Inbound Marketing is a collaborative effort. It is incredibly difficult to successfully market for your company if you are a one-person team. There are simply too many processes to manage. It’s virtually impossible to take ownership of all of them to operate them to high standards.
If you are looking to build an inbound marketing team, you will need internal support in the management of the multiple marketing channels.
In this blog article, we will discuss four of the most essential roles needed for an inbound marketing team and their responsibilities.
Marketing Director
What is a Marketing Director?
The marketing director is the highest level position for a small internal marketing team. They are responsible for setting the big picture goal of the marketing department and aligning the strategy to achieve that goal. They set budgets and develop key performance metrics for each of the channels currently being used for marketing. This person generally signs off on final project approval before any marketing campaign effort goes live.
What Skills Does a Marketing Director need?
A marketing director needs to be well versed in all the facets of marketing. They need to understand how every marketing channel works and how they relate to each other in terms of performance.
Marketing directors need 10 to 12 years of hands-on experience in marketing. Most large companies require their marketing directors to have an MBA degree.
The marketing director needs to be analytical and an innovator. They should be able to dive into the analytics of marketing campaigns, draw conclusions, and make the necessary adjustments to further optimize efforts. This person should also have great ideas that could trigger the creativity of their coworkers on their team.
Communication skills are also very important. The director needs to be able to communicate clearly with the team about the overall objective of the marketing department. They should also be able to communicate results to upper management and be able to pitch their company to potential partners as well.
They need to be great leaders and be able to challenge their teams. Also, they should be a source of knowledge and help to mentor the team.
Why are Marketing Director’s important?
Having a great marketing director is important because they control the direction of all marketing processes for the company. If the marketing director is incompetent, you can expect to struggle to market the company’s products effectively.
Email Marketing Manager
What is an Email Marketing Manager?
The email marketing manager is responsible for all email correspondence for your company. They build out email marketing plans and execute them. These individuals are also responsible for creating automated workflows to target customers based on their behavior. After email campaigns, they analyze and make adjustments to further optimize efforts in the future.
What Skills Does an Email Marketing Manager need?
This person should be very familiar with everything related to email marketing.
An email marketing manager should know what a great email looks like. There should be knowledgeable in how to code in HTML and CSS and how to build out email templates manually. If they are not too familiar with coding, they should have a workaround to build a nice email template.
Their writing ability should be superb as well. Many times a good email can be ruined by grammatical and spelling mistakes. Overall, their copy should be well written with the end goal of the reader to take the desired action.
A background in sales tools like CRMs and basic sales methodologies like the sales cycle is critical. This person should be able to parse data in the CRM and create lists or segments to target specific messages to. They should understand how to cater to messages based on where a user is in the sales cycle as well. With all the information present within the CRM and guidance from the Marketing Director, they should be able to generate a successful email marketing plan.
Why are Email Marketing Managers Important?
Contrary to popular belief, email marketing is a very effective way to get sales conversions. You have your customer’s email address, all you need to do is knock on their door and give them a good offer they cannot refuse. With a good email marketer onboarded, you can expect your sales to grow exponentially.
Content Marketing Manager
What is a Content Marketing Manager?
The content marketing manager is the driver behind all the content used by the marketing team. They create blogs, infographics, and other forms of content designed to attract, engage, and delight customers. The content manager is responsible for creating an overall content plan and should also maintain a database of all the content available for use. They should be able to determine the success or failure of content based on bounce rates and click-through rates.
What skills do Content Marketing Managers need?
The one skill that content managers need the most is research. They need to go in and find out what your customer’s problems are and offer a solution to them. They can achieve this by looking at search queries where your website shows up on the search engines and analyzing the most common phrases.
This individual should also know how to create content that will rank on the search engines. Content is great to have especially when it has a long shelf life. If you constantly create short-term content, you will run the risk of burning yourself out trying to think of ideas all the time. Create content that will work for your business.
The Content Marketing Manager needs to be creative as well. They should have an understanding of how to use Adobe Creative Suite. Their ideas need to make it from the initial brainstorming session to the final product as clear and concise as possible.
Why are Content Marketing Managers important?
The content marketing manager is vital to the long-term survival of the marketing department. Their content fuels all the other channels’ initiatives.
Having a great content manager will allow you the most optimal ability to attract as many potential customers as possible.
Best of all, this is free marketing. Content marketing for the most part is free of cost except for the time you put in trying to create content. The more time you work on content, the more you will get from it.
Social Media Manager
What is a Social Media Manager?
The social media manager is responsible for all the social media channels for the company. They should be very familiar with all the social media tools currently being used and can properly recommend the correct channels your company should be on. This person has to be up to date with all the latest trends in social media and be able to act quickly.
What skills do they need?
They should be able to craft a well-thought-out social media plan to entertain and draw potential customers to your business and become followers.
Just like an email marketer, their writing ability needs to be very good to attract followers to commit the desired action.
They also need to be analytic to assess how they can better position the company brand on social media to guarantee maximum returns.
Social Media Managers also need to have a grasp on running paid social media campaigns.
Why are they important?
Social Media is usually one of the first places a new customer will see your company. So it’s important to make a good first impression.
A great social media manager will have your social media channels well polished and positively reflect your brand.
What To Do If You Missing One of These Essential Roles?
If you are missing someone to manage these marketing channels, you can simply reach out to an inbound marketing agency like Tommy Cat Media, to fill the void while you try to fill in the position internally.
Conclusion
When starting an inbound marketing team, these 4 roles will serve as the lifeblood to your inbound marketing strategy. If you are missing a cog to your team, don’t be afraid to reach out to inbound marketing agencies (Like Tommy Cat Media) to come in and fill the void until you find someone that can take on the role internally.
