They say, ‘The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.’
This applies to marketing teams, in particular. You can assemble a team of incredibly talented marketers, but if they all operate in silos, their ‘individual’ brilliance might not translate to ‘collective’ marketing efficiency.
The key to achieving a marketing team’s true potential lies in how you structure it. By having the right talent in place and facilitating a collaborative environment, you create a synergy that translates to a successful marketing strategy and impactful campaigns.
This blog post will explore how to structure your marketing team, considering factors such as team size, industry, and campaign goals. By doing so, you can set up a high-performing marketing team where individual strengths complement each other.
How to Structure a Marketing Team
Summarize this article for me pleaseTypes of Marketing Team Structures
The ideal marketing team structure depends on many factors, such as your company’s size, go-to-market strategy, industry, and so on.
Here’s a breakdown of some common structures to give you some ideas for your own:
Traditional marketing team structure
This is a classic structure found in established companies with dedicated marketing departments. Teams are divided into ‘functional areas’ with clear reporting hierarchies. This sets a clear chain of command (which is especially important in large corporations).
Traditional structures rely on marketers specializing in select fields rather than on marketing generalists.
Common teams and roles in such structures are:
- Head of Marketing (or Chief Marketing Officer/CMO): Leads the entire marketing function, setting strategy and overseeing all activities
- Brand marketing: Manages brand identity, messaging, and communication across channels
- Product marketing: Focuses on specific products or services, driving awareness and demand
- Public relations: Cultivates positive relationships with the media and public
- Creative services: Designs marketing materials such as ads, brochures, and website content
Each of these departments will have further divisions. For example, the product marketing team can have roles like:
- Director of Product Marketing: Leads the entire product marketing function, setting strategy, managing budgets, and overseeing all product marketing activities. They report directly to the CMO or the Head of Marketing
- Product marketing manager: Manages the go-to-market strategy for a specific product or product line. They may also manage a team of associate PMMs or marketing specialists
- Product marketing analyst: Focuses on market research, competitive analysis, and data-driven insights to inform product marketing decisions
- Technical marketing manager: Creates technical content (white papers, case studies) and facilitates communication between product marketing and engineering teams
While most public companies and large organizations do seem to prefer this hierarchical method of structuring their marketing team, it’s not without its minuses—creating different teams for different marketing functions can lead to siloed work and less collaboration.
Such rigid structures also come with many operational processes and guidelines that can reduce the speed at which you run marketing campaigns or address updates.
Small marketing team structure
You might benefit from a lean marketing team if you’re a startup (or a bootstrapped SMB). Unlike the traditional marketing team, a small marketing team is built around marketing generalists and fluid hierarchies.
Some marketing roles that you can hire include:
- Marketing manager: To oversee all marketing activities, potentially including content creation, social media management, and email marketing
- Content marketer: To create engaging content, write web copy, and handle all marketing communications
- Growth marketer: To measure marketing performance and handle marketing ops such as setting up campaigns and adding trackers
But when you choose a team of generalists, you might miss out on the nuanced advice and strategies that specialized marketers provide. You should complement your full-time marketers with freelance consultants and marketing agencies.
For example, an SEO consultant can be a great support for your content marketer, or outsourcing to a content marketing agency can help you ramp up your blog publication speed and volume.
Enterprise marketing team structure
Enterprise marketing teams are a subset of the traditional structure. Here, the marketing team—though hierarchical and consisting of specialists—is also hyper-focused to address the unique behaviors of the enterprise market.
Enterprise teams typically have longer sales cycles, heavy hand-holding, and in-person campaigns. This means you’ll need subteams for sales enablement, field marketing, events, demand generation, and more—depending on your GTM strategy.
Also, as enterprise marketing teams are quite large—between 100 to 250 marketers at different career levels—you need strong leadership and good processes to ensure collaboration, accountability, and transparency.
Integrated marketing team structure
This structure breaks down silos and promotes close collaboration between marketing, sales, and other departments. Teams are organized around specific customer journeys or marketing campaigns rather than marketing functions.
