Building an effective marketing team

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When it comes to any growing startup or SMB, having a marketing team that correctly fits your business is vital to acquiring and retaining customers. 

Digital marketing goes beyond having a team that manages your paid campaigns. A great team consists of strategic and creative experts experienced in creating value for a company. Their primary goal should be to support your sales efforts by providing a steady flow of leads.

The key to any successful team is to have a group of specialists for each discipline. At the fundamental level, there should be specialists in:

1. Strategy
2. Digital
3. Content
4. Web development

Strategic leadership

It all starts with the top - a successful marketing team is led by an adaptable strategic leader who can spearhead initiatives and bring everyone together with strategy and coordination.

Communication is vital in this role as the individual is responsible for developing messaging with the higher-ups and disseminating it within their teams and to other verticals. 

Digital marketing specialists

Once you've established a clear hierarchy of marketing leaders, you need a team of specialists below that can execute your objectives and deliver results. This is where a team of digital marketing specialists come in.

Digital marketing specialists, automation specialists, PPC specialists, SEO specialists and even analysts are individuals you should look at when building an effective marketing team. Each of these team members can be dedicated to a channel and be responsible for its ongoing optimisation.

No matter the type of digital marketing specialist, we recommend they possess the following skills to carry out the following tasks:

1. Understand how to use marketing automation software to create email campaigns and manage social media and ad campaigns
2. Implement the above tools to accelerate your business' growth
3.  Research and collect data to further develop your marketing strategy
4. Work with the content marketing team to optimise company web content to be more relevant and discoverable to desired users.
5. Work with the visual design and web development team to implement technical edits across the website and email.

Digital marketing specialists should have a hand in every aspect of a marketing strategy, and their main goal is to ensure that all channels align with the company's goals. Digital marketing specialists significantly impact your ROI, from setting up workflow automation to collecting data and adjusting campaign strategy - they're a vital component of every effective marketing team.

Content marketing specialist

There needs to be a content marketing strategy along with your digital strategy. This area should be handled by a dedicated content marketing specialist or team and may consist of SEO specialists, writers and social media specialists.

No matter their focus, their duties typically include:

1. Understanding company goals and creating an overarching strategy for effective messaging and positioning when developing content pieces.
2. Identifying topics that are popular or in demand by ideal customers.
3. Drawing in prospects by creating targeted content in the form of blogs, social media posts and other sales collateral.

Search engine optimisation is a significant aspect of content marketing and is crucial to the long-term success of your inbound marketing strategy. With the help of SEO specialists, your content marketing team should be able to analyse and implement the changes needed to make your website more visible on Google for relevant search terms.

Combined with your sales team, content and digital marketing specialists can put together persuasive copy and ensure your content strategy is carried out within all channels and communication.

Web development specialists

Web developers are another component of effective marketing teams. They allow the business to build a website that accurately represents your brand, enhances user experience, and helps draw in leads.

In addition to creating visually appealing, user-friendly websites, web developers are also responsible for:

1. Optimising websites to be responsive across all devices, web browsers and screen sizes.
2. Collaborating with visual designers to create and optimise a website aligned with branding guidelines.
3. Assist with the development of emails that are optimised across all email clients. 

Once the website has been built, web developers are also responsible for its ongoing management. This includes technical SEO, integrating third-party apps and troubleshooting problems if they arise.

Building a marketing dream team

The four roles we've touched on are essential to building an effective marketing team. Each specialist works alongside the others to create and implement a marketing strategy aligned with your business goals.

But what if you're an SMB or don't have the resources on hand to build an effective team? The answer is outsourcing - companies like Fide can provide a complete marketing department to help drive your marketing efforts at a fraction of the cost of building internally. 

Fide acts as an extension of your company and can help build the strategy and implement campaigns surrounding all digital marketing channels (SEO, PPC, socials, email and SMS), content marketing and web development.

If you'd like to know how we can help your business with its marketing efforts, get in touch with us today for a free consultation.