Anatomy of a marketing team: who does what?
Full-scale marketing teams are a bit like a sports team or a foosball table. The people on them have a big range of talents and responsibilities and if you haven’t worked on or directly with a marketing team, it can be tough to understand the roles. In this article, we’ll break down the different positions and show you how they work together to drive awareness and revenue for the business.
A startup’s success is a function of two things: product and marketing. If you're reading this, you've likely already built your MVP and are gearing up for the next phase: spreading the word about your product.
There's just one problem:
Marketing is complicated as hell.
From paid ads and PR to social media and virtual events, marketing can feel like juggling 12 balls at the same time. It quickly becomes evident that you need more than one marketing person on your team to be successful, as different people play different roles with varying degrees of impact.
Some marketers will execute day-to-day tasks, while others are best as strategic masterminds and still others as creative geniuses. Hiring the right people for each of these roles isn't easy, with many founding teams being grappling with questions such as:
"What type of marketer do we need to hire, and when should we hire them?"
"Should we combine two marketing roles into one, or split them for greater effectiveness?"
"What information should we include in each marketing job description?"
This article will answer those questions and shed some light on how to build the ultimate marketing team. But first:
Here’s why building a marketing team is so hard
Marketing is a broad function within any organization. You use it to tell and sell your brand and products, which means that you can swing between wrangling journalists for PR juice and mapping out your content strategy.
It’s not just a one-way conversation, either — marketing requires tracking and analyzing customer sentiments to feed the product development cycle.
It's impossible for one person to do all of that properly — and if you're a small team with just one marketer, they’re unlikely to fully dedicate the necessary time and resources to each process.
Secondly, there are many sub-functions within each marketing role, and each of them requires a different skill set. For example, a growth marketer needs to be adept at social media marketing, email marketing, and sales copywriting. This might make them wholly unsuitable for trade show marketing, for instance.
This complexity also applies to many of the marketing assets you’ll create over time, as a single asset can serve multiple uses and be worked on by different team members.
Take an annual survey, for example. An annual survey falls under the content marketing function and can act as a lead generation magnet — but it can also work as sales enablement content. The first person to work on it will be a content strategist, who will outline its structure and flesh it out. A copy-editor will then polish it before a designer from the creative team creates graphics for it. The PR team will then shop it around for placements and track media chatter around the piece. All of this costs time and money.
For example:
We Are Social (a socially-led creative agency) and Hootsuite (a social media management platform) jointly released their Digital 2020 report in January 2020 — an in-depth report on the state of social media and digital advertising around the globe. Such a piece would have passed through researchers, analysts, copywriters, designers, and web developers before going live. After that, the PR team would’ve shopped it around for press coverage to ensure maximum reach (as seen on Adobo, Business Insider, and AP).
Thirdly, no two marketing teams are the same — even if their companies sell similar products. This can be due to their target markets, their locations, and the unique attributes of their respective products, all of which may influence the type of marketing that's required.
For example, Nutshell and Salesforce both sell CRMs but the former targets SMBs while the latter was built primarily for large enterprises. Where one may lean heavily on growth and content marketing, the other may tap into PR and events to drive brand awareness and conversions.
Lastly, you likely won't be able to re-use the job description for any role until you've reached a sizable number of marketers (10+) and have worked out your workflow.
This is because marketing is fast-paced by nature and a marketer’s role can change quickly — especially at early-stage startups. For example, a content marketer might need to learn product marketing to acquire new customers, while a comms specialist may need to host events to drive new sales.
Because of this, a strict selection process can lead to you missing out on the best people for each role. It helps to hire for adaptability rather than specific marketing skills.
The above caveats give you context on the hiring process, but what type of roles should you be looking to fill over the long term? We've collected the top marketing roles for early-stage startups into the framework below:
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These are:
Product marketing
Growth marketing / demand generation
Content marketing
Creative design
Public relations
Field/event marketing
Naturally, each role's scope of work may bleed into the next, so use this framework as a starting point for your own hiring efforts. Let's explore each role in turn.
#1 Product marketing
Product marketing is all about communicating your product and its benefits to your target audience. Mainly focusing on the pre-sale phase of your marketing efforts, a product marketer crafts the brand's positioning, segments users according to their buyer personas, delivers targeted messaging for each segment, and owns the product launch and overall go-to-market strategy.
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Product marketing also works on the pricing strategy with the Finance or RevOps team, handles partner marketing initiatives, and runs ongoing competitor analysis to keep your value proposition strong.
An excellent product marketer can source feedback from customers and other team members and draw insights to improve the product. This ability to build rapport and communicate with other stakeholders helps them deliver results through influence, not authority.
