The 6 Essential Positions of a Successful Marketing Team

by Blackwood Impact Group

To successfully carry out marketing and branding initiatives, your company needs to have six essential positions filled by the right people. These positions may be filled by hiring your own internal staff, by engaging an outside marketing agency, or by hiring freelancers. The six positions you need are a lead strategist, a marketing operations specialist, a search engine specialist, a copywriter, a graphic designer, and a web developer. In this article, we will give you a brief overview of what each position entails.

The Lead Strategist

The Lead Strategist is your Director or Vice President of marketing. They should be someone who thinks creatively and independently. They will be in close communication with the company’s CEO and other executives to understand the company’s overall objectives and translate them into strategies and campaigns.  The lead strategist sets the budget for campaigns and manages the team of marketing talent.

The Marketing Operations Specialist

The Marketing Operations Specialist is the person who tracks the progress of marketing campaigns and provides an analysis of the statistics and results. This person will ensure campaigns remain within budget. The Marketing Operations Specialist manages the email campaigns, the company’s blog/vlog, and other content marketing initiatives. Most importantly, they track the leads generated by these efforts and provide forecasts.

The Marketing Operations Specialist may also manage social media scheduling or might manage the person who focuses on social media engagement. The Marketing Operations Specialist also maintains the Marketing Automation and other marketing software tools. Additionally, they may share in CRM (Customer Relationship Management software) responsibilities with a sales counterpart as the sales and marketing teams should be collaborating.

The Search Engine Specialist

Your Search Engine Specialist should be an analytical person by nature. They should have an intrinsic passion for understanding search algorithms. Your Search Engine Specialist will be responsible for all your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) initiatives, your SEM (Search Engine Marketing), and run your PPC (Pay-per-Click campaigns). They should be certified to work in Google tools. Most importantly, this team member must be able to clearly translate the implications of their work and the results they are getting to the rest of the team. Data-driven marketing initiatives perform best. Your Search Engine Specialist must work collaboratively with your other marketing team members to strategize blog content, web pages, and ad campaigns according to the data.

The Copywriter

No marketing initiative can happen without words (also referred to as “copy”). Having a versatile writer on your team is essential. But not all writers are created equally. An ideal candidate will have experience writing sales or direct response copy. These writers are trained to help prospects make a buying decision.  This will be important when you need web copy for landing pages, event promotion pages, PPC, and social media ad campaigns.  Your writer should also be versatile enough to write nurturing and branding content, such as blog articles, case studies, copy for marketing materials such as brochures, copy for digital and print flyers, packaging copy, press releases, and other corporate communications that can connect with your target audience.

The Creative

The creative person is someone who typically has a background in graphic design and possibly video editing or directing. They will be your brand storyteller. They should know how to represent your company’s values and messages in visual contexts. They will be able to create logos, design the company’s letterhead and business cards, create visuals for web and landing pages, visuals for social media campaigns, PPC campaigns, design printed marketing materials, for packaging, take the lead on video production, and more.

The Web Developer

Your website is one of the first touches that prospects come in contact with your brand. It is critically important that you are able to make changes on a dime. An in-house web developer who understands HTML, Java, and all the other protocols that make the internet work will be a convenient choice over a freelancer or working with an agency. Keeping your website fresh with modern design, mobile responsiveness, (link to glossary article) and high functionality (such as lead capture, delivery of digital products, customer self-service portals, etc.) is critical to modern business success. The most significant benefit to having your own Web Developer is being able to immediately attend to your site’s issues and can keep all your data secure.

Ready? Set? Hire!

It’s exciting to get ready to assemble your dream team of marketing superstars that will lead you to victorious sales.  Choosing the right players is critical. If you want to ensure you are making the best hires possible the first time around, consider letting Blackwood Impact Group (BIG) be your hiring partner.  Through our Marketing Organizational Structure service, BIG can help you hire the right team players internally, vet candidates, set KPIs (key performance indicators), and manage your team. If you want to outsource any of these roles to an agency or freelancer, we can also help you through our Agency Relationship Management Service. We will vet, engage, and manage your company’s relationships with these entities.  Contact us today for a no-obligation consultation to learn more!