Five Roles You Need in a Future-Focused B2B Growth Marketing Squad

In last week’s blog, I briefly touched on the idea that structuring your team for growth marketing is the winning formula for helping your business grow.  So what does that really mean?  How do you build a growth marketing squad?

While there are many ways to build your team and resources (including external agencies, consultants, writers, etc) it’s hard to know which is the smartest way to reach your specific goals.  Many times we find ourselves “shuffling the deck” – restructuring the same roles and responsibilities in new ways, trying to breathe new life into our current tactics.  But that can lead to more of the same results.  For a dramatic shift in marketing output, consider five important roles – old and new – that you might be overlooking in your strategy.

Let’s start by first identifying where you might be with marketing resources based on size.

• Small B2B businesses (<50 employees): You might have a few marketers in your company – most of them wearing multiple hats from your list of marketing tactics –  managing trade shows, graphic design, social media, copy writing.  You might do some campaign automation and have a “techie” in the team who also likes digital stuff and actually looks at your web traffic and conversions.  Maybe there is one leader for the team or everyone reports to the CEO.  You should read points one and two below as your starting place.
• Mid-Sized (51-450 employees): Recognizing this is a huge spectrum for business size, most mid-sized companies have around 5-15 marketing people and use several external resources (like a PR firm, a website developer, and occasional creative/branding agency help). Internally they are usually organized by function (content, digital, ops, product marketing, graphic design, etc) with one executive leader who reports to the CEO.  You should read points one through five below.
• Large (>450 employees): You are fancy and complicated, and this blog probably isn’t for you.

Here are the five roles/skills/responsibilities you should have in marketing team road map, and why:

1. Demand Generation Manager
   • Does this sound like a new buzz word to you?  I will kindly ask that you get out from under that rock, because as jargony as it might sound – Demand Generation grows your pipeline.   It is not one tactic – but a set of programs that optimizes conversions throughout the sales cycle.
   • Having a resource in your company that focuses on demand generation starts to build the bridge between marketing investment and sales opportunities won.
2. Sales Development Rep (SDR)
   • SDR’s focus on moving leads through the pipeline.  Their contact data usually comes from marketing (what content the prospect has engaged with, if they fit our target profile, etc) but they take leads from partially baked to fully qualified and ready for a sales representative (e.g. setting up a demo).
   • This is a high ROI role/responsibility and in a small business every marketing dollar needs to count.  Focus your closers on selling to qualified leads and let marketing take on the lead development.  It’s a win-win and takes some buy-in to start and then the results will speak for themselves.
3. Marketing Data Analyst
   • This might feel like overkill, but here’s the real killer: making marketing investment decisions with no idea if they help you grow.  Analysts gather the information to tell your strategists what does and doesn’t work in the market.
   • With the digital journey heating up, there is a ton of data out there showing your buyer behavior – and combined with performance data from your marketing automation tools and web traffic – it all adds up to good business.
4. Sales Enablement Manager
   • If you’re wondering why so many of the future-focused marketing roles are sales focused, it’s because that is the missing link in your marketing ROI.  Sales enablement is pretty much what it sounds like: providing your sales org with info, content, and tools to sell more effectively.
   • One element that people often miss in implementing a sales enablement program is that you aren’t just providing marketing materials and buyer insights – you are also providing sales training and improvement.  Allowing marketing to lead in this space is not to undermine any sales leadership and training, only to complement it and support revenue generation.
5. Marketing Operations Manager
   • The conductor of your growth orchestra, Marketing Ops.  Technology, Data, Project Management, and most importantly, internal alignment.
   • This is your next VP/CMO, so get them on board now and train them well.

If this seems like a lot of new resource to add, be creative.  Many of these “roles” can begin as responsibilities within your current set of resources, giving your team members a chance to grow their skills and career path while allowing you to dip your toe in these important trends.   And that’s not the only option – almost any of these functions can be outsourced to a marketing partner, agency, freelancer, part-timer, or consultant (see what I did there).

Next week, we’ll take a look at how to find that perfect marketing partner.

Squad up,

Julie

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