Outputs and tactics
Sample outputs for a product marketer include:
A go-to-market plan
Pricing packages
A positioning document, and
NPS survey results
Sample metrics include:
Your Net Promoter Score (NPS), and
Product engagement rates
Tools they use include:
Airtable for records and database management, and
Sample interview questions for a product marketer include:
Which product(s) do you think have been marketed incorrectly? Why? And how would you fix it?
How do you determine whether an onboarding process is working? (Source)
You launch a new feature and there is low adoption by your customers. What data would you evaluate and how would you respond? (Source)
#2 Growth marketing
Growth marketing involves launching, tracking, and optimizing programs and campaigns across multiple channels to move customers down your funnel. This means owning efforts across your website, email, and social media channels.
Growth is accountable for A/B testing, campaign optimization, analytics, paid media, and outbound sales support.
As part of the hiring process, look for someone who is highly analytical, enjoys experimental approaches, and isn't afraid to fail fast and learn quickly.
Sample outputs for a growth marketer include:
A/B tests
Landing pages
Email newsletters, and
Referral campaigns
Sample metrics include email open rates and content clickthrough rates. Tools for growth marketers include:
ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp for email marketing
Facebook Analytics to collect data on user engagement and ad performance
Sample interview questions for growth marketers include:
What's one growth framework you've used successfully?
Walk me through how you’d build an automation sequence that converts.
How would you run an A/B or multivariate test to optimize a landing page?
(You can get more at https://bamf.co/questions-ask-hiring-growth-marketer)
#3 Content marketing
Content marketing tells your brand's story through helpful, relevant, and timely content across different channels and formats. With the right kind of content, you can engage prospects, retain customers, attract job candidates, and court investors and partners.
The content marketing function owns content ideation and creation through to distribution and promotion. Content marketers use channels like social media and email to drive engagement and conversions and are responsible for crafting the brand's tone of voice. Sourcing and highlighting customer stories through case studies also falls under the role of content marketing.
A competent content marketer is a storyteller who understands strategy, metrics, ideation, and distribution. Look for someone who knows how to source content ideas from anywhere and repurpose it for different use-cases.
Sample outputs for a content marketer include:
Social media posts
Product guides
Blog articles, and
Reports
Sample metrics include social media shares and engagement as well as website traffic and bounce rates. Tools for content marketers include:
MarketMuse, Frase, and Clearscope for content optimization
Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Ubersuggest for keyword research, and
Sample interview questions for content marketers include:
Which metrics do you look at when measuring the success or failure of a content marketing campaign? (Source)
How did you determine the style, tone, and voice for a recent piece of content you wrote? (Source)
After you publish content, how do you promote it? (Source)
#4 Creative design
Your brand identity cements the association customers make in their mind whenever they see your ads, merchandise, and other creative assets. The creative design role creates and maintains a consistent look and feel across all channels and formats, including digital, print, and video.
The ideal creative designer is detail-oriented, able to ideate and execute campaigns, and can translate the brand’s core essence into effective marketing assets.
Sample outputs for a creative designer include:
A corporate identity manual
Product animations
Website wireframes, and
Campaign posters
Sample metrics include video views, social shares, and alignment with brand guidelines. Tools for creative designers include: Adobe Creative Suite, CorelDraw, and Figma for creative work.
Sample interview questions for a creative designer include:
What’s your creative process? (Source)
Walk me through the best piece in your portfolio. (Source)
How do you handle harsh criticism? (Source)
#5 Public relations
Within the classic media pie chart, the PR team is responsible for generating earned media for the brand. This involves building close relationships with members of the media and communicating news about the company, its products, its team, and its achievements.
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Your communications or media specialist will be responsible for owning all media relationships (including influencers, analysts, and investors), planning award show entries, booking speaking engagements (together with the field/events team), and driving internal communications.
The ideal PR specialist is flexible, meticulous, and has long-standing industry relationships. They’ll also need stellar writing skills and a thick skin to handle pitch rejections.
Sample outputs for a PR specialist include:
A media plan
Speaking tours
Product placements, and
Influencer campaigns
Sample metrics include brand mentions and organic web traffic. Tools for PR specialists include:
HARO to respond to pitch requests
Meltwater to track brand mentions, and
Buzzstream for media outreach
Sample interview questions for PR specialists include:
How would you deal with a PR crisis? (Source)
What are some of your go-to social media monitoring tools? (Source)
Give an example of a successful PR campaign you designed. (Source)
#6 Field/event marketing
Depending on your company and product, you might need to invest in field or event marketing to plan and host events for awareness, lead generation, and customer retention purposes. These events can be self-hosted or co-hosted with relevant partners.
Your field or event marketer will own the full event strategy from preparing the annual event calendar to sourcing booths for conferences and trade shows. Their remit will also include promoting each event prior to its date (with the content and creative team); keeping attendees engaged during events; and tracking post-event sentiments.
