those channels.
• Content Writer: Creates blog posts, ebooks, white papers, and other types of long-form content.
• Graphic Designer: Creates visuals for social media posts, email campaigns, and other marketing collateral.
• Video Producer: Creates videos for social media, YouTube, and other video-based platforms.
• Email Marketing Specialist: Manages email marketing campaigns and creates automated email sequences.

We will go into each position more in the coming sections, but you must know that each position you fill should be based on your goals and the marketing channels you want to go after.

Building a marketing team is like baking a cake. You need to figure out the type of audience you want to serve before you put the ingredients together. Unless it’s carrot cake… because that cake is gross no matter who you bake it for :).

4. Find the Best Talent

Now that you know the marketing roles you need to fill, it’s time to start looking for the best talent.

There are many ways to find marketing talent, but starting with referrals is the best. Ask your friends, family, and colleagues if they know anyone who would be a good fit for your team. Once you have a few referrals, reach out to those individuals and set up an initial call or meeting.

You can also look for marketing talent on job boards like Indeed or Monster. However, these job boards can be overwhelming because so many options exist. To narrow your search, use keywords related to the position you want to fill.

Here are a few great places to find freelance copywriters, designers, and content strategists for your outsourced marketing team:

• StrategyBeam: If you are looking for a great team of marketing experts, look no further than right here at StrategyBeam. We provide end-to-end support for all types of companies in everything from marketing strategy, website copywriting, blogging, paid search, and even social media marketing. Unlike other options, you will work directly with one of our team members to build and execute a strategy that delivers results.
• Upwork: Upwork is one of the most popular online job boards where companies connect with freelancers in all areas of marketing. This service helps you “interview” potential candidates and can even help you find the most qualified freelancers based on your budget.
• Guru: Guru is the go-to place if you are looking for experienced freelancers with vocabulary. The site offers 500K skilled content writers who can write anything from articles to proofreading your work!
• Reddit: Luckily, there are subreddits like r/freelance_forhire and others that can help fill your technical writing gaps. However, you should be careful about who you choose to work with on these sites as some freelancers might only have beginner’s luck or lack experience in their field, which could result poorly for both parties involved if they don’t match up well enough quality-wise!

5. Build Connections Between Individuals/Teams

When building your marketing team, the final point is how individual team members will receive communication.

Whether you bring in outsourced marketing resources to fill in knowledge or skill gaps within your current marketing team or build a fully outsourced marketing team, communication will be crucial to your success.

You should set up regular meetings with your marketing team to ensure everyone is on the same page as you plan, produce, and publish content across the various marketing channels that you oversee.

You should also introduce each team member to each other and explain each person’s role. This will help everyone understand how they fit into the overall team and how they can support your strategy.

Building an outsourced marketing team is possible. Still, it does require that you put additional time and effort into making the connections between the team so everyone understands how they should work in the team and who they work with.

Building The Ideal Marketing Team Structure

Now that you understand the different marketing channels and the types of marketing roles that you need to fill, it’s time to start thinking about how you will structure your marketing team.

The marketing department structure of a company can vary depending on the size of the company, the industry, the products or services offered, and the marketing budget.

Whether you plan to outsource your marketing team organization to a trusted outsourcing marketing agency or need a few positions to build your current marketing team, your marketing organization needs to fill a few key roles.

Marketing Manager/Chief Marketing Officer

A marketing manager will be one of the first people you hire, whether you are building a marketing team from scratch, scaling your marketing department, or simply growing your business.

The marketing manager will bridge the gap between upper management/owners and individual contributors within the marketing team. This individual will manage day-to-day operations in the marketing team, manage relationships with vendors, and determine what marketing functions it makes sense to keep in-house or outsource.

Quick Summary

• Key Responsibilities: Plan marketing budgets, onboard new employees, deliver measurable results, maintain brand guidelines, and oversee marketing plan.
• Primary Skills: Analyzing market trends, coordinating strategies between various departments, overseeing marketing campaigns, and managing the marketing department’s budget.
• Average In-House Salary: $149,053
• Est. Outsource Cost: Expect to pay around $5,000/month for a comprehensive marketing strategy that includes content planning, production, and management.
• Also Called: Director of Marketing, Product Marketing Manager, Brand Manager, Content Strategist.

Image Source: https://www.salary.com/tools/salary-calculator/marketing-senior-manager

What To Look For

You need a single point of contact to help oversee your marketing team. The nice thing about outsourcing your marketing efforts with an agency is that marketing strategy is typically included in the monthly retainer.