For example, you might have sub-marketing teams for each module or product (in case you’re selling a suite of tools), each with a separate set of product, content, and social media marketers.
This can help you launch integrated marketing campaigns with ease.
Let’s say an event management company is releasing a new website builder and has to promote it:
- The product marketing manager leads the campaign strategy—defining messaging and positioning, highlighting the value props, and launching the web page
- The content marketer creates blog posts showcasing how the website builder helps event planners achieve success
- The social media manager develops social media content, builds and manages industry influencer partnerships for promotion, and handles the social launch of the feature—amplifying the message set by the product marketer and the blogs created by the content marketer
- The PR specialist secures media coverage in relevant event planning and technology publications to generate buzz and get media coverage
- The growth marketer tracks campaign performance across all channels—landing page traffic, social media engagement, email open rates—and provides insights for optimization
Some benefits of going the integrated marketing team route are:
- Better collaboration, as everyone is working on the same campaign
- More transparency as all campaigns are inter-related and have the same goal
Digital marketing team structure
While the previous team structures were broad and contained all marketing functions, this is a narrow one.
Whether you’re going with a traditional marketing team structure or an enterprise one, if you have a digital marketing function, here are some specializations that you might want to consider:
- SEO specialist: Optimizes website content and technical aspects for search engine visibility
- PPC specialist: Manages paid advertising campaigns on platforms like Google Ads and social media
- Web analyst: Tracks website traffic data and provides insights for website optimization and campaign measurement
- Growth marketer: Uses various marketing channels and growth hacks to achieve user acquisition
- Marketing operations specialist: Provides operational support to the marketing team, managing marketing platforms, campaigns, and workflows
Larger teams might also have to add a ‘digital marketing head’ role to supervise the various specialists.
Summarize this article for me pleaseChallenges in Structuring a Marketing Team and How to Overcome Them
Structuring a marketing team for success can be tricky. You have to find the right people, figure out how to pay them, and ensure everyone’s working together seamlessly. And it gets even more complicated with marketing trends and priorities in constant flux—think AI workflows, automations, B2B TikTok marketing etc.
Here’s a breakdown of the common challenges you might face when setting up your marketing departments, along with some tips to overcome them:
Acquiring (and retaining) talent
Most companies’ first challenge is finding the right marketers (especially in a competitive job market). Also, finding a skilled marketer is only half the battle. You need someone who matches your company culture, too.
Here are some tips to help you find the right marketers:
1. Be upfront about your expectations
List the skills you need, elaborate on the day-to-day marketing responsibilities, benefits, and perks, and most importantly, be transparent about your salary range—this can help you set your expectations right at the beginning.
2. Spread the word
Don’t just rely on job boards. Post job descriptions and calls for hiring on your social media channels, marketing job boards, and Slack marketing communities like Superpath to ensure the right people learn about your hiring plans.
3. Start a referral program
This can be especially great if you’re just starting out.
Even popular companies like Slack built their first teams by leveraging the founder’s network.
4. Build your employer’s brand
Employees also want to work for an authentic brand. So, be upfront about your values, mission, and work culture by highlighting them on your ‘About Us’ page, careers section, and maybe even your blog.
Or take a leaf out of Google or LinkedIn’s books. LinkedIn Life is LinkedIn’s fun employer branding Instagram channel with over 75K followers, while Life at Google showcases Google’s amazing employee-centric initiatives and employee stories in the most empathetic way.
Budget constraints
With inflation on the rise, marketer expectations regarding compensation are also increasing. According to the 2022 Performance Marketing World survey, four out of every ten marketers stated salary as their most significant deciding factor when accepting new jobs.
On the other hand, limited funds can make it challenging to meet the expectations of top marketers. Here are some ways to build your dream team, even on a budget.
1. Provide other forms of compensation
Salary is only one side of the equation. Other perks, such as employee stock options, health benefits, more autonomy, and even leadership training, can help you create a tempting package for potential employees.
2. Consider freelancers
For specialized skills or temporary needs, outsourcing tasks to freelancers or part-time consultants can be a budget-friendly option. This allows you to access expertise without the overhead costs of full-time employees.