This function works closely with the sales team to ensure revenue targets are met and with the creative team to generate brand assets.
When hiring an event marketer, look for someone who is highly flexible, organized, and easy to get along with. They’ll also need great project management and people skills.
Sample outputs for a field or event marketer include:
An event calendar
Webinar schedules and scripts
Lead generation forecasts, and
Partnership programs
Sample metrics include sales bookings and marketing qualified leads. Tools for field or event marketers include:
Sample interview questions for field or event marketers include:
How do you manage event promotion from social media outreach to email marketing? (Source)
How do you go about sourcing reliable partners and suppliers for an event? (Source)
Describe a time when you went over budget. What went wrong and how did you fix it? (Source)
Sourcing your first hires
Once you’ve decided on which roles you need on your team, finding the right people gets a lot easier. The nature of the profession means that marketers are pretty good at, well, marketing themselves. There are 3 main ways to source marketers for your early-stage startup:
Hire in-house
Hire an agency, or
Hire freelancers
Hiring in-house
Hiring in-house means finding, vetting, interviewing, and making an offer to each individual hire. Their background, qualifications, skills, and experience will determine whether or not they’re a good fit for your team. Ensure they’ll fit into the culture you’re trying to build, as hiring the wrong people can cost you time, money, and productivity.
Hiring an agency
An agency typically offers different marketing roles in one package. Having done the hard work of sourcing and hiring writers, analysts, designers, promoters, and managers, an agency might charge you a one-off campaign fee or a retainer for ongoing services.
While hiring an agency will typically be more expensive than hiring in-house, an agency brings extensive insights from across the industry that a single marketer might not have. You also get a strategic partner who is invested in your growth — because their revenue is tied to your profits.
Vet prospective agencies by looking at their past work and getting testimonials from their previous clients. Also, lay out a comprehensive scope of work to align all parties.
Hiring freelancers
Freelancers bring with them the varied insights of an agency minus the administrative headaches of hiring in-house. Typically brought on for a single project or a long-term engagement, a freelancer or contractor is able to dedicate more time to your brand since they take on fewer clients than an agency would.
As with agencies, a clearly outlined scope of work helps align all parties involved. You can vet freelancers by looking at their portfolio and working on a small paid project at the beginning to establish good fit.
Whether you opt for an in-house marketer, an agency, or a freelancer, ensure that processes are followed and outcomes are met on time and within budget.
Mapping your marketing teams to the customer journey
So how do all of these marketing teams map to your customer journey? Here’s a brief outline of how they might work together to attract, convert, and retain new customers. We’ve divided it into 4 sections:
Reach strangers
Attract visitors to your website
Convince visitors to become customers
Educate customers to become power users
Delight power users to become promoters
Here’s a bit more detail on each:
#1 Reach strangers
This entails getting in front of new people to make them aware of your brand and what you do.
The teams:
Growth or demand gen
Event or field marketing
PR
The tactics:
Hosting events
Ad campaigns
Giving talks
Press outreach
#2 Attract visitors to your website
This involves attracting people to your website through strong SEO and valuable content.
The teams:
Content marketing: While your content team takes the lead here, product marketing should support SEO efforts and lead webinars. Thought leadership with the CEO can be handled by content marketing and PR.
The tactics:
Blog articles
Infographics
White papers and e-books
Webinars
SEO
#3 Convince visitors to become customers
This involves getting your website visitors to sign up, try, and buy your product.
The team:
Product marketing takes the lead here
The tactics:
Website and landing pages
Sales enablement
Competitor intelligence
Customer testimonials (with support from content marketing)
#4 Educate customers to become power users
Teaching users in your product and on your help center how to be successful with your offering and get the most value out of the product.
The teams:
You likely won’t have a single person or team devoted to product education at first, so this job will be shared among your customer support, product, and product marketing teams.
The tactics:
Onboarding flow
Best practices content
Product documentation
Customer webinars
#5 Delight power users to become promoters
The teams:
Shared across the company, especially event/field marketing, product management, product marketing, customer support, and sales.
The tactics:
Customer events and meetups
Office hours
Random acts of delight — like an envoy sending cupcakes to new customers
Start hiring your marketing team
Marketing is an important part of your company’s success. The right team will help your brand stand out, while the wrong one can cost you time and money. Building a good team starts with understanding how to organize your marketing efforts around each member's role and responsibility.
Hiring for adaptability is more important than trying to tick every box on your checklist. This is because day-to-day needs can change quickly and may require non-specialists to take over and execute on critical tasks. This makes it essential to expose each member of your marketing department to different roles so they can pick up new skills.
FMP provides a member’s forum to discuss hiring and other critical issues for early-stage startups. Join us today to get tips and advice on hiring your next marketer!