You should expect an outsource marketing agency to provide you with a point of contact who is responsible for the overall success of your efforts and marketing budget. This person is typically the business owner, but large agencies will. It would help if you also looked for someone who understands how different marketing channels work together to build a marketing plan for the department to follow.

Who They Work With

The Marketing Manager will work with everyone on the marketing team and typically reports to upper management. This person should have a working knowledge of all channels so they can help fill any knowledge or skill gaps within the team.

A Marketing Manager will oversee personnel, project management, and “on-the-ground” production within each marketing channel. This person won’t do production (unless necessary), but this person will help guide timelines.

Content Creation Team

The Content Creation team is responsible for the ideation, creation, and distribution of marketing collateral. This could be anything from blog posts and ebooks to infographics and webinars.

The content team should have a mix of creative and analytical individuals who understand how to produce content that drives results. You can hire a freelance writer to fulfill this need along with an editor, or you can hire an in-house writer to help you write blog posts and other content for your content marketing needs.

Quick Summary

• Key Responsibilities: Ideate, create, and distribute marketing collateral.
• Primary Skills: SEO copywriting, design, and project management.
• Average In-House Salary: $53,831
• Est. Outsource Cost: $2,500 – $5,000/month for a comprehensive content marketing strategy that includes content planning, production, and management.
• Also Called: Copywriter, SEO Specialist, Designer, or Project Manager.

Image Source: https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/copywriter-i-salary

What To Look For

When building a content team, you should look for individuals who are strong writers and understand how to produce content that is both creative and effective. The content team should also have a good understanding of SEO and how to optimize content for the web.

If you’re outsourcing your content marketing efforts, you should look for an agency that can provide a mix of writing, design, and project management services. Finding an agency with a good understanding of SEO is also essential and can help you produce creative and compelling content.

Who They Work With

The Content Creation team typically works with the marketing manager but may also work with other marketing team members, such as the Social Media team.

Search Engine Optimization Team

If your business needs to reach customers online, you need an SEO Strategist to plan and optimize content to help you rank in search engine results (SERPs) for specific keywords and topics.

The SEO Strategist is responsible for building your company’s SEO strategy, conducting market research to understand your target audience, and building keyword strategies for copywriters to use when writing content blog posts, website pages, and other types of content.

Quick Summary

• Key Responsibilities: Keyword research, running technical website audits, direct link-building campaigns, and assisting with landing page optimizations.
• Primary Skills: Working knowledge of various web languages (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript), experience with various tools like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console, and a strong analytical mindset.
• Average In-House Salary: $91,867
• Est. Outsource Cost: Expect to pay around $2,000/month for just SEO planning and strategy. Purely outsourced SEO services typically don’t include content production or management. Still, you can get a lot of value by bringing on a freelance SEO to help optimize and direct projects.
• Also Called: SEO Manager, Search Marketing Manager, SEM Manager, or Search Engine Marketing Manager.

Image Source: https://www.salary.com/research/salary/posting/search-engine-optimization-seo-manager-salary

What To Look For

It would help if you looked for qualities and skillsets for an SEO Strategist based on the needs and goals of your business. For example, if you want to increase your organic traffic by 20% YoY but don’t have the resources to hire a writer, then you will want to find an SEO Strategies who knows how to plan, write, and optimize content.

At a minimum, the SEO Strategist you hire needs to understand how to use different SEO tools like Ahrefs, Moz, and Screaming Frog to find opportunities on your website. They should also know how to use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to report on the performance of your content and marketing campaigns as needed.

Who They Work With

The SEO Strategist typically works with many other individuals in the marketing department to plan content, oversee content production, and optimize before content is published. They work closely with other functions like the Copywriter to determine what to write, help write briefs, and optimize content before blog posts and landing pages are published on your website.

Suppose your business needs to be more significant to support an entire SEO team with several SEO Analysts. In that case, you can get by with an SEO Strategist who also acts as your SEO Analyst and Copywriter.

Paid Media Team

Paid Media is a marketing channel where businesses use platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads to advertise their products or services.

The Paid Media team is responsible for managing your company’s budget for advertising, planning and executing marketing campaigns, analyzing performance data, and optimizing campaigns to improve results.

Quick Summary

• Key Responsibilities: Manage ad spending, create marketing plans, execute campaigns, analyze performance data, and optimize campaigns.
• Primary Skills: Strong analytical skills, experience with marketing campaign management tools like Google Ads and Facebook Ads Manager, and experience with web analytics tools like Google Analytics.
• Average In-House Salary: $88,781/year
• Est. Outsource Cost: $3,000 – $5,000+/month. The Cost of a paid media consultant or agency will depend on the size of your business, the scope of work, and the tools they need.
• Also Called: Paid Search Manager, PPC Manager, Pay-Per-Click Manager, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Manager

What To Look For

When looking for someone to manage your company’s paid advertising campaigns, you should look for an experienced marketing professional with strong analytical skills. They should also have experience using marketing campaign management tools like Google Ads and Facebook Ads Manager.

