Yes!…In this Blog we will talk about the marketing department. An area that we must always have on the radar for SMEs.
Why?... Because it is an investment, not an additional expense!
Sometimes we do not give importance to the structuring of the areas in an SME, much less to marketing.
But, if you take a second to analyze and think about the department that goes hand in hand with sales , of course, you realize that it is marketing. For this reason, it is essential to give it the same importance as the other areas.
If we validate it in figures, the newspaper La República de Colombia indicates that:
“… more than two thirds of SMEs will increase their technology budgets by 2023 and there are three priority areas: operational efficiency (33%), improve sales and marketing (32%) and retain customers (31%)”.
Now, it's clear why you're here.
I invite you to take 15 minutes for this reading and learn:
- Functions and organizational chart of the Marketing department.
- How to coordinate a Marketing department that works remotely.
- Marketing in the Company as a whole?
- 4 Keys to manage your Marketing department.
- How to have a 100% Marketing department?
- How to measure team performance?
- Marketing and sales: equal teams?
Let's go!
How is an organization chart of a marketing department?
The structure of the marketing department varies by company, but this is the most common.
Let's focus on the main positions and their functions:
1. CEO (Chief Executive Officer): the executive director's function is to lead the processes, ensure that the proposed objectives are met, analyze market opportunities and monitor the results.
What catapults him is his leadership and knowledge of marketing trends.
2. Marketing Manager: creates marketing strategies, incorporates digital tools according to distribution channels. He is also the designer of the marketing plan.
3. SEO / SEM specialist: the content marketer is in charge of planning, creating and defining the content strategy, in order to attract potential customers, in a few words they are the most pro in accompanying the user on their purchase journey .
4. Content Marketer: the content manager of the brand or company, is the one who prepares blog articles and posts, is the hardest in creating and writing. Keep an eye out for a good multifaceted communicator or digital journalist for this role.
5. Creative Director and/or Graphic Designer: the magic hands of the area, who translate ideas into images and audiovisual products. You could consider hiring this external profile or freelance.
6. Community Manager: is responsible for managing and monitoring social networks. His main objective is to grow the audience on digital channels and execute the marketing strategy.
Thinking about the organization and distribution of the marketing department, create sub-areas that help you manage workflows:
Team Audiovisual and Graphic Design: in charge of the pre-production and production of videos and visual pieces for clients.
Team Content: perform a search for trends, generate ideas and content for the different digital channels.
Management Team: here the actions proposed by the CEO and Marketing leader are led and planned. The responsibility of this sub-area is essential to guarantee the results.
Prioritize strategic and operational profiles, make a qualitative and quantitative selection.
How to coordinate a marketing department that works remotely.
The home office in the "new normal" has given us important and interesting challenges, such as the coordination and organization of remote work teams; Although it is not a difficult task, but it is not easy either, it can lead us to the highest level of productivity or to low performance.
These are some key points for an ideal structure when coordinating a marketing department:
- Fundamental, the leadership and planning of the CEO and/or Marketing Leader with the team and the impact on the results.
- Be clear about the positions and functions of each of the members of the marketing department, which are aligned with the objectives of the company. You decide if you hire freelance professionals.
- Schedule online spaces to share with the team and thus clarify doubts or pending tasks. Also get out of the routine, creating a moment of leisure to strengthen the work environment from a distance.
- Respect the schedules of your classmates by planning an agenda of activities for each one of them.
- Have a 360 degree vision of digital marketing.
- Define the budget for the area, which does not affect the financial muscle of the company.
- Consider the possibility of an external marketing agency or specialized agency.
- Have communication and task assignment tools, some examples: Asana, Google Calendar, Trello and COR. Do not forget that trust and communication with your team are the key to this.
- Use software to carry out the proposed marketing strategies and keep the team aligned with other departments of the company.
In addition, emotional, work and professional support must be maintained with the team members.
At the end of the day, what we want to achieve are efficient processes and… of course, sometimes we can make mistakes, but we also learn from it.
What is the role of Marketing in the company as a whole?
From our perspective, marketing is not selling on social networks, as we often see it in the digital field.
Marketing in a company means giving users the value to satisfy their needs, accompanying them at all times of the purchase journey and (of course!) helping sales to meet their business objectives.
It's amazing how Digital Marketing creates predictable growth in companies! For every action can be measured.
So the role of marketing must be the main ally, the engine that leads to: meeting visionary objectives, attracting effective audiences for a shopping journey, customer loyalty, interaction and achieving brand impact.
Even if you don't consider it, many companies are still unaware of the power of marketing, what we want is for the same thing not to happen to you.
The role of marketing is crucial for new businesses, specifically it benefits the ROI (return on investment) in a company.
Determine what you are going to focus on!
4 Keys to managing your marketing department
Let's start from the idea that you are creating your own marketing department and you may ask yourself: how to organize it?
How to achieve it? Here we will give you an ABCD for its management:
A. Establishes the objectives , actions and a calendar for monitoring the area.
B. Assign the work team: keep in mind the organization chart of the marketing department and the tasks that each member must perform.
C. Use efficient work methodologies that strengthen the motivation of the team.
D. Evaluate everything you do in order to know if you are doing the right thing or if you should reorient the processes.
At first you will have doubts or fear to do it, but the important thing is to take the first step and take a risk.
