Building a digital marketing team can be daunting. As a B2B business, you know you need to be relevant in the digital world, but it’s hard to know where to start.
In this blog, I will talk about the different roles needed to build a B2B marketing team structure. In my next blog, I will help guide you through the hiring process and what to look for in each role.
Outsource Vs. In-House
Before running to put up a job posting, there are a couple of things you will need to decide; Does it make more sense for you to hire an in-house team or, instead, outsource your digital marketing needs?
This question depends on the scope of what you are trying to achieve. If you have a one-off project, such as designing an infographic, it would be best to work with a freelancer. If you have ongoing, or highly technical needs, it’s best to hire someone in-house or work with an agency.
Cost is also something to consider here.
According to Glassdoor the average salary for a digital marketing manager is 77K. While on average, outsourcing to an agency costs anywhere from $7,500 to $25,000 monthly.
As per a survey conducted by the CMO (see below), salaries for marketing employees accounts for one of the top expenses in companies marketing budgets.
Generalist Vs. Specialist
The second thing you need to determine is whether you are looking for a generalist or a specialist. A generalist is great for a team that is looking to dabble in digital, without going too thick in any one area.
Generalists in digital marketing are often called digital marketing managers, or full-stack marketers. These people are the jack-of-all-trades in the digital world.
It may seem like a no-brainer to hire one or two full-stack marketers as your whole marketing department. And it may be especially if your business is small, its marketing plan is limited, and you are not looking at driving high impact results.
But, a significant downside of a one-person marketing team is the limitations, one person. Full-stack managers cannot delve deeply into specific digital marketing domains, such as SEO, web development, and others compared to a full in-house team or agency.
When asked, 91% of companies say they could improve their digital marketing activities, with the majority claiming only to be good in some areas and weak in others. This gap is often caused by relying solely on a team of one or two generalists.
A specialist is perfect for doing a deep dive in one area and getting a particular job done. For example, our SEO team uses a variety of tactics to improve the Google rankings of our clients. Maintaining this level of quality requires a team that dedicates their full attention to SEO.
Although they’re specialized, it is also vital for them to have a general understanding of other digital tactics. This aspect ensures our SEO efforts work in conjunction with our other digital strategies. This is why at Jumpfactor we hire t-shaped marketers.
T-Shaped Marketers
Unlike a full-stack marketer, a t-shaped marketer has the basic knowledge of the industry as well as one or two areas of specialization.
For example, take one of our strategists. He is comfortable in PPC, design, and content but he is an expert in Google Analytics, a skill that is critical in making data-based decisions in campaign strategies.
Check out this image by MOZ (via Smart Insights) to get an illustrated idea of this advantage:
Roles Within an Inbound Marketing Team Structure
Now that you know the basics, let’s take a look at who is usually on a digital marketing team.
I will talk more about where and what to look for when hiring a digital team in my next blog, but it’s important to mention that each of these roles requires someone who is a lifelong learner.
Inbound marketing is a constantly changing industry. One update from Google can drastically change the direction and strategies at play. If you don’t have people on top of what’s new you will soon find your efforts will be wasted.
Strategist
It is essential to have someone in charge of driving your digital goals. This role requires an analytic mind and a love for researching. They speak in numbers, and their best friend is Google Analytics.
A strategist gives direction to projects and guides everything towards optimizing conversions. This means they also need to stay organized and have an affinity for project management.
Responsibilities:
- Identifying buyer personas
- Determining the buyer journey and content mapping
- Preliminary keyword research
- Marketing automation
- Competitor analysis
- Content Audits
- Lead conversion optimization
- Ensuring all marketing activities align with broader business goals
- Measuring and optimizing campaigns
Image Source: Hurca
1. Content Strategist/Writer
Content is king with inbound marketing.
Without content, getting people into your marketing funnel is near impossible. An engaging copy will be the main driver in maximizing your leads. A content strategist writes all the copy — e.g., web copy, blogs, eBooks, email campaigns and more — for your digital assets.
Content strategists are often both creative and analytical. With the use of storytelling, they will speak to the pain points of your customers, finding ways to provide solutions to problems while guiding them along the sales funnel.
With a well-crafted offer, you can suggest a compelling solution without sounding pushy.
Responsibilities:
- Writing copy for all digital assets (pillar pieces, web copy, ebooks, blogs, etc.)
- Ensuring copy is aligned with a content strategy (e.g., evergreen, gated pieces, etc.)
- Crafting AB-tested CTAs
- Conducting preliminary keyword research for topics
- Keeping in line with the buyer journey
- Researching, and editing all topics to match the brand voice
2. SEO Specialist
What’s the point in creating content if no one reads it? This is where an SEO specialist comes in. An SEO team uses a broad range of tactics to improve rankings on search engines, like Google. Now potential customers can discover your brand!
Having a strong SEO team with a comprehensive background in onsite and offsite strategies is crucial to any inbound strategy.
“In our agency, we have almost as many SEO resources as we have strategists and content writers; however, some of today’s HubSpot platinum agencies don’t even have a single on-site technical SEO
According to Hubspot, 61% of marketers are focusing on improving organic traffic. This is because SEO is 5.66 more effective than paid search ads. (HubSpot).
Want to learn more about the benefits of SEO? Read some interesting stats here.
One SEO tactic that is a role in itself is digital PR. Digital PR involves finding backlinking opportunities and reaching out to those websites. This increases your page’s authority and ranking.
