How to Build a Marketing Team for Your Business

Whether you’re a marketer or you have a small business, these challenges lie ahead.

While reaching out to consumers has never been easier than now, it has also never been more challenging. Marketers have to be proactive 24/7 and adapt to every new trend and social media platform that shows up. That’s all due to one simple fact — social media now wields more power than any other form of marketing.

So if you want to be successful in today’s market, you have to know how to build a great marketing team. That’s even more relevant if you have a small business, and you are up against strong competitors.

 

Here are some tips on how to build a marketing team for your business:

 

1. Understand Your Business and Know Your Goals

The very first thing you need to do while you’re preparing to build your marketing team is to understand yourself. Be realistic about where your business is right now. Set the goals you want to achieve. Then, try to create a roadmap that you want your company to follow in the years to come.

You need to know where you’re going before you start running towards the finish line.

So do a SWOT analysis of your business so that you can recognise strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Once you do that, you will know where your ship is leaking and how to repair the damage.

For example, your current marketing strategy might be great for physical marketing, but could be absolutely awful for modern digital marketing requirements.

Your team might be made of people with great ideas who don’t know how to realise them, or of self-centred experts who aren’t team players. Find the problematic team members and give them two options – to be better, or be replaced by someone better.

You need a marketing team that consists of people who work well with each other, who understand you, and who have the company’s best interest in their minds.

 

2. Set Your Goals with SMART Framework

Create goals for your marketing team by using these simple criteria — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Bound. The SMART framework will help you to define a roadmap both for your business and your marketing team.

If you want your team to have set goals to strive towards, request measurable outcomes — page views, clicks, engagement, and conversion rates. With these Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), your team will have the finish line in sight, which will make taking action a lot easier.

 

3. Hiring and Training

Most business owners run into the same obstacle when building their marketing teams — they lack the resources to hire the talent they want.

That’s why you need to prepare a budget that won’t break the bank. Also, make sure to determine the roles of everyone you want on the team in advance and to hire people accordingly.

After you hire your dream team, you need to train those people and deploy them. That’s where you need to be perfectly clear and explain your vision and goals to the team you have just assembled.

 

4. Actions, Results, and Consequences

If you want to motivate people, you can offer performance-linked bonuses and perks for the best performing team members. However, on the other side, if they fail reaching set goals, there have to be consequences otherwise it will backfire! Just be careful to balance the carrot and the stick properly, so you don’t destroy team unity and their willingness to work for you.

Although no one can deliver results in an instant, there are reasonable time frames. So when you start out, put those before your marketing team and be perfectly clear regarding your expectations. Balance your goals with your capabilities, and your business will thrive.

Keep track of your marketing team’s activities. Obtain as much feedback as you can. Gather data and evaluate. Once you see which areas are advancing and which ones need improvement, reward your team for their successes or warn them about their failures. Don’t allow for mistakes to be repeated, and always build on successful practices.

 

5. Take Responsibility

Your business – your responsibility. If you want to build your own marketing team instead of hiring an agency – you need to be aware that it’s all up to you. If you hire a team that doesn’t function well – it’s on you. When or if you overwhelm your marketing staff – take responsibility. If you set unrealistic goals, vague ones, or you change them frequently, be prepared for some negative results. More importantly, make sure your marketing team knows that you’re aware of what went wrong, why, and how. Be honest, be transparent, and don’t allow a mistake to become a cause for dissonance.

There’s no room for ego fights and personality clashes if you want a cohesive team that’s able to overcome obstacles on the road that you’ve mapped out.  So whatever happens, make sure not to look for someone to place blame on. Look for a way to fix the problem and make your marketing team better equipped for the next one.

 

In the End

It doesn’t matter if you believe that you have the best or the worst marketing team in the world if you have no results to show for it. To put it simply, results are everything.

The world of marketing is a tough one, and every misstep can cost you a lot. So it’s best to keep track of everything and maintain a hands-on approach. Yes, you can assemble and train a good marketing team, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t review their performance every quarter.

Once your team gets into their groove, their marketing efforts will help make a much brighter future for your business. Use these simple pieces of advice and you can increase your brand recognition and your profits simultaneously with confidence.

Related content:
Marketing Management Knowhow – learn more about marketing with our collection of educational articles.

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