Who They Work With

The Paid Media team typically works with other marketing teams, like SEO and Content, to plan and execute marketing campaigns. They also work with the Sales team to track and report on the performance of campaigns.

Social Media Team

The Social Media team is responsible for creating and executing marketing plans to grow your company’s social media presence. This includes creating content, managing social media accounts, engaging with followers, and analyzing social media analytics.

Quick Summary

• Key Responsibilities: Create marketing plans, manage social media accounts, create content, engage with followers, and analyze social media analytics.
• Primary Skills: Strong writing skills, experience with social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and experience with marketing campaign management tools.
• Average In-House Salary: $110,722/year
• Est. Outsource Cost: $1,000 – $3,000+/month. The Cost of a social media consultant or agency will depend on the size of your business, the scope of work, and the tools they need.
• Also Called: Social Media Strategist, Social Media Manager, Social Media Coordinator

Image Source: https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/social-media-communications-manager-salary

What To Look For

When looking for someone to manage your company’s social media accounts, you should look for an experienced marketing professional with strong writing skills. They should also have experience using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Additionally, they should have experience with marketing campaign management tools.

Who They Work With

The Social Media team typically works with other marketing teams, like SEO and Content, to plan and execute marketing campaigns. They also work with the Sales team to track and report on the performance of campaigns.

Marketing Team Structures At Different Stages

There needs to be one right way to structure a marketing team. The best marketing team structure for your business depends on the current size and abilities of your marketing department or business.

If you have a small marketing team, you should structure it hierarchically with a transparent chain of command. If you have a larger marketing team, you should structure it horizontally, with cross-functional teams working on different projects.

You might even want to combine these two approaches with a mix of hierarchical and horizontal team structures.

Ultimately, the best marketing team structure for your business is the one that allows your marketing team to function effectively and efficiently.

Let’s look at a few options to structure your marketing team based on the size, capabilities, and resources your business or marketing department has at its disposal.

Image Source: https://contentwriters.com/blog/whats-the-ideal-marketing-team-structure/

Startup Marketing Team Structure

Your marketing team structure will lean and focus on growth if you’re a startup. You’ll likely have one or two marketing team members who wear many hats and are responsible for various marketing activities. As your business grows, you can add more marketing team members with specific skill sets.

Small Business Marketing Team Structure

As a small business, you may have a larger marketing team than a startup, but you are likely still plagued with many management responsibilities. However, you may still have marketing team members who wear many hats and are responsible for a variety of marketing activities. Alternatively, specialists may focus on one marketing area, like SEO or social media. Still, you will likely need to be the acting marketing manager who oversees the personnel side of the business or marketing department.

Medium Business Marketing Team Structure

If you’re a medium-sized business, you likely have a marketing team that includes specialists who focus on one area of marketing. For example, you may have an SEO specialist, a social media specialist, and a content marketing specialist. You may also have generalists who are responsible for multiple marketing activities.

At this stage, your business or marketing department should have several individual contributors who understand their marketing area and handle all projects within their area of expertise.

Large Business Marketing Team Structure

As a large business, you likely have a marketing team that’s made up of specialists who focus on one area of marketing. For example, you may have an SEO, social media, and content marketing team. Each team is likely led by a manager who oversees the day-to-day operations and reports to the marketing director.

Enterprise Marketing Team Structure

If you’re an enterprise, you likely have a marketing team that’s made up of specialists who focus on one area of marketing. For example, you may have an SEO, social media, and content marketing team. Each team is likely led by a manager who oversees the day-to-day operations and reports to the marketing director.

Top Resources To Build Your Marketing Team Structure

If you’re a business owner or marketing director looking to scale your marketing efforts, StrategyBeam is an excellent outsourcing marketing solution.

We offer end-to-end marketing solutions for everything from marketing strategy to copywriting, PPC, and social media marketing. Our marketing experts can help you design and implement a marketing plan to help you achieve your business goals.

Plus, we offer a wide range of marketing services that can be customized to meet your specific needs. So whether you’re looking for help with your marketing strategy or need someone to handle your social media marketing, we can help.

Contact us today to learn more about our services and how we can help you grow your business no matter what stage your business or marketing department is at!