Building A Marketing Team From Scratch? Here Are The Roles To Prioritize For Hiring
When you think of a marketing team, what sort of people come to mind?
Is it the communicative extrovert? The social media whizz? The diligent administrator? Is it the vibrant brand obsessive who knows SEO inside and out, or a behind-the-scenes data analyst, who analyses consumer sentiment and puts together business plans to unlock new markets?
Is it all of the above?
Well, yes and no.
The secret to putting together a quality marketing team lies in an enterprises’ ability to both predict and react to brand positioning and market forces, all with the aim of driving sales, usage, and brand knowledge higher and higher.
Marketing serves as both a magnifier of brand credentials, and a sales channel for people to interact and, perhaps, purchase or engage with your brand.
Managing successful marketing takes savvy skills from a selection of well-positioned employees that understand the channels, the psychology, and the needs of your user or customer base, not to mention a deep understanding of your service, how it stacks up against the competition, and how to elevate the USPs or solutions it offers.
Enter - the marketing team.
Resources abound regarding what constitutes the “best” kind of marketing, and in context of the many, many channels you can explore. For example, Hubspot notes 41 different types of marketing that are worthy of investment, Wix notes 30 strategies that could underpin your marketing strategy, and chiefmartec.com notes 131 different types of marketing.
All of them are, in their own way, right - there are a vast array of styles and types of marketing that underpin a marketing strategy. The challenge is knowing how to utilize the right ones.
So when you’re building a marketing team from scratch, how do you know which channel to pursue? What should you budget for, and how do you know the work you’re doing is actually working?!
This is where business leaders have to choose what kind of marketing works for their brand, their audience, and their product.
Our advice is this:
You need to get a fundamental understanding of the main roles of marketing,
You need to know a little about the process of marketing and its purpose,
And you need to know where to apply yourself, your budget, and your brand.
What are the main types of marketing jobs?
The above strategic approach to building a marketing team should start with analyzing what type of marketer you need. While the below small list isn’t exhaustive, the responsibilities of each main job role cover virtually the entire landscape of marketing:
Digital Marketer,
Content Marketer,
Event Marketer,
Social Media Marketer,
Email Marketer.
Other sub-genre marketing roles, such as Affiliate Marketing Manager, Brand Manager, Inbound Marketer, Sales Marketer, Experiential Marketer etc tend to be subsumed under the titles above or only put in place in larger companies with a requirement for marketing specialisms.
For humble startups, and for companies putting together marketing teams for the first time, the above 5 types of marketing job should be your starting point.
What are the 4 P’s of Marketing?
Let's talk marketing theory. Marketing lore states that the entire business of marketing, promotion and branding revolves around the 4 Ps - product, price, place, and promotion.
“The 4 Ps are used by companies to identify some key factors for their business, including what consumers want from them, how their product or service meets or fails to meet those needs, how their product or service is perceived in the world, how they stand out from their competitors, and how they interact with their customers”.
Applying your product or brand to the above criteria will give you a much more focused approach to how, when, and why you market yourself and your company.
For companies putting together a marketing team, the 4 Ps provide scaffolding for your hires - what essential skills do you need to make sure your product is well represented, the price is in keeping with competitors, the place in which you market it has the audience, and the promotional tools and channels are relevant and provide ROI?
Managing your marketing ecosystem.
This is where your understanding of “place” and “promotion”, and a little bit of “price” come into play. There are many, many marketing channels to use, but not all of them will be relevant, effective or indeed accessible, in creating a brand marketing ecosystem.
For example, Cars are the most widely advertised product on television. However, social media channels are flush marketing for streaming companies and media brands, whilst FMCG brands are evolving in the wake of COVID to personalize and expand, or completely get rid of, their marketing output.
Each space, each channel, each direction will garner certain audiences and certain commitments from potential customers.
Customers inevitably have multiple “touchpoints” with a brand. As such, most brands are expected to be present on multiple channels, such as both SEO marketing, advertisement, influencer and via email marketing.
Through your market research, you need to understand the value of engagement on each channel, and how it will work to elevate your brand.
The culmination of messaging on these channels makes your “ecosystem” - consider this when hiring marketing staff!
What kind of marketing roles should I hire for my marketing team?
You should only base your hiring strategy on the above - you need to know whom you’re selling to, how you’re selling to them, and the channels you’ll be doing it on. That should determine who to hire.
Is your product more sellable, visible, and engagement-worthy on social media? Would your brand in fact benefit more from email marketing and direct marketing strategy? Where does your audience “shop”, digitally and physically?
While each industry, product and brand will require slightly adjusted marketing team make-ups, the vast majority of brands will require:
A Marketing Manager - your marketing lead, decision-maker and content reviewer who keeps the marketing team on brand and mission,
A Content Marketer - the lead figure on researching and creating content,
A Digital Marketer - the skilled marketer in charge of the company’s digital and social channels,
Marketing Analyst - the person in charge of reviewing and analyzing the success, reach, engagement and effectiveness of marketing campaigns,
Copywriter - the wordsmith responsible for the brand language, and consistently of language, across channels,
Graphic Designer - the talent in charge of creating engaging, meaningful visuals to complement and augment the product or service.
The above list covers the basics of effective marketing - good visuals, good copy, brand leadership, and savvy digital channel management, alongside a figure who analyzes the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
A few of the roles, however, can be subsumed into one role - for example, good digital marketing managers are sometimes wonderful copywriters or will be cross-skilled in adobe packages like Photoshop or Illustrator.
What we want you to do is focus on the skills - each role points to a necessary foundational element of good marketing.
Final thoughts
Marketing takes patience, trial and error, a bit of luck, consistent investment, and a competitive, knowledgeable team.
The work marketers do borders sales, brand management, customer service and product development.
But your team needs above all else to be relevant to your market. This means making sure you’re bringing the right skills needed to take full advantage of the channels and audience you need to attract.