3. Hire in phases
Start by hiring for the most critical marketing functions you need—perhaps a content creator (if you’re doubling down on SEO) or a field marketer (if you have in-person events). Once you demonstrate the ROI of these hires, you can build a stronger case for expanding the team further.
Adapting to change
The marketing world is forever evolving, so the marketers you hire should also stay updated. New platforms pop up overnight, and old ones die or get rebranded just as quickly (like Twitter), and yesterday’s trendiest marketing tactic might no longer be relevant today.
Take SEO, for example. The Google AI Overviews feature means we might have to start optimizing for AI, not search engines.
What you can do:
- Create a culture of continuous learning within your entire marketing team, not just sub-teams. Encourage marketers to participate in online courses, attend industry conferences, and subscribe to marketing publications. Even better, you can sponsor them
- The MarTech landscape is constantly evolving too! Stay informed about new marketing technology tools and explore their potential to enhance your marketing efforts
- Implement knowledge-sharing sessions within the marketing department. Let team members present new trends they’ve learned, sparking discussions and keeping everyone informed
Remember, the key is to stay agile and adaptable. So, build a team that embraces lifelong learning, thrives on experimentation, and leverages the power of marketing technology.
Summarize this article for me pleaseHow to Structure a Marketing Team
Whether you’re a startup looking to build your first marketing department or an established company aiming to revamp your current structure, you need to figure out how to structure your team.
A marketing tool like ClickUp’s Marketing Project Management Platform can help with this. It offers a flexible workspace for marketing teams, allowing you to brainstorm, plan, and execute your marketing programs.
From multi-channel campaigns to global events, ClickUp provides features for visual project management, resource management, and collaboration.
Recommended reading: Want some inspiration? Learn how ClickUp’s marketing team uses ClickUp to move fast and break things (in a good way!)
This tool allows you to:
- Use ClickUp Brain’s AI assistance to create campaign ideas, content briefs, blogs, case studies, and emails
- Link marketing roadmaps directly to actionable tasks
- Seamlessly work across marketing workstreams using Docs, Whiteboards, and Proofing tools
- Monitor progress with team-wide transparency and visual dashboards
- Track marketing goals in detail and at a glance
Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you set up your marketing departments using ClickUp:
Decide the marketing roles
Think about your company’s unique goals, size, and budget to determine the ideal team structure. Consider including niche roles like email marketing specialist or community manager to fill specific needs based on your marketing roadmap and GTM strategy. This customization ensures your marketing team is perfectly tailored to achieve your specific objectives.
You can use the ClickUp Marketing Teams Template as your starting point.
This template allows you to elaborate on your marketing initiatives and indicate which team members are responsible for each campaign or channel.
It comes with ready-to-use pages to help you define your brand guidelines and various processes, such as blog reviews and campaign management. You can also add more nested pages for other aspects of your hiring, like interview assignments and the steps in the hiring process.
By being clear about your marketing goals, you can get an overarching idea of the types of marketers to hire. For example, if you plan to go strong on SEO, your priority is a content marketing team. Similarly, a video-focused social media strategy might mean hiring video content creators and editors.
Analyze skill gaps
Now that you’ve defined your marketing goals and brainstormed possible roles, the next step is to drill deeper into what you’re looking for in each role. If you’ve decided on a content-led growth strategy, you need to set up a content marketing team.
But what are the exact skills that you should look out for? Here’s where the ClickUp Skill Mapping Template comes in.
With this template, you can:
- Create a ‘skills database’ to track the skill sets of current employees and potential hires
- Analyze employee skills across different roles to pinpoint areas of strengths and weakness
- Identify skill gaps within your team and use this information to hire the right people to complement your existing team
How does this work? Customize the available ClickUp Form by adding questions on different marketing skill sets. Then, you can ask employees (or interview candidates) to rate themselves on those skills
Save form submissions as a list, calculate the score, and make data-driven hiring decisions. Easy, right? Now, all that you have to do is use these scores to shortlist the marketing roles you need to hire.
