Your Ideal Marketing Team

Written by Laurie Zinn@LineByLineLLC8 years ago

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Every business needs marketing to establish its brand, connect with customers and sell their products and services. And with digital marketing, the outreach opportunities are endless.

Now, instead of simply checking a box and creating a brochure or flyer for your business, you need to think continuously about your digital platform, your online presence, and how you rank with search engines.

That significantly increases your marketing department’s responsibilities. How are you going to get it all done? And how many people do you need on your team to make it all happen?

In a perfect world, you’d just hire the best of the best in every marketing specialty your business needs.

But most of us are small business owners, maybe even start-ups, and budget and resource limitations make that unrealistic. At least in the beginning.

So what’s the best way to build depth in your marketing team? What skills should they have?

There are several different ways for small business owners to figure this out and get this done.

As you review the team member skills below, keep in mind that you may have one person who can wear a few of these hats, or maybe you can hire for some of the positions and contract out for the rest.

Here are key positions that could make up your ideal marketing team:

Someone in Charge.

You’ll want to appoint someone to oversee all of your marketing efforts and the people in the department. If you are a small business, you may not be in a position to hire a Director of Digital Marketing. So this position might be you.

A Website Developer/Designer.

This is the person who designs and supports your website, and keeps it looking beautiful and matching your brand. This is also the techy person, responsible for conducting backups and installing updates to protect your website from hackers.

A Copywriter.

Once you have your beautiful website, you’ll need a wordsmith with a flare for sales to add the content to it – as well as to your blog, your email marketing and your social media. What you say and how you say it creates an impression for your business. Try to find someone whose tone and voice matches the brand you’ve created.

A Graphic Designer.

Images, layout, logo design and social media graphics are just some of the contributions a graphic designer can bring to your team. Creativity and artistry are important, and a talented graphic designer can add polish and professionalism to your online marketing efforts.

An SEO Expert.

Since the Internet is today’s yellow pages, you want to be sure your customers can find you. This is where the SEO expert comes in. He or she can implement strategies that will help your business name come up in Google search results. This person also can analyze your data, and help you determine what is working and what’s not.

A Social Media Guru.

Consistency is the name of the social media game. You need to have a strong presence on social media, not only to post updates, but also to engage with other followers, businesses and potential customers, by liking, sharing and commenting on their posts.

An editor.

Reviewing all of your business’ marketing content for spelling, grammar, punctuation or syntax errors is a necessary responsibility. An editor is trained to take a critical eye to the flow, structure, and organization of your content.

So how many people do you actually need?

In an ideal world, you could employ someone to handle each of these tasks. But more realistically, you’ll have one or two people who handle multiple responsibilities.

Maybe your website developer knows a thing or two about SEO and analytics. And maybe a copywriter can handle your content, editing and social media responsibilities. If you’re just starting out, you could contract with an agency to provide all of these services. Or you could hire your own employee, either someone with some experience or someone who is willing to be trained.

The most important thing to remember is that you have to do what is best for your business at this moment in time. There is no perfect model that fits every business. Each business has different needs, and team members have different strengths. The structure of your marketing team should match your company.

What you can afford to add may change as your business grows. But you’ll at least have knowledge of what you need to have done, and the most efficient and affordable way to make it happen.

Laurie Zinn is a Columbus-based freelance writer and owner of Line-By-Line. She helps businesses communicate with their customers through website content, blog articles, email marketing campaigns and social media. For more information about Line-By-Line, visit http://line-by-line.us or contact Laurie at laurie@line-by-line.us.