Excellent marketing plans are built by great teams. And on every marketing team, there are distinct roles with specialized areas of responsibility.
Depending on the size of your organization, you may be tasked with performing more than one or even most of these roles yourself.
Nevertheless, these different areas of responsibility should be reflected in a marketing team’s job descriptions. If your organization has the ability to scale its staff, those job descriptions can be divided into multiple positions with greater specialization.
Here are five essential roles for every marketing team.
1. Marketing Manager
Marketing managers are the leaders of the marketing department, casting vision, setting goals and expectations, managing projects, and helping the rest of the marketing team achieve their goals.
While marketing managers may also engage in specialized tasks themselves depending on the size of the team, their goal is to manage marketing campaigns and strategies as a whole.
Larger teams can have multiple marketing managers, with each overseeing different aspects of the marketing strategy, and a senior marketing manager or vice president of marketing overseeing those marketing managers.
2. SEO Specialist
In many ways, the effectiveness of a marketing strategy is dependent upon the quality of a team’s analytics. This is where an SEO specialist can serve a vital role. SEO specialists have the skills to help your team maximize the visibility and discoverability of your products and services online. They help marketers understand the types of messages that consumers are responding to, developing and implementing inbound marketing strategies.
A related role to consider is that of data analyst. Data analysts often work closely with SEO specialists and focus their efforts on measuring the relative success of different marketing campaigns and strategies through quantitative analysis.
3. Graphic Designer
Since we live in a visual world, design is a key aspect of any marketing strategy or campaign. Oftentimes, the visual branding and aesthetics of your marketing efforts is a determining factor in sparking the interest of a consumer or customer, leading them to learn more about your products and services.
Depending on the size of your budget, you may want to employ more than one designer for marketing purposes. These subsets of roles may include brand management, visual design, and web and user experience design (Learn more about that here).
4. Content Marketer
Content marketers oversee the writing and editing of marketing materials, from advertisements to landing pages, blogs, social media, and other collateral. They can also be involved in overseeing or creating video content, coordinating with subject matter experts to create webinars, how-to videos, and other resources that will be of value to your customers and potential customers.
Content marketers work closely with SEO specialists to determine the types of content that will be most valuable to your audience.
Depending on the size of your organization, a marketing team may have more than one content marketing role, with each focusing on a particular type of content, from social media to video content or medium to long form written content.
5. Public Relations Manager
Public Relations (PR) managers develop and manage your organization’s public image, interfacing with entities outside your organization, such as news media. They also oversee participation in industry related events, representing the organization at conventions and industry trade shows.
A related role to PR manager is that of brand strategist, who likewise seeks to cultivate a positive public image for your organization, seeking to provide a consistent brand image and voice, closely working with the graphic design and content marketing teams to that end.
A Team That Grow With You
As your organization grows, there are almost infinite ways to structure your team with different roles and responsibilities. Nevertheless, each of the different aspects of a team’s effort will remain vital to a healthy and effective marketing team.
