In the past, marketers were sometimes seen to be the cream on top and surplus to the core requirements of a sales person and a finance person and CEO. Now, I think most businesses know that marketing holds its own and has its place at the top table as much so as sales or finance.
Whether that’s come about because people just want to keep up with their competitors who all seem to have marketing teams or whether they’ve realised the need for it on their own, I don’t know but whatever way that has come to pass, I don’t think anyone is using that ‘fluffy’ word anymore regarding marketing.
When it comes to building that marketing team, there’s a variety of strengths and disciplines that you’re going to need to fill, but usually, they start with one and then needs are established and business cases are made.
So, a smaller organisation will hire a marketer who will be expected to be adept right across the discipline. So that person should be creative, able to produce collateral such as sales materials and brochures, and commercially driven so that they can satisfy the budget spent on their hire.
A really robust marketing team will have a content person, a designer ideally, a social media professional, it might have a good digital person or even a good digital team. You might be in a position to have a separate umbrella of three or four within a digital team, which may include content, social media, analytics, a PPC person who is really good on the paid optimisation side of things and then an SEO person who focuses on search engine optimisation in collaboration with a content marketer.
If a company is resource-rich and has signed off to hire a team, another route might be a team of affiliate marketers under the umbrella of a head of brand. That’s a huge burgeoning area where businesses have seen the value of having an affiliate manager who goes out to markets and gets their brand out there. When that works, it’s a really easy one to make a business case for hiring two, three or four affiliate managers.
Initially, that marketer will come in and define what needs to be done and, hopefully by driving some of their own success, will make a business case for the need to grow a team. The larger a business, the larger the budgets are, so a head of marketing will have the joy of being able to hire experts within each stream.
For example, they could say they need to hire a content marketer or a growth editor or a demand generation manager, so that they can carry on with their strategic work and that new person will be solely back at base, driving leads and nurturing them through the funnel, which ultimately, the sales team will go and knock out of the park. The more seniority and influence that marketer has, the more they will be able to drive the senior leadership team through numbers and metrics.
With the dawning and solidifying of the digital function, everything is measurable, so marketers can analyse and produce results regarding their work, particularly online, so easily that nobody can deny that marketing is directly impacting and generating sales.
Having marketing at an early stage is most valuable because the marketer now creates the leads for the sales team. Traditionally, you would have looked for a sales person, sent them out into the streets and let them bring back leads and signed contracts. But now, the sales people will turn to the marketing team and say, ‘Where are my leads?’.
Marketing is so pivotal to any business’s success because without an audience and without engagement with customers, what have you got? So, if a company has 20 head office employees, I would expect the marketing team to account for about 15-20% of that.
I would advise leadership teams or CEOs to throw down the gauntlet to their marketer and ask them to produce their forecast. If there are any doubts, I think leaders and CEOs will be surprised that the marketer can come in and impress with numbers. And with numbers, somebody’s accountable, so if they say they can achieve something in three, six or nine months, then you can measure that.
Looking to hire top marketing talent or build your team from scratch? Check out our award-winning marketing recruitment solutions or talk to me by email at louise.oreilly@recruiters.ie or on the phone at 353 1 632 5043.
Louise O’Reilly is an associate principal marketing recruitment consultant at RECRUITERS
Macrons photo by Holly Stratton on Unsplash
