To survive in an increasingly competitive industry, business-to-business (B2B) companies need to implement an effective marketing strategy. A comprehensive and data-driven inbound digital marketing strategy is the difference between a B2B organization that falls behind the times and becomes obsolete and one that stands apart from the crowd, reaches new target markets, increases revenues, and achieves predictable growth.
But one of the most important aspects of a successful marketing strategy is often overlooked: having an effective B2B marketing team structure.
Building the right B2B marketing organizational structure is the key to implementing your marketing plan and meeting your key performance indicators (KPIs). Without a well-organized marketing team in place, you’re making it more difficult for your employees to successfully market your B2B company.
B2B Marketing Organization Structure
The field of marketing is constantly evolving, and so are the job roles and organizational structures that fall within marketing departments.
While a clearly defined marketing team structure is necessary to effectively carry out your B2B company’s marketing campaigns, there’s no concrete answer to what your marketing team should look like.
However, some job roles are found in marketing departments across industries and companies. Here are a few of the most common examples.
Leadership
Marketing leadership roles vary widely based on the size of your B2B company and its marketing department. Nonetheless, clearly defining these strategic positions is essential to creating an efficient and organized marketing team.
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Director
The director role may have many titles, including Director of Marketing, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), or Marketing Director. No matter what title this individual holds, though, they oversee the marketing vision and strategy of the company, define marketing goals, and serve as the head of the department.
Team Leads
Larger marketing departments silo job roles into teams, and each team needs a leader that reports to the director. These teams may be categorized by product, by stage in the buyer’s journey, by skill, or by some other metric. Regardless, appoint a leader for every team or branch to streamline communication.
Project Managers
Project managers may have short-term or long-term responsibilities, depending on the task at hand. To clarify roles and responsibilities, projects should have a leader. Project managers keep a careful eye on deadlines and assign responsibilities to marketing team members.
Contributors
Marketing professionals contribute different kinds of valuable input to your campaigns. These professionals bring experience in a variety of categories and directly impact the content you use to engage with buyers.
Writers
Content writers and copywriters create written content of all types, from blog posts and newsletters to white papers and website copy. They are also experienced researchers who are prepared to speak with subject matter experts (SMEs) to write material that will educate, engage, and entertain members of your target audience.
Graphic Designers
To be taken seriously as a B2B company, you need experienced graphic designers dedicated to the visual aspects of your marketing materials. These professional artists illustrate, design, and animate company logos, documents, images, graphics, products, etc.—anything that requires graphic design work.
Audio/Video Producers
Video marketing is growing more and more popular, and every B2B company that wants to remain relevant needs to jump on board. Audio and/or video contributors produce audio and video content for your B2B company, from professionally recorded YouTube videos to podcast episodes, so you can connect with buyers via the channels they most often follow online.
Data Analysts
One of the best things to come out of digital marketing is the analytical opportunities. Data analysts collect and interpret data obtained from a variety of marketing campaigns, keep track of KPIs, and use measured results to make decisions for future marketing efforts.
Web Developers
Your B2B company website is your home on the internet, and you need an experienced web developer, web designer, or programmer to make sure your website is easy to navigate, attractive, fully optimized, and functional. These tech-savvy professionals also know exactly how to read and analyze website analytics data so you can see how your marketing efforts impact your web traffic.
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Specialists
Highly specialized marketing professionals are essential to taking advantage of everything digital marketing campaigns have to offer. Their expertise is invaluable to any B2B marketing department.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Specialist
Search engine optimization (SEO) specialists work with your content team to ensure web copy, marketing materials, blog posts, social media content, and more are optimized for Google and other search engines. They also conduct extensive keyword research to make sure your company’s online presence is easy for members of your target audience to find.
Paid Media (PPC) Specialist
Paid media specialists, also known as pay-per-click (PPC) specialists, are responsible for managing all online paid ad campaigns carried out across platforms like Facebook, Google, Reddit, and LinkedIn. These experts not only run ad campaigns but also track and measure the results to determine which advertisements are effective.
Content Coordinator
Content coordinators, content managers, content directors, senior copywriters—whatever the job title, they oversee content across your B2B company. Responsibilities for this position include mapping out a content schedule, identifying target personas, communicating with writers and editors, and streamlining content across all channels. Their goal is to clearly communicate your brand’s message to the audience.
Events Manager
If you’ve ever tried to plan an event without a dedicated event manager, you know why this position is critically important to any B2B company that hosts workshops, conferences, tradeshows, or networking events.
Event managers supervise all aspects of hosting and managing company events. They select and decorate venues, hire caterers and entertainers, find corporate sponsors and partners, create promotional materials, manage the event budget, and oversee all event logistics.
Brand Manager
Your B2B company’s brand tells a story. A brand manager is in charge of telling that story.
These marketing professionals translate your company’s values, mission, and voice into guidelines that clearly communicate your brand to your target audience. Brand managers understand your target market and the most effective ways to engage with them—all as part of their goal to share your story.
Public Relations (PR) Specialist
Does your B2B business stay in contact with media outlets like newspapers, TV networks, or radio stations? If so, you may benefit from a public relations (PR) specialist with experience in establishing and maintaining relationships with the media. PR specialists not only handle communications with these outlets but also keep them informed of changes and news taking place in your company.
Email Marketing Specialist
Email marketing is an incredibly effective tool in your digital marketing arsenal. Email marketing specialists know exactly how to create and send effective email campaigns that promote your company’s products and services as well as transform readers into buyers.
