Crafting an All-Star Marketing Team

Having served in a marketing capacity in a handful of industries, a wide range of company sizes, and several different approaches to segmentation or decentralization, I've seen the full spectrum of team organization. Some teams are understaffed and unable to get their message out. Some have too many members or no clear differentiation of responsibility, resulting in dwindling efforts. But sometimes, you strike just the right mix of members with their own areas of expertise to really shine! To that end, I've compiled a list of the nine different areas of expertise your marketing team needs to make great strides in their united efforts. When you have all of these parties working together, you can absolutely make marketing magic happen.

This isn't to say that you shouldn't grow past these nine. As your organization flourishes and your marketing efforts increase, let each of these primary experts build their own team and grow in their capacity to serve your company best.

Startup organizations will not be able to fill all these initially, and that's alright, but it is important to note the variety of skillsets that need to be filled and keep watch for when the project list grows too big, which will require additional dedicated headcount.

Even for large organizations, you likely won't always have all these roles filled at the same time, because your All-Star Team is going to get a lot of outside attention by working smoothly together. It is crucial that they share enough time and information with each other that they can pick up the pieces temporarily if one of them departs. You should also be constantly surveying for signs of burnout. The kind of harmonious flow they will naturally get into can only be sustained for so long before a mental break will be needed. Sometimes, they may want to wear each others' shoes for a short time, and this should be encouraged to avoid the negative situations of either burnout or gaps in knowledge share.

A Celebrity. This person will act as the public face of your campaign efforts. He or she will be featured in the main pitch videos, media interviews, thought leadership pieces, from written articles to lectures at trade events. In general, they take the spotlight in efforts to garner industry support. This person has to be emotionally invested in the company. They need to be intelligent, eloquent, humble, genuine. Being witty or "quick on the draw" may also be important in public speaking. They should be a credible expert in your product or service, working tirelessly to build momentum in the planning, launch, implementation, and wrap-up phases of each campaign. This could be the CEO or an executive of your company, but oftentimes, this role is most fitting for other charismatic and passionate members of your team, leaving your executive's time better spent managing investors or other board-level initiatives. Regardless of official company title, they are likely your team manager. Alternatively, this can be an outside expert who is well-recognized to lead public efforts; their name adds credibility to your program and helps kick things off to accelerate your launch and adoption in the marketplace.

This skillset can be rare in the technical world, so they will likely be the most highly compensated member of the team, as they will be hotly pursued by other organizations. It will be tough to hold on to them forever because they will naturally grow their skillset and expertise, which will lead them elsewhere. This growth benefits the industry and your internal teams as a whole, as they leave their impressive fingerprints everywhere they go; it should be encouraged. For a company that wishes to keep their celebrity long-term, it is important to have a constant conversation with them regarding what they are working for, because at this level, it likely isn't just for money. It may not even be something on your HR team's list of conceived benefits. Then, and this is important, you have to give them what they ask for.

While this individual will take the lead on publicly-facing initiatives, each subsequent member below might at times wish to use their unique fields of expertise to share public messages highlighting their insights and perspective, and this should not be discouraged. It only serves to bolster your entire team's visibility as a group of experts, which builds customer credibility and leaves you covered in case your Celebrity moves on.

A Campaign Manager. This is arguably one of the most important roles, while usually being someone who most easily fades into the background. They're the man behind the curtain who is actually running the show. They plan, organize, and manage the grand plans and day-to-day logistics for a campaign's entirety, making sure everything goes off without a hitch. They review the market research and data other members find, attend all the events to stay up to date on all the trends, they identify all the ways your company can speak to those trends, then they orchestrate the full schedule of promotional activity where the Celebrity can stand up and make magic happen. They should also be able to serve as a Publicist or PR Manager, though those responsibilities are arguably best suited for an agency.

A Wizard. Oftentimes, your Celebrity is not the technical wizard behind your products and services, but the person who is sitting right behind him and whispering in his ear needs to be. This person will be there to answer the tough questions about how you're going to carry through on your commitments, leaving the celebrity to address questions and details at a higher-level. The Expert will understand what you can and can't commit to. They provide the product specs, development timelines, and technical explanations which lend credibility to your entire organization. The best ones know how to educate others, are fluent in industry operational practices, and gifted enough at writing about technical details that they can easily convert their advanced knowledge into easily digestible information.

