Every company needs to put more emphasis on its marketing campaigns and strategies not only to get ahead of the competition but to keep the business operational. Marketing is no longer an optional endeavor for businesses but has become a staple and fundamental element integral to business growth. With its absence, any scale or type of business can easily fail.
Therefore, it’s crucial to build an in-house marketing team as early as you can. Whether you just recently launched a startup or want to combine an outsource and an internal marketing department, now’s the time to take that leap of faith. The best strategy is to continue to rely on digital media agencies for specific marketing tasks but assemble an in-house marketing team for other activities.
To get you started, here are some steps and ways to form your in-house marketing department:
- Segregate Marketing Roles
As mentioned, you can continually rely on the support of media agencies despite launching an in-house marketing department. The key is delegating different tasks to respective teams and segregating such roles. One advantage of having an in-house team is that it becomes easier to communicate and share marketing tactics with company members and stakeholders. After all, they are the ones who know what’s best for the company.
However, your new marketing team cannot immediately take over all the work. In fact, there are complex marketing and media tasks that are better left to the experts. That’s why it’s best to continue outsourcing some marketing activities from digital media agencies.
Consider all the things that need to be done, and delegate them accordingly to each member in respective teams. When delegating marketing tasks, it is crucial to define what your agency and team will be responsible for. Identify the scope of the decision-making power each team has. There should be business aspects wherein the third-party company can have the liberty and flexibility to decide about. But they should come with limitations and restrictions.
Some of the tasks may require approval only from the executive team, but the marketing team will be kept in the loop. The best alternative is establishing a marketing team member who can be a middleman between the third-party agency and the company. In this role, a member of the marketing team interacts with the agency, gaining an understanding of previous campaigns, results, and planned campaigns. And they’ll be the ones to relay these tactics to the internal marketing department, heads, management, and stakeholders.
- Delegate A Marketing Manager
There should be an organized way of establishing and implementing marketing plans within the company. The best way to achieve this is to hire a marketing manager or choose one from your internal pool of talents. Their primary role is to overlook all the marketing activities. A marketing manager has the following responsibilities:
- Conduct marketing research
- Analyze trends and customer preferences
- Develop marketing strategies and budgets
- Create marketing materials and content
- Perform other necessary tasks to increase sales
Hire someone who has excellent communication and leadership skills. They should be approachable and knowledgeable of the marketing industry. And ultimately, they need to make sure that departmental goals are achieved. You can hire one marketing manager or more if the department is too big to be managed by one.
- Invest In Training
To ensure quality performance and productivity, you should invest in training for your in-house marketing team. This allows them to learn a detailed understanding of your business needs. They can understand more about your target market, study industry competition, and create effective strategies to gain a competitive edge.
Training can be done internally, or you can hire a third-party vendor who can provide training and workshops to all marketing members. It should be clear to your new in-house staff what they need to do after completing training. While this may require an initial investment, you’ll likely see short and long-term results.
- Create Subgroups In A Marketing Team
A marketing team should entail different subgroups in charge of different marketing elements. Consider creating one to three members of each subgroup of the following:
- Social Media
The social media manager’s role is crucial to any marketing team’s success. Today, social media plays a role in all businesses. Assign marketing members who are keen on reading trends on social media and are good at managing various social media platforms.
- SEO And Data Analytics
SEO is a must for your business to rank in search engines. There are many reasons why you should care about SEO. Employ an SEO expert who knows how to make your content and website rank higher than the competition.
In line with SEO, you should also recruit a data analyst who can analyze the data and all relevant information online. They should have unparalleled expertise in data analytics and marketing. In addition to industry experience, the successful candidate must have a broad understanding of market developments.
- Design
Ideally, a marketing firm’s designer should have technical skills and extensive industry knowledge. Creating online content is highly focused on design. Recruit several designers who are passionate, artistic, and creative. They should always think out of the box when devising marketing campaigns digitally and traditionally. Since designers usually work with other marketing members, they should be patient and communicative.
- Content
A large portion of your marketing strategies depends on content. Hence, having a separate subgroup in charge of this is ideal. It is imperative that a content team is efficient and creative. After all, they can make or break your marketing outcomes. This team should comprise the best content writers, creators, digital media experts, and so on.
- Hire Skilled Marketers
Finally, ensure to focus on skills and expertise when building an in-house marketing team. Some candidates claim to be marketers and may perform greatly during interviews, only to disappoint you when they’re finally onboarded.
Before hiring marketers, check their skills through tests or portfolios. Aside from technical skills, ensure that you hire a good candidate equipped with the most important soft skills for your company. They need to be polite, professional, and easy to work with.
Conclusion
To build a successful in-house marketing team, you must devote a lot of time and build strategies to hire the right staff and delegate roles. You can apply the steps and ways above to complete launching a successful and productive in-house marketing department for your company.
