When building a marketing team, you need to make sure you have all your bases covered. Here are the 7 most critical positions that will need to be filled on your marketing team.
Is your marketing team as efficient and effective as possible? If not, you’re not alone; only 57% of companies consider their marketing to be successful.
Building a marketing team is about more than numbers and talent. A team full of experienced marketing experts will still be inefficient and unproductive if they’re not well-organized.
Organizing your marketing team is about creating well-defined roles.
These marketing team roles don’t necessarily need to be filled by one person each. You can have a two-person team in which each person takes on several responsibilities or a fifty-person team in which each role is shared by several people. What’s important is that the roles are clear and that they work together efficiently.
What roles do you need on your marketing team? In this article, we’ll go over seven of the most important roles you need to fill on your marketing team.
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The Marketing Team Manager
The marketing team manager isn’t necessarily the leader of the group. And they probably won’t deal with the details of your marketing strategy. But they are responsible for your team’s efficiency, and that’s just as important.
Their job is logistical. They organize meetings, develop workflow structure, and determine timetables. They help mediate communication between groups and allocate funds.
In short, they manage. It’s not always the most glamorous position on the marketing team, but it’s one of the most important. Smart marketing team structure is all about efficiency, and efficiency starts with the manager.
The Visionary
On the other end of the glamour spectrum, we have the visionary. The visionary directs the overall direction of the marketing strategy. In many ways, they’re the leader of the group.
The visionary doesn’t get into the nitty-gritty of logistics (they leave that to the manager). But they do need to communicate with every member of the team. They need to be on top of both the practical and the creative aspects of your marketing strategy.
Oftentimes, the visionary isn’t a dedicated marketing team member, but instead, a higher-up from outside of marketing. For smaller companies, the visionary will probably be the CEO of the company. Even in bigger companies, the CEO will have at least a say in the visionary aspects of the marketing team.
The Designer
While the visionary provides the high-level creativity, the designer provides the low-level creative muscle. The designer is what gives your brand its pizzazz.
This should be someone with expert level graphic design skills and great artistic instincts. They’ll work extensively with the visionary in order to perfect the brand image, and they’ll continue to develop the brand image as your marketing strategy grows.
But the designer’s role goes beyond graphic design. Depending on your marketing style, you may also need to produce well-written blog content or well-produced video. All of this requires top-notch creative talent.
For smaller companies. the designer position (or positions) may be freelancers. There are plenty of freelancer sites that will provide you with the short-term workers you need.
But, for larger marketing teams, you definitely want your creativity on staff.
The Developer
Working in concert with the designer is the developer. In the context of marketing, development mostly refers to web development.
Web development might seem completely separate from marketing, but especially in the digital age, your website is essential to your marketing strategy.
Your website is where your customers are going to interact directly with your company. The functionality of your site and the quality of the user experience will have a direct impact on your brand image.
Furthermore, the designer can’t do their job without the developer. These two roles must work together to create a pleasant and engaging user experience that will build your brand and keep your customers coming back.
This combination of design and development is the future of marketing. Top marketing companies such as Loyal Dog Marketing take this approach, and your team should too.
The developer position will likely be filled by programmers who aren’t marketing experts.
The Distributor
You can create all the great marketing content you want, but it’s all useless unless you deliver it to potential customers. This is where the distributor comes in.
The distributor’s job is to take part (along with the visionary) in deciding which advertising platforms your team will use. Will you focus on internet advertising, television advertising, or maybe even radio?
And, within this larger strategy, the distributor forms relationships with individual entities: online advertising platforms, television channels, radio stations. They use these relationships to make sure your marketing content is being efficiently delivered to potential customers.
Much like the marketing team manager, the distributor’s job is much more logistical than creative. But it’s an indispensable role in any marketing team.
The Customer Feedback Specialist
Your visionary and designer will drive your marketing strategy. And while this approach can create beautiful, innovative content, you need someone that will help keep your strategy grounded.
The most beautiful and innovative marketing strategy imaginable is useless if it doesn’t appeal to your customers. This is where the customer feedback specialist comes into play.
Do your customers think your new slogan is funny? Do they think your blog content is worthwhile? The customer feedback specialist answers questions like these.
This can involve gathering information with surveys or simply talking to customers. That’s why this position is often filled by your sales specialists. They spend the most time in the field and they’ll have the best idea of how your marketing is being received by your customers.
The Analyst
Much like the customer feedback specialist, the analyst determines how well your marketing strategy is working. But, while the customer feedback specialist gathers qualitative information about the customer experience, the analyst gathers hard, quantitative numbers.
The analyst is usually a data specialist who knows how to measure the impact of a marketing strategy. They’ll look at things like web traffic and sales numbers, and they’ll have a good understanding of search engine optimization.
You can’t develop an effective marketing strategy without feedback.
Build Your Marketing Team
Now that you know the roles you need to fill, it’s time to build your marketing team. You can do this by hiring within your company or bringing on new people, but what’s important is that your team is well organized and that they know their roles.
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