A Handler, aka Event Planner. There is so much involved in running an event, whether a trade show display, conference participation, or customer appreciation activity. Hire one person to oversee it all, which will rob other strategic members of your team of their focused attention in critical areas. This person will share the calendar of plans and needs with the Campaign Manager, who in turn will primarily ensure that there is a seamless strategic approach and the content, materials, and experts to support it. The Event Planner must be Type-A oriented, because the level of oversight required to not miss a single detail needs someone's full and complete attention. This has to be someone with the freedom and willingness to travel and to work odd hours. Events are "low-hanging fruit" in the marketing world--easy to commit to with firm deadlines, but then costly in terms of all resources (time, money, staff). The planning for events is a chaotic mess of mostly mundane administrative needs, mostly driven by frustrating internal requests, so this person will have to be a trooper and may or may not require you feeding him drinks, publicly thanking her for her dedication, or some other combination of buying them out of their misery and rewarding them for their endurance. If you can minimize your internal team's demands on them, you will empower them to shine, because deep down, they really love what they do, the rush as they put the perfect finishing touches on right before the event doors open, the victorious feel of teamwork and project management, and having created engaging and memorable moments with customers.

A Lobbyist. This individual will serve the team as an external regulations expert to oversee product compliance. They will continuously keep an eye on the standards your products will need to conform to, while internally sharing what data your organization will need to be publicly sharing to meet these criteria. Because this often involves intensive study, this may require more time than the Wizard has available, but the two will work side-by-side daily to knowledge share, then to educate others on the team so they can speak to both industry standards and internal compliance in a conversational manner. This may also require discussions with firms engaged in actual legal and lobbying activity, depending on the extent to which your products are used and accepted by the general public.

A Creative. I highly recommend bringing in an in-house designer to oversee your brand, logos, graphics, presentations, documentation, videos, web design, advertising, email campaigns, and anything else I might have left off. If you work within a large organization that is segmented, this means you should have dedicated support that has the latest corporate brand materials and knows all the rules they have to follow. This individual needs to work all these elements to deliver content that the Campaign Strategist has coordinated and scheduled. They work through graphic assets to ensure a consistent design, look, and feel exist through all your materials. This is the first area you should build further, bringing in different types of creative designers who can always present cutting-edge materials that attract attention and leave memorable impressions on your viewers.

An IT Manager. This individual has the digital expertise to make the creative assets and communications work in the background and collect market data. They need to be part "IT guy," part web developer, and part data analyst. They need to be up to date with the latest marketing metrics, technology management methods, coding, etc. They are the ones who will make sure your web updates don't cause display issues across different platforms, your email campaign formats properly, your digital materials ethically collect customer data, and CRM systems manage it. Whatever digital integration needs to happen, they're fighting the good fight to get it done.

A Data Scientist. This person collects market intelligence for a specific purpose. They are naturally inquisitive and intelligent. They set out with curiosity to learn and understand all that they can about your industry, customers, operating practices, mergers and acquisitions, and more. They can benefit the campaign strategist by providing keyword terms, trend data, and customer insights. They will review customer data and web analytics with the Technology Manager. They will help form your strategy for products and services alongside the Expert.

?A Connector. These are influential individuals, internally as well as external to your organization. They have access to a vast network of important people who have access to money and ideas, especially internally. They network constantly, have likely been with your company for years, and always know who to call. While they may not lead brainstorming strategies, they can quickly grasp them and use their network to build momentum by gaining signoff from internal stakeholders, motivating and inspiring action across your team, securing budget to implement your most ambitious goals, and report successes and victories to all parties as they occur. This personal also relieves some of the day-to-day administrative discussions, freeing up your team to charge ahead on their own areas of expertise. Externally, they will manage partnerships and joint marketing efforts to build opportunities that span across the industry to elevate your service capabilities. This person would also be good to fill the role of team manager.

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Melissa Reali-Elliott has spent over 15 years marketing digital technologies. Her marketing efforts have supported organizations specializing in gaming software, IoT, RFID, supply chain, and power distribution to utility markets, including smart grid and microgrid applications, as well as industry verticals such as data centers, oil & gas, metal refineries, and food & bev. She is accomplished at developing and implementing innovative marketing, branding, and messaging programs that improve market position and drive demand generation, as well as inspire customer and industry engagement with a brand.

If you are just landing on this series, the background for its creation is in the first post here . The gist is that the data center industry where Melissa specializes does not have many formally-trained marketers dedicated to it and many of those that actually are are newer to industry. She wants to use her years of experience to help bridge the gap between industry influencers and technical marketers.

A general closing note from Melissa: In my efforts to share experiences and data that help others in the data center space to improve their marketing efforts, I often use both positive and negative examples, some of which will be from companies I have personally worked for or done business with. No anecdote will reveal proprietary information that can be tied to a company. Neither will I cite an organization I have worked for by name. While none are perfect, these companies have been fundamental to my success and have provided my life’s work. I respect them too much to attribute public criticism to their brands, though it is inevitable that those who have worked alongside me will pick up on certain references.