10th March, 2021 by William Aldred
Introduction
Q: What does it mean to be functional? A: To be reliable and useful
A simple enough question, however, what does that mean when we apply this to your marketing team? Is your team useful, reliable or is there something missing?
Most businesses fall short of ensuring their marketing team delivers upon their business objectives, but don’t worry it’s normally a simple fix. This blog outlines the key responsibilities as well as examples of the individuals needed to ensure your marketing department kicks ass!
Making your Marketing Team Functional
Functional means relating to the way in which something works or operates, or relating to how useful it is.
Functional Adjective, defined by Collins Dictionary
Understanding the meaning of what functional means is the first step in ensuring you bring your marketing department up to scratch. The image above is a clear pictorial example of what we see in most marketing teams. We could say that this chair is functioning to its purpose, which is for someone to be able to sit on it. (Whether they will be comfortable or not, we leave that to your imagination).
Some may even say that its task is fulfilled and that it performs as it should, right? However, do you trust that it will continually deliver upon its objective, or is it only a matter of time till it collapses? If this sounds familiar to your chair? Then we recommend buying a new one! But don’t worry, in regards to your marketing team it normally means your missing something which we outline in this blog.
What do you need your Marketing Team to do?
Like the chair below, you need your marketing department to be useful and reliable for your business. If you cannot rely on your team like Dev relies on this chair then we recommend reading further on.
For a Marketing Team to be functional then it needs to be able to execute and deliver marketing solutions that help drive the company towards its business goals.
Functional Marketing Department, defined by Cordeeple
We’ve created this definition based on the Collins Dictionary definition to create the foundations of what we deem a functional marketing team to be. From this, we were able to identify the essential responsibilities needed to fulfil this definition.
Simple eh!
What are the essential responsibilities needed in your Marketing Team?
A thing that one is required to do as part of a job, role, or legal obligation.
Responsibility, defined by Colins Dictionary
We believe that 6 Essential Responsibilities are needed for every marketing team’s foundations.
1. Marketing Team Leader
The role of a team leader is instrumental in ensuring growth and alignment of the business objectives through a robust marketing strategy.
2. Brand Champion
A senior member of staff whose job is to ensure brand consistency via visual through visual and tonel representation across their brand’s online communities.
3. Writer/Editor
They manage your voice, your verbiage of your brand. Content starts with a story.
This can include creating straplines, slogans, body copy, jingles and scripts.
4. Designer
Designers are your visual communicators. A picture is worth a thousand words.
They create the visual content of your story.
5. Distributor
They distribute content through the Channels which bring the biggest ROI
6. Analysis & Reporting
Last but not least, these are the individuals who organize the date into digestible reports and extract meaningful insights, which can be used to better understand and improve your business performance.
Now that we’ve defined the essential responsibilities that are needed within your marketing team, it’s now time to align these with individuals whose role it is to perform these tasks.
What does a functional marketing team look like?
The marketing deparment are a collection of individuals who share or are tasked with essential repsonboitlies to deliver upon their marketing objectives that helps direct the business towards its business goals. These tasks are executed across either or both the digital and traditional mediums, depending on objectives.
When referring to digital and traditional marketing, we are simply referring to the marketing efforts being communicated through the medium type that an audience member may encounter it. Traditional marketing would refer to efforts such as magazines and newspapers, and other various print resources; whereas digital marketing capitalizes the online spaces like social media, websites, podcasts, etc.
Traditional & Digital Marketing, defined by Cordeeple
So what about that team, eh?
1. MARKETING DIRECTOR as your Marketing Team Leader.
- They translate stakeholders’ business goals into attainable marketing efforts.
- They create Marketing plans which deliver upon reaching business objectives.
- They will use the insights and reports to re-adjust marketing efforts.
2. SENIOR DESIGNER as your Brand Champion
- They ensure the business is being consistent with messaging throughout the digital and traditional platforms.
