Once you know who you’re selling for, it’s time to build a marketing team which can implement digital marketing tactics that’ll target your chosen demographic. Previously, digital marketing was an additional “add on” for big name companies, however, now it’s a marketing necessity many small businesses can carry out. Therefore, you need to take a look at your current marketing team – are you understaffed, overstaffed, or are they undertrained? When it comes to digital marketing, and if it’s a new marketing feat for you and your current employees, you’ll probably wish to build the ideal marketing team from scratch.
Modern Marketing Structures
For digital marketing, you will need to implement a new structure for your marketing team. You will need a content team, an outreach team, and a monetization team; however, to begin with, it may be best to hire a single individual responsible for the listed responsibilities. Once they understand their job roles, they can help you bring in employees that’ll sit beneath them.
For your content team, look to hire an overall content director who is responsible for organizing and distributing content to the copywriters. You will then want a set of in-house copywriters, a video editor (if you’re going to incorporate regular videos into your website), and a social media manager.
Outreach should have an overall director, responsible for directing the outreach campaigns. Working beneath your outreach director, you should have someone who will write the pitches and send them out, and another person who finds clients who may wish to work with you.
The director for monetization should be responsible for maximizing the revenue generated from customer lists, and web and media properties. Your email marketing manager will then work beneath the director of monetization.
Once you understand the roles needed, you can get a feel of how big you’ll want/need your in-house staff to be. Of course, another area you’ll want to utilize in your modern marketing approach is SEO and link-building. If you do not, however, have the space hold all these different aspect of marketing, you can always outsource to a company who specializes in these approaches. Before hiring, make sure to look at reviews of SEO companies. SEO is an important marketing practice your marketing team will want to utilize, and so, hiring a company to oversee and increase your search engine ranking will take the pressure off of your current employees.
Correct Job Descriptions
You’ll have provided job descriptions and specifications when advertising the roles, however, sometimes jobs can become muddled once employees are together and working as a team. Although working together is incredibly handy and can produce superb results, you’ll need to ensure each employee is on track with their own responsibilities and not spending too much (or any) time on someone else’s duties. Not only will this boost their efficiencies, but it means better quality work will be produced. Having employees spread themselves too thin will only lessen their capabilities of achieving good results in their actual job role.
When someone starts working for you, you should cover the following:
- Job title
- Job purpose
- Key responsibilities
- How you’ll be monitoring their performance
You should also ensure your employee understands everything listed in the job role, and have them raise any queries before they sign and start work.
Promote High Achievers
Your employees should be recognized for their hard work. Doing so will improve their productivity and make them work more efficiently. If you reward your employees, then it will influence others, as they will work harder to also become recognized.
Set targets for your marketing team to hit. If they hit them, then reward them. If people are just shy, make sure to mention how close to the mark they were. Rewards can be anything from a bottle of wine, chocolate, to a longer lunch break. If someone is constantly striving for excellence, then improve the quality of your reward – for example, half or a whole day off work is a great reward for their achievements.
Sack the Poor Performers
Similarly, you’ll want to pay attention to those who perform poorly. People who fail, time and time again, to reach their targets are considered deadweight, and so, after giving them a few warnings and performance review sessions; if they’re still failing to hit their goals, they should be let go.
Firing employees can be tough; however, your company will thank you for it. Make sure to follow appropriate protocol such as notifying them of your expectations not being met; followed by a face-to-face meeting if they continue to underachieve, and then terminate their employment if they continue to work below par.
Keep Them Knowledgeable
Informed employees make the best employees. Especially in marketing, employees need to stay knowledgeable of their field. Marketing can change in a matter of a day (think Google’s ‘Fred’), and so regular training should be implemented. This means bi-monthly training days, online documents for them to study, and a monthly newsletter which may mention if there’s a shift in their field.
Employees should also take learning new trends and practices upon themselves too. You want an employee who is dedicated, and who shows pride in what they do. You may have hired the best content director, however, if they seem lazy and offhand when it comes to learning the latest news in their line of work, then the people working beneath them will also suffer. You need employees who care, and who are genuinely interested in what they do for a living.
Building a marketing team (or any team, for that matter), can be an arduous and time-consuming project. Before you recruit your perfect and ideal team, you’ll find you’ve hired a few employees who don’t work out. This means the recruitment process has to be repeated. However, taking your time and creating a winning team will surely be worth all the extra hassle. Grow your company how you want to, and build a marketing team which will function well together.
