One headache for many B2B companies is how to structure their marketing department. The truth is, there is no concrete answer to this dilemma, it will depend a lot on the characteristics of the company such as financial resources available, size of the company, or the business objectives.
Still, there are a number of essential figures for a marketing team to function perfectly and meet what is expected of it, like a marketing director or coordinator. But why is having a well-structured marketing department so important? There are many reasons to have a clear and well-defined organization chart in the marketing area, some of them we will give you below.
Benefits of properly structuring a marketing department
- Achievement of business objectives: The functions of a marketing department must be aligned with business objectives for these to be achievable. For example, if the main objective of a company is internationalization, the marketing team must focus on carrying out tasks related to that purpose.
- Achievement of a good relationship between marketing and sales: it is important to have a fluid relationship between the marketing and sales departments, as they have common objectives. Many companies make the mistake of only having a marketing director as a communication link between both departments when all team members should be connected to achieve a correct flow of information.
- Flexibility and versatility: having a defined structure does not mean becoming an erratic department. The team must know how to adapt to new challenges and scenarios, as well as have a scalable structure that can be expanded or modified depending on the needs of the company without losing effectiveness.
- Clear and well-defined responsibilities: for an employee, it is essential to know what their role is, especially when working as a team. Not defining the functions of each of the positions can generate demotivation among employees, conflicts between colleagues, and loss of strategic thinking.
“The functions of a marketing department must be aligned with business objectives so that these can be achievable”
What structure should a marketing team have?
It is very difficult to define a correct structure for a B2B marketing department. Still, there are a number of guidelines that can help companies organize their teams. For example, from Hubspot, they advise that the basic structure of a marketing team should be focused on attracting, converting, and closing, and for this, they propose the following organization based on the number of people you can afford to have in your company.
The Hubspot model based on the Inbound Marketing philosophy is very successful since it is adaptable to any company size and provides some scalability for those teams that grow over the years. Following the organization suggested by this scheme, some of the positions that can be found in this type of department are:
Marketing Director
Every marketing department must have a visible head. The functions of this are to define the department’s strategy, establish annual objectives, manage the team and the methodology to be followed, and work on brand positioning, among others.
Content Coordinator or Content Manager
Is in charge of developing all the necessary information to attract customers and lead them through the sales funnel. Therefore, their work is essential for all phases of the sales funnel, from attraction to closing.
Data Analyst
Is responsible for collecting and interpreting all the data obtained from the different marketing actions carried out. It is useless to carry out all these tasks if the results obtained are not measured later. For this reason, this profile is so interesting for a marketing department, since it will be in charge of keeping track of the KPIs and making decisions based on them.
Graphic Designer
Their job is to illustrate, animate or design all the concepts, products, and ideas of the company, they usually look after the image of the company, making sure logos, images, and overall content is used in the right way to appeal to the customers. Basically, they are in charge of the visual communication for the company.
PPC specialist
This person will be in charge of managing all online payment actions, or PPC campaigns carried out by the department. These initiatives can be, Google Ads campaigns, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Amazon ads, etc. In addition to executing these actions, you will also need to track them and measure their results to verify their effectiveness.
Social Media Manager
Their main responsibility is to define a communication strategy for the different social profiles of the company, ensuring that it is unified and transmits the brand image that is expected. In addition, the Social Media Manager must also measure the results and gradually modify the strategy to achieve the established objectives.
PR or Events Manager
Those companies that work both online and offline marketing will need to have an events manager who is in charge of carrying out and managing the different acts carried out by the company. For example, participation in fairs, talks, conferences, etc.
Communications manager
In addition to the event manager, a key figure in traditional marketing is the communications manager. This will be in charge of establishing relationships with the different communication media and keeping them informed of the news that is taking place in the company. This one is mostly needed when you have to stay in direct contact with newspapers, radio stations or TV networks.
These are just some examples of the most common positions in a current marketing department in a B2B company, but in addition to these, in larger companies, we can also find other figures such as an email marketing specialist, a digital marketing specialist, SEO specialist,a programmer or a community manager.
Our Recommendations
So, as you see, there are many possible options to structure a marketing department and have it adapted to the specific needs of a company. For small companies, we recommend to keep the team small and functional, to have someone in charge of Content (Content Manager), someone taking care of design (Graphic Designer), and someone who can keep track of social media (Social Media Manager), that way you’ll be able to work on attraction from marketing and converting with your sales team.
There’s also Marketing Agencies that work with companies as their marketing department, like ourselves at MdB, we function as the marketing department for some of our clients, taking care of the whole strategy online and offline.
If you need some advice on how to develop your Marketing Department, feel free to approach one of our experts, book a free consultation.
