7 Steps To Building A Successful marketing team
Do you have the right people in the right seats?
There comes a point when growing companies, brands, & non-profits need to take the leap forward and build their own internal marketing teams. This task can seem daunting. It is no surprise that organizations typically start by addressing specific tactical needs, like social media, e-comm, or website support, then quickly realize they have no one to guide the ship they’ve started building.
How do you build out a successful marketing department when you don’t have any marketing leadership to guide you? It is like building a house without an architect. It is critical to have a plan and build a solid foundation so your marketing discipline can grow as your needs do.
Here are my 7 steps:
START WITH WHERE YOU WANT TO Be
One of the most important things I do when I sit down with clients looking to build their internal marketing team, is to create a solid list of business goals that marketing can support. Where do you want to be in the next quarter, the next year, 3 years? You don’t have to get granular with highly specific metrics (yet), instead you need to prioritize where marketing can support the big picture - build awareness in new markets, fundraising, launching new products, driving traffic to store/shelf during specific time periods or in specific markets, growing basket size, increasing event participation, generating buzz/excitement, etc.
2. Assess your toolbox
Next it is important to understand what you have already in your toolbox and build from there. Maybe you already have some in house talent that is ready for a career opportunity? Do you already have team members that have been assisting with marketing as part of their other responsibilities and are interested in switching to full-time? Is someone already working on your social media or helping plan your events that could be folded into your new marketing team?
3. Make Your Strategic Plan
Where brands get lost is not investing in experienced strategic advice on what marketing disciplines they need, tactics to employ, and critical milestones/metrics to hit to meet their goals. “Let’s just hire a Marketing Manager and let them sort it out,” isn’t a great plan. I give solid advice based on decades of experience and working directly with you to identify your gaps. Does your short term focus need to be on email outreach? Need to start creating content for your ordering app or 3rd party delivery partners like, yesterday? Is your trade show presence sorely lacking and not driving the results you need? I can help you build out your strategic marketing plan focused on reaching your goals.
4. Team Structure & Job Descriptions
What specific marketing roles do you need filled to execute your strategic plan? Social media community manager? CRM database engineer? Art director? Account Supervisor? Project Manager/Traffic, Data Analyst? Video Producer? Experiential Designer?
I can help you build out the team structure you need and even a plan for growth. We’ll work together to craft job descriptions, an ideal team structure, and responsibilities that work for your organization.
5. Hire Your Team
The hiring process can be a challenge for anyone trying to fill specific roles and not sure how to access capabilities & expertise. Having a dedicated and highly experienced hiring team assisting you to find the right bodies for the right roles is critical! I can help with screening, interviewing, and making recommendations on individuals as potential hires or agencies to partner with to fill specific gaps.
6. Process Roadmap & Tools
It is critical to give your new team the right communication & process framework, marketing software, and internal workflow structures to do their respective jobs and interact with other departments and outside vendors. You need to be prepared to invest in the right mar/com tech stack to manage projects, timelines, budgets, generate creative, monitor social media, and distribute content appropriately.
7. Optimizing & Measuring Success!
Providing ongoing training and development opportunities for your team is critical to meet constantly shifting marketing challenges. Change is the only constant in marketing - from social media channels & algorithms, to consumer sentiments & cultural/political influences - your marketing needs to be always evolving. Making sure you have created a framework to measure team performance against your KPIs is an important way to identify when you have strayed off course or the market place has shifted and you need to recalibrate to meet your new marketing demands.