Source: Niche Market
- Perform on-site and off-site tactics
- Conduct and interpret audits (technical, technical content, backlink, opportunity, competitor and citation)
- Keyword research and blog topics research
- Backlinking and digital PR
3. SEM Specialist
Another way to increase traffic is through paid advertising. This would be an SEM, PPC or paid specialist. Like strategists, your SEM specialist will be numbers oriented and enjoy analyzing large amounts of data.
They will monitor campaigns, conduct AB testing and manage budgets. This way you can ensure that the people you want are seeing your ads.
Responsibilities:
- Running campaigns on Google Adwords and social ad platforms
- Maximizing budget for search terms
- Implementing display advertising, retargeting campaigns, etc.
- Consistent upkeep of negative keywords
4. Designer
Now that your SEO and SEM specialists have traffic coming to your website you want them to stay there. To increase session duration, you need to have visually engaging designs.
A digital designer’s job is all about helping people enjoy navigating your website. One way is to make content more digestible by breaking up large chunks of text with images or infographics.
Responsibilities:
- Develop effective & creative designs and implement them on your CMS
- Re-design websites using updated brand guidelines and create creative yes effective designs
- Design CTAs, landing pages, banners, web pages, collateral, infographics, eBooks, & more
- Develop visual design styles appropriate to target buyer personas, brand archetypes, and client style/brand guidelines
- Implement A/B testing and leverage analytics to improve designs for conversion
Source: ThemeXpert
5. Front-End Developer
Your designer can create the best high conversion design out there, but it won’t make a difference if you don’t have anyone to implement it.
First, you need to determine the level of development work you need. What is your CMS, are you hosting your website, do want everything custom coded?
Most companies use a platform like WordPress or Hubspot to create their site. If this is the case for you, look for a front-end developer who specializes in your CMS.
Responsibilities:
- Building, updating and maintaining responsive websites
- Convert visual PSD concepts into functional websites, landing pages & HTML emails,
- Configuring & customizing WordPress, WP plug-ins & integrating with other tools
- Modifying server-side configuration and hosting platform capabilities for optimal website speed, uptime, and performance
- Manage website security and traffic load management
- Implementing plugins, Google APIs, event tracking codes and microdata markup on web pages
6. Marketing Technologist
A marketing technologist is an analyst at heart. They are someone who runs email marketing campaigns and marketing automation.
A marketing tech can take all of your initiatives and streamline each process using different software or applications.
“Companies that automate lead management see a 10% or more bump in revenue in 6-9 months time”. (Source: HubSpot) Doing automation itself is a full-time job, and with a 10% increase in revenue, you can see how it pays for itself!
Responsibilities:
- Visitor identification and heat mapping
- Database management
- CRM integration
- Conversion optimization
- Implementing lead-scoring strategies
7. Scrum Master/Project Manager
At Jumpfactor, we run our agency a little differently. We leverage the Agile methodology. To that end, it’s critical to have a scrum master who can act as both a project manager and help keep workflows running smoothly and deliver strong results to our clients.
This enables our team to be efficient with our time and ensure the highest priority items are being completed every week.
Even if you don’t run an Agile environment, you will need a project manager. With all the moving pieces in the inbound strategy, you will need someone to steer the ship.
This person juggles multiple priorities and keeps projects on track. They help remove roadblocks and keep track of budgets.
Responsibilities:
- Oversee planning, meetings, and progress
- Manage team workload, and handle capacity planning
- Streamline processes for each function and Coaching team members to increase productivity and efficiency
- Manage and ensure quality standards for all output
- Creating high visibility of team goals and KPIs
8. Digital Marketing Director
Digital marketing is a competitive industry, and if you don’t offer growth and learning opportunities, you will experience high turnover. Fostering an environment full of collaboration is one of the key responsibilities of a Digital Marketing Director.
They should also have hands-on experience in executing digital strategies, so they can train and mentor other team members.
Responsibilities:
- Managing and growing the team of strategists and specialists
- Oversee & coach on multiple ongoing projects led by marketing strategists
- Create, document & streamline digital marketing processes
- Help manage resource and workload prioritization
- Ensure roadblocks are removed, milestones met, and jump in hands-on when needed
9. Sales Enablement/Marketing Coordinator
Despite its importance, this role often gets overlooked. Having someone spearheading your sales enablement will pull together your whole strategy.
This person turns your leads into customers. Left alone these qualified leads will fall to the wayside, and your efforts and money go to waste.
Hubspot reports that only 46% of marketing teams with lead management strategies have a sales team who respond to 75%+ of inbound leads. (Source: HubSpot) That means over 50% of companies are missing out on sales.
This is a major issue, especially considering 69% listed converting leads into customers as their top marketing priority (HubSpot)
The easiest answer to address this gap is to hire a sale enablement coordinator!
Responsibilities:
- Qualify and pursue leads until closed
- Learn your target market’s pain points and dive deep into their niche
- Set up meetings with qualified prospects or suggest appropriate solutions
- Report on (weekly/monthly/quarterly) sales targets
- Stay up-to-date with digital/inbound marketing
You can see the importance digital marketing plays in for sales in this chart by Hubspot:
10. Combining Roles
Each team member plays an important role in executing inbound marketing.
However, depending on your needs you may be able to combine a few related roles. For example, a web designer might also meet your development needs.
It is also important to remember that the more roles someone takes on, the less effective they become at each one. So make sure you don’t stretch your team too thin.
Conclusion
Now you know who you need to implement inbound marketing internally, next I will guide you through the hiring process for each role. If you are concerned about the time or cost commitment you can also consider working with an agency.
