Without marketing, a business is less likely to succeed in our day and age. Marketing teams are essential, as they not only build a strong brand awareness, but they also promote products and services. They are basically the face of your company, because their main role is to create an image that inspires and brings your company into a positive light.
A great marketing team will grow your business and have a profound impact on the way customers perceive your brand. It is strategic, it studies the market, and it implements plans that guarantee success. The role of a marketing department is not to be understated, but in order to build a great team, you need to understand what they do and what they need in order to succeed.
The Difference Between Marketing and Sales
Before getting into more details about the marketing department, let’s see how can we distinguish it from the sales function:
Marketing implies offering the right services to the right prospects and with the right benefits. This process requires understanding your marketplace and the competitors. A marketing team defines your firm’s position in the market, outlines the prices and services, and promotes your company to the audience you’re targeting while explaining how they can benefit from your offers.
Sales, on the other hand, represents the process of qualifying your prospects while also convincing those identified as target audience to buy the services or products you offer. Because in some organizations the sales team also generates leads until they become business opportunities, the confusion can be easily made.
What Does a Marketing Team Do
Now that we can make the difference between marketing and sales, let’s see what are the responsibilities of this department. All the duties below are crucial for your business to thrive:
- Paying attention to customer needs
Without meeting the needs of the customer, your company cannot grow. That’s why it is important to identify the audience that needs the services you’re offering. Get closer to the client and make sure they always send their feedback.
- Tracking trends and monitoring the competition
A great marketing strategy will know its position on the market. By closely analyzing what your competitors do, you will learn what mistakes to avoid and how to stand out from the crowd.
- Building strong brand values
Your brand represents the feeling that your company gives. Creating images, messages and ideas that share your unique value will put you top-of-mind with your audience. If your brand is consistent, your product will be recognizable, reliable, and impressive.
- Implementing Innovation
When the only constant is change, searching for new marketing tools is essential. Your team must know about new trends, strategies and digital instruments.
- Having great communication skills
Communication skills are also needed, and not only with the customer, but also with the rest of the company. Since you all share the same goal as a business, if one department fails, the entire company does. The actions of your marketing department must be aligned with the rest of the team.
- Managing strategic plans and marketing budgets
To ensure a positive ROI, the team should be able to create their own budget while also measuring their actions in order to meet the company’s goals. Besides that, their marketing strategies should be planned on the long-term and be cost-effective.
Before starting to build a reliable marketing team, everyone’s duty should be perfectly defined. These are the most essential responsibilities of your marketing team. Next we’ll see how to create the ideal structure for this department.
The Marketing Team Structure
Structuring your marketing department is of great importance, because finding dedicated people that are able to express a positive image of your entire company is not an easy job. Before digging deeper, make sure you find the right cultural fit for your company.
In order to be complete and to properly function, your marketing team will need the following components:
| Social Media Specialist | In charge of your online image. Specialized in Social Media marketing tools, they will build brand awareness, generate leads, and connect with your audience. |
| Search Engine Optimization Specialist | In charge of driving traffic to your web pages by finding the best keywords that rank for your products/services. They need writing skills along with technical and programming abilities. |
| Acquisition Representative | They have to always come up with new ideas on how to give the customer the best experience there is. |
| Product Marketer | They explain the benefits and features of your products/services to the customers and also create the ad campaigns. |
| Content Creator | From videos to blog posts, Content Creators have to make sure they’re telling a compelling story about your brand. They are skilled writers, able to edit and produce high-quality multimedia assets. |
| Web Designer | To create and maintain your website. They need creative web design skills, web strategy, and optimization. They also need collaborative abilities, in order to work closely with the product marketers and the content creators. |
What Does a Marketing Team Need to Deliver Results?
Now that we have organized our marketing department and seen what their responsibilities are, let’s take a moment to find out what are the team’s needs for a better functionality:
Talent
If you don’t have the talents that a marketing team requires in house, you might need to do some hiring. Marketing cannot be done without experience and the right skill sets. One person that does everything, will do nothing great. That’s why you can’t assign the entire marketing process to someone with general marketing skills.
If you already have employees interested in this field but lack the experience, a great idea would be to invest in training programs. You will see better results while also giving them the opportunity to grow within the firm.
Resources
To be able to do the job right, they will need sufficient resources. Results will hardly be seen if you under fund the team. You don’t have to do excessive investments — with an average spending, your team can do a great job.
Decision-Making
Marketers are specialized people, trained to grow your firm and share with the world a positive image of your company. If you build a team of professionals but don’t listen to their advice, results won’t be seen. They know what they do, because they’ve been trained for it, and trust what they have to say.
Patience
Creativity does not come overnight. Even the most talented people know that creating something that has impact takes time and lots of work. Don’t put pressure on your team, be patient and cooperative instead.
Grow Faster With Marketing
Without marketing, your business is less likely to succeed. It takes time to build a trustworthy team, but it is totally worth it. If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, you can get in touch with us, and we will make the entire process easier for you.
Success does not come easy, but when the job is done right, you will get closer and closer to it!