How to have a 100% Marketing department?
For this part of the reading, I know that you will already be super convinced of forming that marketing department for your business, so let's continue reviewing those tips that will lead you to create it 100%.
Tips that are never overlooked:
Manage the strategies of the department, according to the functions of each participant in the area, aligned with the general objective of the company.
Define the true needs from a marketing plan , after carrying out a deep audit of the environment.
Specify the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators or Key Performance Indicators) to monitor the performance of the department's actions. Remember that they must be real and measurable.
Maintain an analytical vision at all times.
The marketing department will help increase the profitability of the company, we are sure that it is so.
The important thing is to approach and give value to marketing in SMEs, break those myths and inspire other businesses to join this field.
How is performance measured?
Now is the time to make a quantitative analysis of these actions to strengthen this department and get it out of the stadium 
.
With the help of certain metrics we will know the performance of the strategies proposed at the beginning of the marketing department , and be sure that the team members will appreciate this measurement.
So... you have to define those metrics, now!, in order to evaluate the performance, be it of the strategy or of the entire team.
A Marketing Team can be measured by:
Acquisition metrics : they will help to understand how profitable the investment is in the marketing department.
- One of these is CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) . Divide the marketing and sales spend by the number of customers acquired over a certain period of time.
Example:
– Marketing and sales investment in one month = $2,000 USD
-New customers acquired: 20
$2,000 USD / 10 = 200 (customer acquisition value is $200 USD)
Taking control and analysis of this and the next metrics that we will see cannot be a problem. For this, and with the aim that you have total practicality, we prepare this material for you
- Another widely used metric is the CPL (Cost Per Lead) , it will measure how much it costs to reach that lead, it is very similar to the previous one.
CPL (Cost Per Lead) = Total investment to get the leads / Total leads reached.
- Finally, the CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) metric that basically tells you how much it costs to generate a sale, here is the operation:
CPA (Cost per Acquisition) = Total investment to achieve sales / Total sales achieved.
Sales funnel metric: consists of measuring the number of sales, leads, qualified leads, opportunities and sales.
By using this you can measure the conversion rate , that is, you will be able to know which customers advanced in the funnel.
With the above we can conclude that it is essential to measure, because with this we will know if we have to rethink the area's budget.
It is even important to have a tool that helps you simplify metrics and indicators like RD Station Marketing .
Marketing and sales: equal teams?
Although they are not equal teams, if they go for the same goal and one complements the other, like fries with ketchup, the perfect couple!
According to our Marketing Manager in Latin America, Jorge Santos, in the Digital Marketing with Inbound Methodology course, when these two departments align, stage zero is born.
A stage where a concept is created, not very positive: the vicious circle. where the relationship does not flow for each team and they are claimed, "winning the one that best argues".
Therefore, you must take into account the following so that this stage does not rise:
– Alignment on the client.
-Alignment of responsibilities.
-Alignment of concepts
Another interesting concept that you should know about the relationship between these two departments is the SLA (Service Level Agreement) or the so-called Service Level Agreement , which consists of each area establishing workflow agreements.
Each Team is committed prioritizing the initial goals.
It is very valuable that you incorporate this term so that it is strengthened and helps generate effective results between sales and marketing. Being aligned the impact is very positive.
This is a list of the advantages that will be given by aligning the marketing team with the sales team:
- Positive impact on sales
- Maintain control of the sales funnel
- Generate more sales leads
- Ensuring an excellent customer experience
- ROI increase
- Get qualified leads
So yes, connecting these two areas will give us more benefits than you can imagine.
To go deeper into the subject, visit these articles:
The advantages of having a united team between marketing and sales
3 steps to improve the relationship between marketing and sales
And, do you have to have an experienced person to lead the team?
We can all know the meaning of a leader, a manager, a boss, but do we really know their experience and role in the area?
Or is he simply the one who tells us what to do and when to deliver it?
A leader or the person in charge who leads a team is an essential piece in the puzzle of any department. More than a guaranteed experience of many years for this profile, you will need to know their skills.
Let's see some skills that you should consider when choosing a marketing leader:
1. Leadership : security in decision-making, knowing how to delegate and structure the functions of the staff. It is important to have a constant connection with the other areas of the company.
2.Communication : learn to listen, pay attention and know the appropriate channels of communication with the team.
3. Empathy : putting yourself in the shoes of the team members, standing shoulder to shoulder with each one, knowing how to keep stress situations, motivation and the work environment under control.
4. Mastery of tools: being a digital field, the use of tools will be a priority to strengthen the planning of the department's actions.
5.Strategic knowledge: prioritize current marketing strategies, which focus on customer and company analysis. Likewise, it responds to corporate objectives.
Nothing is written in the structuring of a team for the marketing department, here the wonderful thing about this process is that your brand becomes relevant and is positioned.
Take care of your people and your staff, they are the first ambassadors of your Brand!
Closing date!
Currently, there are many tools that will help us achieve what we want and in this case, we recommend the Digital Marketing Course with the Inbound Methodology so that your company does the necessary management when creating this dream Digital Marketing department.
Make the decision and be part of this digital age
Until next time.