Using this method, you can identify the gaps in your entire marketing team and hire the right people with the right skill sets and at the right career stages.
Finalize the process
Now that you know what roles you need to hire for and the skillsets for each role, the next action item is finalizing the interview process and compensation package. Your next steps would look like this:
- Research average salaries for similar positions in your industry and location. Salary data can be found on websites such as Glassdoor and Salary.com or through industry reports
- Plan the interview stages, including phone screenings, initial interviews, take-home assessments, and final interviews with key decision-makers
- Select interviewers with the expertise and experience to evaluate candidates against the defined skill sets
- Set up your compensation package, including benefits like stock options, health insurance, and retirement plans
You can use ClickUp Docs to draft job descriptions, document interview questions, track assignment scores, and collaborate with the hiring committee. It’s a document processing tool that will enable your entire team to collaborate on the hiring process.
By creating a well-structured interview process and a competitive compensation package, you’ll be well-positioned to attract top marketing talent and build a successful team.
Onboard new marketers
Once you’ve completed the interview process, onboard your newly hired marketers onto your team.
Start by sending them a welcome package with company swag, important documents, and information about the first day. You can also consider assigning them a mentor or work buddy to support them during their first few weeks.
Side by side, you can also start adding them to your internal communications tools, marketing tech stack, and even your organization chart so they have access to all the information they need (and other team members also know about their joining).
You can use the ClickUp Organizational Chart Template to represent the marketing department structure, including reporting lines, teams, and departments. This will help new employees clearly understand who does what, whom to report to, and how different teams collaborate.
Here’s how this works:
- First, collect all team member details in a ClickUp Doc. Even better, you can ask each marketer to draft a ‘how I work’ document along with their profile details
- Then, add the different marketing to the ClickUp Whiteboard and use lines to denote reporting hierarchies
- Add details such as profile picture, responsibilities, contact details, etc., to add more depth
- Link each team member’s ClickUp Doc to their profile in the whiteboard so others can learn more about them without cluttering the org chart
New hires can use organizational charts to understand their place in the company structure, who their colleagues are, and reporting relationships. Moreover, employees can easily identify the right person to contact for specific needs or questions—leading to smoother workflows, especially when managing cross-functional teams.
Summarize this article for me pleaseThe Essential Aspects of a Marketing Team
Here are some final pointers to help you set up a well-balanced in-house marketing team that focuses on all key marketing aspects:
Online presence management
Online presence management marketing refers to the strategies and initiatives used to maintain a brand’s visibility across the internet. This is a collaborative effort that includes various teams, such as the content marketing team, social media team, SEO and PPC specialists, and, to a small extent, even analyst and media relations teams.
Your online presence management function is responsible for:
- Boosting brand visibility: Make your brand easy to find online through SEO, social media, and directory listings such as G2, Gartner, and Capterra
- Driving traffic: Attract potential customers through valuable content, community engagement, and a search-optimized website
- Gaining competitive advantage: Stand out from competitors by showcasing your brand’s USP
They manage your overall digital presence and build positive brand awareness.
Media management
In marketing, media management refers to the strategic planning, execution, and analysis of all activities related to paid, earned, and owned media channels. It involves:
- Paid media: This involves managing advertising campaigns across various platforms such as search engines (PPC), social media advertising, display advertising, and native advertising
- Earned media: This focuses on securing positive media coverage, such as articles, interviews, or product reviews in traditional media outlets and online publications
- Owned media: This contains all content you create and control, such as your website, blog posts, webinars, and newsletters
Media management can be a dedicated role or spread across different specialists depending on the team size and budget. While one marketer might handle all aspects of media management in startups, larger teams might have specialized roles like lifecycle marketer, analyst relations executive, and influencer marketer.
Search engine optimization and link-building
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and link building are core aspects of online presence management and help improve your website’s visibility and organic traffic in search engine results pages (SERPs).