- This person will delegate and execute all design-related tasks.
- This individual will manage the design team and approve all content before distribution.
3. COPYWRITER as your Writer/Editor
- The writer is a wordsmith that captures and inspires your database.
- They look after all the written components from blogs to press releases.
- They ensure all web copy is created and edited with purpose and true to the company values and perception.
- They will edit and approve all writing before distribution.
4. GRAPHIC DESIGNER as your Print Designer
- This designer will be in charge of creating all print material such as catalogs, leaflets, and tradeshow deliverables.
- They will have a great design eye for perspective to ensure that the onscreen work is produced correctly in the physical world.
- They source and liaise with printers and vendors.
5. DIGITAL DESIGNER as your WEB/Social Designer
- This designer understands content creation across all digital platforms.
- They are a whiz at architectural blog layout and understand when to create informational or artistic content.
- They ensure that all content produced is created with the purpose, to engage, inspire, and inform your database.
6. DIGITAL MARKETER as your Distributor & Analytical Reporting guru
- This person will measure the Key performance indicators (KPIs) that are deemed important to each campaign as well as your business.
- They create reports in a digestible manner for the decision-makers to review.
- They create a content calendar and distribute content across the appropriate channels for your business.
These 6 roles cover the 6 responsibilities needed in the marketing team. However, the above solution may differ for your company as many variables can contribute to the structure of a marketing team. One typical variable is the overall size of a company and its budget restraints. Within most small businesses it’s not uncommon to have one or two members within the marketing department to take on multiple responsibilities. It’s not ideal however it happens, and the above team is to help illustrate the distribution of responsibilities to ensure ownership of tasks which ensures the marketing team delivers upon their objectives. Making your department functional.
Medium-sized businesses are businesses with 100 to 499 employees; Large businesses are businesses with 500 employees or more.
150 StatCan, 2015
Whatever your marketing team size is, everything you do should be geared to your consumer’s needs and pain point resolutions. However, having all essential roles covered can be a costly venture especially if your business is new. Don’t worry at Cordeeple we have teams and individuals ready for all business budget restraints. Maybe you need a seasonal campaign or some extra social media posts, whatever it may be ensure you court your people with us, Cordeeple.
Summary
You can tell if your Marketing Department is missing one of the above 6 essential roles pretty quickly as, without a solid marketing group, your day-to-day marketing activities will range anywhere from “not very effective” to “a waste of money”
Take a look at your marketing team and tick off what you have covered.
- [ ] Marketing Lead
- [ ] Brand Champion
- [ ] Writer/Editor
- [ ] Designer
- [ ] Distributor
- [ ] Analysis & Reporting
And then ask these simple but to the point questions
- Is your team functional or are you missing something? (Are they meeting your Business GOALS)
- Is one of the above responsibilities being sidelined or completely missed?
- Or are you expecting more from your team than they can give?
Take a look at your answers and see what you’re missing. If you’re here, then it could mean you need some support and that’s what we do at Cordeeple. We help you, help yourself.
Either one of the below chairs can perform the basic function it was designed for, but which one would you want to sit on?
Be like Dev
Work Cited/Resources
- 150 StatCan. (2015). Canadian Internet Use Survey. statcan.gc.ca
- Collins Dictionary. collinsdictionary.com
- CoSchedule. How to Organize Cross-Functional Marketing Teams. Coschedule.com
- Garrett Mehrguth. (2017). 6 roles you need on your marketing team + 2 you probably haven’t considered. marketingland.com
- Greg Mischio. (N/A). 6 Steps to Building a Content Creation System. Windbound.com
- Jennifer Moss. (2019). Burnout Is About Your Workplace, Not Your People. hbr.org
- Kathi Kruse. (2020). The 8 Essential Positions in a Winning Modern Marketing Team. krusecontrolinc.com
- Simple. (2018). 6 Essential Elements for Cross-Functional Marketing Team Success. Simple.io