Social Media Manager
Social media managers wear many hats: They define your company’s communication strategy for different platforms, transmit your brand image across social media channels, create guidelines for communicating with your audience, grow your online presence, and engage with your followers.
These specialists also monitor your network, constantly looking for hot topics, companies, and resources that your target audience finds helpful so they can tailor the social media strategy and make it more effective.
Automation Specialist
When it comes to creating an efficient B2B marketing team, taking advantage of marketing automation tools is the way to go. Automation specialists are responsible for implementing new tools to streamline your marketing efforts, integrating these tools with your current processes, and analyzing marketing automation data across channels to maximize efficiency.
Building a B2B Marketing Team: A Step-by-Step Process
To establish a successful B2B marketing team, you need to identify what type of organizational structure is right for your company, find marketing professionals to fill foundational rolls, and determine a plan for scaling your existing marketing team as your company continues to expand.
Consider the Factors Affecting Your B2B Marketing Team Structure
There are many ways to structure a B2B marketing organization. The key is to tailor it to your company.
Here are a few factors affecting the organizational structure of your B2B marketing team.
Nature of the Company
Decide how to build your marketing organization based on the nature of your company. Should your teams be organized by the products you sell or by the function they contribute? What about geography or region? Choose how to segment your teams in order to organize the roles that fall within each category.
Company Size
The marketing team for a startup will look much different from the marketing department at a midsized business or enterprise. Smaller business should keep their marketing teams small and functional, while larger companies may require additional roles.
Current Marketing Strategies
What marketing strategies are you currently investing in? How are you generating leads at the moment? You need to build a digital marketing team that has the experience required to support your current marketing strategies and make them even more effective.
Budget
Your budget will dictate your B2B marketing team structure. Hiring marketing professionals is a significant investment, and that’s why many organizations look to an outsourced marketing team for help.
Long-Term Goals
Where your B2B company is headed in the next 12 to 18 months will affect the structure of your marketing team. Keep the future in mind—you don’t want redundancies, but you do want to have the specialists you need to succeed.
Relationship Between Marketing and Sales
Marketing and sales go hand in hand, and these departments work best when they are aligned. As you develop a B2B marketing team structure, determine how marketing and sales responsibilities overlap and how individuals in various teams communicate with one another.
Start by Prioritizing Foundational Hires
When it’s time to start building a B2B marketing team, prioritize these four foundational roles—whether you reassign current employees or hire new marketing professionals to join your team.
Position #1: The Strategist
Your marketing team needs a leader who is responsible for planning and implementing your overall B2B marketing strategy. This individual should be good with numbers and able to make decisions based on data.
The strategist position is frequently covered by the CMO or marketing director.
Position #2: The Writer
Content is king—you can’t run marketing campaigns without it. That’s why you need a writer from the very start. They should be able to write many different kinds of marketing content, from guidebooks and social media posts to blogs and newsletters.
Position #3: The Programmer
As the home base for your entire online presence, your website is a priority. Get a programmer, web developer, or front-end designer who can create and maintain a beautiful, functional, optimized website for your B2B company.
Position #4: The Artist
An experienced graphic designer is important for establishing the visual identity of your company. If you want to promote your brand across channels, you will need to find an artist who will not only create graphics but also define your brand style guide.
Scale Your B2B Marketing Team as the Company Grows
With an effective marketing team in place, your B2B company will reach wider audiences, generate new leads, and increase revenues. But as your business grows, your small, dedicated marketing team will have too much on their plate. That’s a sign for you to start getting more marketing professionals and specialists to join your company.
Scale your B2B marketing team and continue to develop a multi-faceted, well-organized, and strategic marketing organization.
In-House Marketing Team vs. Outsourced Marketing Team
There are a lot of specialized marketing roles that your B2B company needs to fill—either now or in the future as your business expands. Should you fill every role with a marketing team member in-house?
An in-house marketing team is a combination of leaders, contributors, and specialists that work together to create and implement your B2B marketing strategy. However, instead of exhausting your budget by hiring these individuals, you may benefit from outsourcing some of these marketing roles.
Full-service marketing agencies let your B2B company take advantage of the skills and experience of a team of marketing specialists that cover every facet of inbound and outbound marketing. By outsourcing some or all of your marketing needs, you save the time, money, and resources it would take to employ in-house marketers.
Consider partnering with a marketing agency to transform and streamline your B2B marketing efforts.
Conclusion
Hiring an experienced inbound marketing agency like OneIMS is the next step for any business looking to reach more customers, increase website traffic, build brand awareness, generate new leads, and create predictable growth.
Are you ready to grow and invest in your B2B marketing efforts? We can help.
At OneIMS, we have the strategies, tools, and solutions you need to engage with buyers and reach your strategic marketing goals. Our team of digital marketing experts works with companies in a variety of industries to develop innovative and successful marketing solutions, and we pride ourselves on producing measurable and sustainable results.
Whether you need help with targeted marketing services or are looking for a full-service outsourced marketing team, the professionals at OneIMS offer a variety of marketing specialties, including SEO services, content marketing, website design, and more.
But you don’t have to take our word for it. View case studies from some of our satisfied clients and read our blog to get an idea of our training and experience.
It’s time to invest in the long-term marketing strategy of your B2B company. If you want to learn more about how we can help grow your business, schedule a consultation with us today.
