Setting up a marketing team is no small feat, especially for startups. You have probably heard the popular saying “people cannot buy a product that they don’t know about”. This statement emphasizes the importance of effectively marketing your products, as this is an essential lifeline for business sustenance. To do this, you need a regular update on marketing trends. As well as a strategy and execution to leverage available information to grow your business.
As a business owner, you are likely to come to the realization sooner or later that “Marketing is a team sport”. Irrespective of your education or range of skills, the set of activities needed to effectively market your products require the combined effort of a team of skilled professionals. So how do you set up your first marketing team as a small business? What skill sets do you Lookout for? And how can you combine them to achieve your first milestones?
What are your marketing needs?
Most businesses share similar marketing needs when starting. It often comes down to creating awareness for the new business and its products among potential customers. Then leveraging data gotten from these to keep refining its strategies until complete product-market fit is achieved. Then pushing further beyond for growth. For most new businesses, this has to be achieved within a limited budget while aiming to get maximum returns on investment.
These returns are not always in the form of revenue or customers, as it is for the Sales team. Rather they could be other parameters that play a role in supporting sales. They may include other valuable metrics like application downloads, platform sign-ups, leads generated, website visits, community members, engagement, event attendance, and more.
Setting up your marketing team for your small business comes down to identifying and recruiting team members with the skills to achieve this.
Key roles and skills to onboard on your first marketing team as a small business
Content writer /storyteller:
A content writer is someone who effectively expresses your business ideologies in the form of writing. This is usually done across digital channels like blogs, emails, social media, online advertising channels, etc. A skilled content writer is very essential to your marketing team because they help to craft your product stories in a way that your audience in each channel can connect to them. Persons to be hired into this role must be skilled at
a. Human psychology and understanding how to trigger people towards a set of goals.
b. Researching topics related to your industry (combining online sources, interviews, and studies)
c. Writing clear marketing copies to promote your products and services.
d. Preparing well-structured drafts using Content Management Systems.
e. Making their content visible online through optimization for searches.
f. Hands-on experience with Content Management Systems (e.g. WordPress)
Some other roles your content writer may temporarily stand in for include content marketer, market trend analyst, copywriter, scriptwriter, and PR officer.
Digital marketer:
As the world constantly heads towards full digitization and internet-based activities. Digital marketing is an important skill set to source for when setting up your marketing team, irrespective of its size. It offers a less expensive alternative to customer acquisition and retention with precise customer targeting and measurable results.
A skilled digital marketer understands the algorithms and nuances of different digital channels and how to use them to generate leads and build brand awareness. Your digital marketer should be able to work seamlessly with the rest of the marketing team to ensure that all online activities complement offline efforts.
Persons to be hired into this role must be skilled at one or more of these;
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Content marketing
- Social media marketing
- Pay per click (PPC)
- Affiliate marketing
- Native advertising
- Marketing automation
- Email marketing
- Online PR
- Sponsored content
- Inbound marketing
Some other roles your Digital marketer may temporarily stand in for includes Growth manager, product manager, PPC specialist, marketing strategist, marketing automation specialist, and customer retention manager.
Social media executive:
Your Social media managers will create and maintain promotions, company information, and marketing campaigns for your business across the different social media networks. With popular social platforms popping out frequently, your social media manager is required to be curious and highly adaptive. They understand content types and the context of their application across various social media platforms.
According to research shown by the Digital Marketing Institute, 34.5% of people prefer their customer service requests attended to through social media. This shows the growing importance of social media as the primary channel for shaping your brand perception.
Persons to be hired into this role must be skilled at these;
- Social media marketing
- Customer relationship
- Community management
- Trendspotting and surfing
- Project management
- Analytics
Some other roles your social media manager may temporarily stand in for includes PR manager, partnership manager, customer relationship manager, and online community manager.
Creative Designer:
It can be said that your creative designer is to audio-visuals, what your content writer is to text. If you’ve heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words, then you understand the relevance of the creative designer’s role. A creative designer is someone who uses design skills to promote a company, or its products and services.
Having this skill in your team helps you to optimize your engagements up to 10X across your online platforms and increase your conversion rate up to 80% Quoracreative. It also opens your business presence to visuals-only social platforms like Youtube, Tik Tok, Instagram, etc. Thereby expanding your channels for customer acquisition.
Your Creative designer must understand basic design principles and their technical applications. Then use this to build assets and collaterals for your marketing team according to your predefined brand guidelines.
Persons to be hired into this role must be skilled at one or more of these;
- Creative strategy
- Graphic design
- Video and photo editing
- Communication
Some other roles your creative designer may temporarily stand in for include brand executive, merchandise vendors manager, and brand strategist.
Direct Sales representative:
It is pointless as a business to learn how to set up your first marketing team without a sales representative to conclude the pipeline. Your sales representative helps to ensure that your team’s marketing efforts convert to successful financial returns.
As mentioned earlier, the marketing team’s effort may result in some direct sales, but customers often require direct sales effort before purchase. Your sales representative negotiates and uses persuasion skills to overcome the objections of potential customers. Where necessary, they also make presentations and demonstrate the product to customers to help them see its competitive edge.
Your sales rep can also double as a customer relationship manager. In this capacity, they are also responsible for customer retention and increasing the revenue per customer, by encouraging repeat purchases or upselling additional products. They keep the customer purchase loop cycling.
Persons to be hired into this role must be skilled at these;
- Customer relationship management (CRM)
- Customer service
- Interpersonal skills
- Listening
- Effective verbal communication
These are complementary skills that work together to achieve your initial marketing goals as a small business. They are mostly generalists roles and can be broken down into more specialized roles as your business grows.
In understanding how to set up your first marketing team as a small business, it is important to note that your role in overseeing their productivity and output can not be over-emphasized. This is because your team depends on your guidance to stir them towards the business aims and objectives.
Very educativ