Building B2B Marketing Organizations
We often hear something like this from startup CEOs and other senior managers: “All we need is a good marketing manager who’ll educate the market, generate demand and leads, drive agencies and contractors, have expertise in relevant marketing platforms, generate quality marketing content, manage PR and analyst relations, handle tradeshows, and bring the sales team lots of ready-to-close opportunities.”
Think we’re overstating the case? Just have a look at ads for digital marketing managers, and the laundry list of skill and experience requirements they include. Good luck finding that all-around manager who can do it all, and on a shoestring budget too…
So how do you build a winning marketing function?
Work methodically, guided by corporate objectives, and draw as much as possible on our expertise and experience recruiting and mentoring marketing teams and departments.
Include these basic functions in even the most minimalistic of marketing teams. In some cases, one individual can undertake more than one role
Responsible for developing content and customizing it for multiple relevant channels and platforms (digital, traditional, inbound, outbound…). At very early stages this role is also responsible for marcom and social media functions.
Deploys and operates essential marketing infrastructure – website, direct mail, CRM, marketing automation, online store, analytics (extremely important!), external interfaces (e.g., channel partner systems) and of course, events and tradeshows.
Tasked with characterizing and communicating the offering’s value – both inhouse and externally, train and coach the sales force, develop and optimize product messaging and value propositions for the full spectrum of target markets (geographical, demographic, buyer personas, analysts, distribution and technology partners, and so on.)
So how do you build a winning marketing function?