- SEO: Optimizes your website and content to rank higher for relevant keywords through on-page optimization, technical SEO, and keyword research
- Link building: Acquires backlinks (links from other websites) to your site, which signals trust and authority to search engines
Some specialist roles in SEO are content SEO analysts, technical SEO managers, and such. By effectively combining SEO and link building, your company can increase organic traffic, attract qualified leads, and drive sales.
Use the ClickUp SEO Research & Management Template to manage your SEO efforts and bring all your SEO tasks into one centralized location.
The template comes with built-in dashboards that show you how your keywords rank, how much traffic you’re getting, and which pages perform best. This template will also enable you to:
- List your target keywords, track their performance, and even note down the competition
- Switch between list views, Kanban boards, or calendar views to see your data in the way that makes the most sense for you
- Assign tasks to team members, set deadlines, and ensure everything stays on track
Copywriting for advertising
Ad copywriting is a specific type of writing used in marketing to create compelling and persuasive messages for advertisements. This includes social media ads, newspaper ads, and even event sponsorship banners and standees.
Ad copywriting is a special skillset that uses strong verbs, short phrases, emotional triggers, and ‘benefits-oriented language’ to grab attention and nudge readers toward immediate action. Content writers, on the other hand, are more conversational and aim to educate or entertain users with long-form content.
They also have different marketing OKRs. Ad copywriting is measured by clicks and conversions, while long-form content is tracked for metrics like engagement, traffic, and lead generation.
By having dedicated content and ad copywriters, you can create informative content that attracts potential customers and craft persuasive ad copy that converts website visitors into paying users.
Enhancing customer experience
Marketing teams play a huge role in shaping customer experience (CX) across the entire customer journey—from building brand awareness to using personalized communications to move them through the funnel.
Here’s how they contribute:
- Messaging: Creating clear, informative content that sets expectations and educates potential customers
- Relationship-building: Using personalized communication, interactive content such as demos and quizzes, and social media engagement to encourage connections
- Community building: Building a community where customers can connect, share experiences, and learn from each other
- Upsell and cross-sell: Identifying opportunities to recommend additional products or services that enhance customer value
All marketers—from brand marketers to email marketers and analysts—contribute toward customer experience in different stages of the customer journey and buyer funnel.
Analytics and data-driven marketing
Put simply, this is about using customer behavior data and trends to inform marketing decisions and optimize campaigns. It’s the opposite of a ‘spray and pray’ approach, relying on insights to target the right audience with the right message at the right time.
The key member here is the marketing analyst. They are also supported by SEO analysts and PPC specialists, who gather data from various sources—website traffic, customer surveys, social media analytics, and campaign performance metrics—to make informed decisions.
Developing and implementing a marketing plan
The marketing world thrives on routine and processes, and two key roles keep it running smoothly—marketing operations specialists and marketing project managers—who work to ensure your marketing plan unfolds on schedule.
The former is responsible for picking the best marketing tools and creating efficient workflows to keep things running smoothly. Depending on your martech stack, they might also handle other operations such as maintaining data hygiene, removing data silos, and running marketing automations.
The marketing project manager, on the other hand, is responsible for the entire lifecycle of a campaign, from planning and budgeting to execution and measuring results.
Though sometimes overlooked, these two important roles are crucial to ensuring that marketing efforts actually succeed.
To make your marketing plan simple and effective, use ClickUp’s Marketing Plan Template.
You can use this template to:
- Set achievable goals and tasks based on priority (high, moderate, low) along with due dates for each quarter
- Track the status, progress, and effort of each task
- Set custom fields such as ‘Task Type’, ‘Quarter’, and ‘Impact’ for specific searches based on requirements
Summarize this article for me pleaseBuild a High-Performing Team for Marketing Success
A successful marketing team is an investment in your brand’s future. It generates not only leads and sales but also loyal customers and brand advocates. It drives immediate results but also lays the groundwork for long-term success.
So, it’s important to take your time and find the right people for your entire marketing department. But you can make this task simpler using a project management tool like ClickUp. ClickUp can help you brainstorm roles, analyze skill gaps, and streamline your interview process.
Sign up for ClickUp and see how it can help you build the right marketing team structure (and set your dream marketing team up for success).
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