How to build the best digital marketing team
No matter the size of your organisation, it’s increasingly important to have a strong digital marketing strategy. And finding the right people to create and effectively execute that strategy is key.
But where to start, especially if your marketing team is a team of just a few people or even no one at all? Here is a guide to finding the right people and fitting them together so you can reach your marketing objectives with the best talent leading the charge.
What does a good marketing team look like?
Typically, a solid marketing team is broken out into two subsections: content and acquisition. Those two groups sit underneath the team lead, or director, and they are respectively responsible for creating content and generating and transforming leads.
- Hire an editorial director
This person will oversee creating the content and social media strategies, connecting brand awareness to conversion. They should understand how all of the different touch-points throughout your user journey fit together, and how they can best optimise the content within those journeys to convert users into customers.
- Hire a content manager
This person should be responsible for ideating, creating and scheduling content across all mediums, including blog posts, video and. This person should have a strong understanding of search engine optimisation (SEO) and know how to manage an editorial calendar.
- Hire a community manager
Also called a social media editor, this person will work with the content manager to dovetail the social media strategy with the larger content strategy. They will then maintain your brand’s public social media presence and may also help maintain any kind of private community involvement, too.
- Hire an acquisitions director
This person will manage lead-generation and customer acquisition strategy, as well as campaigns. They will also work on maximising the revenue generated by areas such as customer lists, web and media properties. They will guide the acquisitions team on the paid and organic traffic strategy and campaigns, and as such, will line manage the following three people.
- Hire an analytics manager
Responsible for tracking marketing analytics and key performance indicators (KPIs) for internal departments, this person will compile and communicate the results of their tracking. They will also be responsible for executing the organic and paid traffic strategies.
- Hire a graphic designer
This person will create graphics for all your channels, including paid media, social media, newsletters and your blog. This person (or multiple people) could sit among the acquisitions team, but it also makes sense to put them on the content team, too.
- Hire an email marketing manager
This person will be responsible for executing your email marketing strategy and campaigns, and manage the testing of those campaigns to keep those conversion rates on an upward trajectory.
How will this team help your organisation succeed?
Initially, you might have one person covering the responsibilities of a few of these roles, but as your organisation grows, each of these elements is important to success. When you’re hiring, a great way to drive this home is by carefully outlining every team member’s KPIs (and be sure to include those KPIs in each role’s job description).
If you can find the right people to fill all the roles above, you’ll be on your way to having a marketing team that energises your organisation.
What resources do I need for interviewing?
Make a list of all the questions you’d like to ask each candidate, and rate their answers. That rating, along with your notes, will help quantify their answers and better compare them to other candidates.
When it comes to the questions, ask candidates about their technical skills, ensuring that they have the right combination of agility and creativity. Ask them how their experience applies to the role they are applying for and look for out-of-the-box responses to unique challenges they’ve faced. Ask them how they build relationships with internal and external people they work with, and try to gauge what their interactions with those people might look like.
Getting a good sense of someone is just as important as their experience and skills, but it isn’t always easy to sort out if you only have an hour. Here are a few creative questions to ask:
- What’s a non-work-related personal goal you have?
- If you were to start a business, what kind of business would it be?
- If could have dinner with a celebrity or historical figure, who would it be and why?
- If we asked someone who knows you very well to describe you, what would they say?
- If you didn’t have to worry about money, how would you fill your time?
What kind of people should you look for?
You should be looking for the kind of people who know how to produce and execute an amazing strategic marketing plan in a creative and collaborative way.
You’ll likely notice that a lot of the people you meet and interview will be very agile, and prepared to wear many hats. They’ll have top-notch digital skills, be creative and understand the importance of data.
Finding those people will future-proof your team, because they’ll always be ready to take on and master new technology.
What tools should I give my marketing team?
There is lots of marketing-focused software you can set up your team with, aside from whatever programmes the rest of your organisation is already using. Keeping everyone organised is key, and software such as Asana, Monday.com or Trello are ideal. Important things to have on board include:
- A quality content management system (CMS)
- Social media management software
- Analytics tools, potentially more than just Google Analytics
- An email marketing platform with flexible templates
Whatever suite of tools you choose, they should all be cross-functional to make everyone’s lives easier. Along with software-based tools, don’t forget to keep your marketing team upskilled and sharp – marketing moves at such a fast pace with new tools and techniques hitting the market all the time.
Avado organises regular workshops and training programmes (from Avado’s Marketing Academy) that will keep your team motivated