I would structure a modern marketing team into 5 distinct units for optimal business performance today: 1. Bottom of funnel demand capturers: Google PPC, purchase intent / long-tail SEO keywords, Affiliates, Aggregators, Conversion Rate Optimization, Pricing Strategists, etc. Any function that is fighting to win existing demand in the market. This area of marketing is complex science and requires deep understanding of customer motivation, intent behind keywords, content, website behavior flows and the “sales motion.” 2. Demand creators that focus on mid to top of funnel: Brand marketing, product marketing, “messaging and positioning”, PR style comms / content marketing, video, social, podcasts, events, community, “evangelists”, storytellers, partnerships - anything that contributes to “dark social” etc. This is NOT about sales / MQLs / leads. This is where you attract, educate and influence. Instead of trying to force these awareness audiences down the funnel prematurely, just focus on leading indicators like traffic growth and content engagement. Don’t falsely pump up the pipeline numbers, or pigeon hole this group into being measured like performance marketing. 3. Creative unit + web management - designers, illustrators, video producers / editors, front end developers, web project managers, etc. I would unify this group. They carry a very challenging workload and must balance priorities while supporting the vast needs of groups 1 & 2. 4. Ops & Enablement & ABM (B2B only) - Tools, tech stack, analytics, data, insights, supporting and working with sales on strategic + tactical initiatives at mid-bottom of funnel. 5. Customer Marketing - All the marvelous tasks they have to perform to educate existing customers with a focus on retention and community building. #marketing
So only the boss sees it all...you'll create a team of minions who look for you to make every decision. Who replaces you? Someone from the outside who has run the entire team? Contrary to this approach, I always believed in a bottom up approach where my people would tell me the right answer. I want leaders who see the whole picture, not just one wee little part. This separation of "brand stuff" and "performance" is downright silly. It's the same skills. And it is rather demoralizing for those looking to advance in their marketing career. This is what is wrong with marketing today. We create minions who hate their job, hate their work...and produce sh*t work that goes into the marketplace. When you tell people what to do, they'll say yes. When you ask them what we should do, you will get the best answers.
Love this breakdown. Been thinking a lot about capture & create, and how to split that out. Within Dooly's content team, we do have folks more focused on creating brand and awareness and folks more focused on capturing existing demand. The KPIs & OKRs are very different: audience building vs demo/pipeline. However, I'm happy to constantly be proven wrong about which function does what. Today, we saw quality demos come in from a "top-funnel" piece. Also, when we started adding a non-obstrusive CTA to event follow-emails, people clicked. Overall, I've found good marketing is usually 90%+ education. 10% making it as easy as possible to take the next step. Magic happens when you have clear, attainable goals, but people who will naturally think bigger and aren't afraid to color outside the lines. (How can I get more out of this idea? Can this help capture *and* create demand)
I find it fascinating how 'limited' the view of marketing is in 'Modern Marketing'. But maybe my thinking is 'old school'? In my world, Product Management is the heart and center of Marketing by managing the Marketing Mix: Product, Place, Price, and Promotion. If you get this right, the rest becomes a service, that does not even need to be in-house (unless there is a specific reason or a critical skill set that nobody else has). But you can't outsource the DEFINITION of: - your product, - the way you take it to the market, - how your price it, and - how best to get the word out. Because that is the core and heart of your business: Marketing. But maybe I am old school and this is just not needed anymore...
The reason I like 0 to 1 products / startups is because you have to think in terms of first principles as you're starting from scratch. I'd consider the following restructuring according to human skills: 1. Written/Spoken Communicators - They talk to the customers and get to know them. I have a mixed group of researchers, SDR, AE and CS doing this. They cold call, respond to inbound requests, and do social posts and comments. As the number of communication channels grows, that's how I split them up into channel managers. 2. Data Nerds (aka Martechs) - Most data nerds know basic python and therefore are okay with being the administrators of the tech stack. I have them webscraping to enrich leads, setting up campaigns, making sure the data is being entered properly from group 1, and correlating attribute to activity data (including revenue) to tell us which communication channels are working with who. 3. Visual Communicators - It's a combo between graphics and video. Their job is to make visual assets for all the written/spoken assets created by group 1. They start off as contractors, usually. I hire in that order. Hire a salesperson first, pair them up with a techie to make them efficient, and then make them look amazing.
Jessica Vose
1y
Gaetano Nino DiNardi 🇺🇦 what about Partner Marketing? To, through, with the partner? I tend to think that just like Customer Marketing, it will need to borrow from the other teams in terms of leveraging that work, but that it requires a singular focus as a team of people. I see that it's not represented in your rundown (unless I missed it), so curious about your thoughts on that?
Let’s say these are areas of impact - could be that the same persons were doing assignments in several of the areas? I find the biggest challenge is that no organization is ever perfect - it is how they operate and organize (themselves even) to achieve the goals/create desired impact. Of course an organization is an aim and a statement in order to understand the job at hand 🤚🏽
Love how you segmented these buckets. You mentioned not prematurely forcing leads through the funnel in point 2. Time to pipeline is longer, but time in pipeline is shorter. It seems point 4 is the opposite, as outbound moves people into pipeline (usually) prematurely. Do you agree and if so, how do you balance those two?
Jason Miller
1y
I would combine 1 and 2. Marketing pretty much owns the entire funnel these days so this has to be tight and fully aligned. I would also maybe split out a growth function with SEO and PPC, then move the SDRs there as well. I do like the approach and thinking here, and I wonder what the maturity curve of adoption looks like across mid size vs enterprise for this type of structure.
Lars Böhnke
1y
Why 3 as a distinct team and not embedded in 1 and 2? Imagine it being quite hard to gain deep customer insight if you're just a "creative factory"
Marketing Automation | Digital Strategy | Founder Nekoh Digital
1ySee here why the phrase ´online marketeer, ´digital marketeer´ in job descriptions is often, not always, the start of failure or mismatch in terms of expectations. Often, not always, 1 and 2 are required by 1 person. Even 1-5 is required by 1 person. Hence, the expectations on company side are wrong from start. And the level of work the person can do within an organization is either too much or the skills are not there, since the person often is specialized and super good in certain segments. So, likely he or she can just work on 1 part of the job description if quality is to be expected. Like the breakout. 👍. Developers / coders are also a breed that i think deserve a seperate team. Its a different tribe than data specialists / analytical guys and girls.