From silos to synergy: six principles for structuring modern marketing teams

When I started in marketing and PR, two related things stood out. Firstly, the structures of marketing departments were pretty simple. You might have someone responsible for PR and communications, another for events, one for advertising (if you were big enough), one for publications/print, and potentially one for working with your channel. Everything else was lumped into a general marketing bucket, meaning people were expected to be able to handle a wide variety of tasks in their day-to-day job. Second, there was a lack of specialised technology used to underpin the marketing function, with at best, marketers using Microsoft Word and maybe even Excel to run operations.

Since then, as in many functions, digitalisation has transformed both of these. From being a profession where some saw email as a bit radical, marketing has dramatically expanded its use of technology to find, acquire, nurture and close leads, and, importantly, to measure the impact of marketing spend. The range of skills required has also blossomed. From the first catch-all ‘digital marketers,’ roles have become much more specialised to cover areas such as the web, SEO, SEA, lead nurturing and video content. At the same time, other roles have expanded to cover wider areas – I started in PR and now most of what I do is ‘content’, writing materials for use across the customer funnel and beyond.

All of this begs the question for Chief Marketing Officers – how do you organise your team and resources when there are so many things you can do, and so many areas you can potentially focus on? Based on working with a number of clients over the years, I’ve identified that there’s no ‘one size fits all’ approach, but that the most successful marketing organisations are structured and managed on six key principles:

1???????????????? Match customer needs

Organizations have different overall objectives. For many in the private sector, it is about growth by winning and retaining customers, while for the public sector it is about delivering the services that citizens want, cost-effectively. Marketing, and how it is organised, should reflect these overall objectives. Deciding what your company needs is a shiny new app is completely pointless if none of your customers have a smartphone, for example. You need to be where your customers are, and that should shape the skills and roles required. Bear in mind that you have multiple customers – the people that buy your products, but also internal customers (sales, employees, HR) that you have to deliver for.

2???????????????? Keep a strategic perspective

Linked to the idea of meeting the needs of your customer is ensuring someone has the overall focus on what your objectives are, and how you are going to meet them. This shouldn’t be the CMO themself, but someone with operational responsibilities. They need to have a foot in two camps – close enough to day-to-day activities to know what is going on, and strategic enough to lead. It is a difficult role to pull off, but absolutely vital to joining-up marketing.

3???????????????? Avoid silos

The danger of having a large marketing team, each responsible for specific parts of the marketing journey, is obvious – silos. People can become so focused on their own piece of the puzzle that they don’t see that the overall design isn’t delivering on objectives. Activities get dropped when they should be handed over, and opportunities are missed. Two things are crucial here – good communication and workflow technology that everyone uses. Have regular meetings to update the wider team on progress and explain early – and clearly - what you’ll need from them and what deadlines are coming up. Back this up with tech that lets you easily track projects, loop others in, and share resources. In my opinion less is more when it comes to applications for marketing management. Pick one solution and stick with it, rather than adding the latest whizzy app – it may be free, but if it complicates people’s lives it will cost you in terms of lost productivity.

4???????????????? Review organizational structures regularly

Reorganization can be painful, particularly as humans are intrinsically suspicious of change. So, the tendency is that if a structure works, just keep it in place. However, the world is not static – new technologies (think AI), new opportunities and new threats keep popping up. Marketing leaders need to understand the impact these can have on the structures and skills they have in place and be ready to implement change when necessary. Part of this is about creating the right culture within marketing – if people are flexible, willing to learn and agile it will make reorganisations much simpler.

5???????????????? Measure everything

One of the benefits of technology is that it makes it much easier to measure the impact of marketing spend on specific activities, track the number of leads handed over to sales, or how many customers have increased their spend due to specific campaigns. Marketing leaders need to set clear KPIs in conjunction with other senior management and monitor progress over time. This requires greater openness and collaboration with other departments – if a campaign doesn’t deliver results then be honest about it, learn and improve.

6???????????????? Look widely to fill skills gaps

To cover every area of marketing with a specialist would require enormous teams, even for the smallest company. Organise yourself to group together similar skills or needs to ensure your people are kept busy and productive, while investing in training to keep their knowledge up to date. Where you don’t have the right skills, or can’t afford to recruit a full-time person, tap into external freelancers. They can fill gaps, bring experience from working with other companies, and are cost-effective as they don’t have to be permanently employed. Make them part of the team as much as possible, so that they can contribute properly, growing your capabilities and supporting your objectives.

Personally, I think this is an incredibly interesting and important time to be involved in marketing. Meeting ever-changing customer needs requires a combination of the right strategy, skills and organisation if you are to meet objectives, and with the growth of new technologies such as GenAI, the challenges - and rewards - are only going to increase.