You’ve got a team to build, and there seem to be an endless number of “right” ways to build it. How do you create a marketing org structure that makes sense, keeps the right teams closely aligned, and creates the best output?
Today’s marketing teams are expected to be more dynamic and agile than ever, and their team structures are shifting as a result. Modern marketing org charts are making space for emerging technology, changing consumer behaviors, and the demand for cross-functional collaboration. Mostly, that means that how your particular marketing organization is structured has a lot to do with who you have on board, who you’re serving, and how much you’re willing to shake things up … but that doesn’t mean we can’t offer some clarity.
At the core of a modern marketing team
Everything starts at the top, so we begin with the C-suite or Leadership team. This can be made up of a few people, but is generally headed by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) or Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). At this level, your C-suite leader is responsible for the overall marketing and brand strategy, and for making sure marketing is helping to achieve larger business goals.
Your Leadership team may also include VP-level leaders that oversee more specific functions like Brand, Creative, Communications and Social, lines of business, and more. At this level, leaders are managing everything from digital transformation and e-commerce strategies to internal/external communications, crisis management, content and design, and more.
Now it gets complex
Below the Leadership team, you’ll see a lot of variation in the way teams are organized, with every major company claiming that their way is the right way … just don’t ask them how many times they’ve reorganized in the last five years. Here are a few other key components of your marketing team, with some thoughts on how they could be organized.
Strategists: These are your SEO and paid media specialists, your data analytics and insights teams, your customer experience experts, and your product specialists. These strategists are tightly aligned to every other part of the marketing team, and usually make sense as shared services.
SBUs: Strategic business units or SBUs are targeted groups of strategists that are organized around a specific business segment. Sometimes the lines are drawn by product, business line, market segment, or geography. SBUs can make it easier for marketers to deep-dive into their particular SBU, but if they’re placed too high in the org structure it can also make it harder to maintain consistent branding across groups. Because every SBU has their own specific audience and needs, it’s easy for these groups to get siloed and for consistency across the organization to get lost in the shuffle, which is why we recommend placing them among your strategists.
Creators: This group is made up of your content, design, video, social, and brand teams. This is the heart of your content marketing engine, where all of the strategy and research is analyzed, synthesized, and turned into impactful and engaging work. These teams work across all of your marketing channels, and should be regularly meeting with the data team to review performance analytics and adjust tactics as needed.
Enablers: Your Enablers are the people who make it possible for everyone else to get their jobs done. They are your marketing operations team (who are managing your tech stack and enabling automation), your CRMs (who manage the ups and downs of your customer relationships), and your project/traffic managers (who keep information flowing and projects moving across all of the teams).
Outside help
Depending on your budget, in-house skillset, and the size of your organization, you might not be able to immediately staff every part of your team. Or you might have occasional or seasonal excess that your team needs support on. Most modern marketing org charts (and budgets) hold space for collaboration with external agencies and vendors to fill the gaps. Some choose to employ specific vendors – maybe you’re missing a videographer on your team so you hire out for your video needs – while others employ full-service agencies on a one-off or retainer basis to support overflow.
Collaboration, collaboration, and more collaboration
No matter how your org is currently structured or what it may look like in the future, one thing remains the same. Working together, leveraging better communication and tighter goal alignment, is the key to making it all work. Marketing should have regular contact not only with one another, but with sales, development, finance, and legal to make sure strategies are working for everyone they’re meant to support.
Even if your marketing org chart looks completely different than what we’ve outlined here, it doesn’t mean all is lost. As long as your team is focused on the right things, you’ll do just fine. What are they? Here are a few:
The ability and willingness to adapt quickly as markets and consumers change
A dedication to making data-driven decisions
The understanding that customer-first approaches are the only path to success
A willingness to implement and embrace new technologies as they offer new tools
A modern marketing org chart should deliver a dynamic structure that prioritizes these four things and makes space for creativity, innovation, and even a little fun.
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