How to Build Best in Class Marketing Teams

So you’re a company founder or CEO who wants to hire a new director or head of marketing? Do you have what it takes to attract, lead and retain the best marketers? Here’s how to set yourself up for success.

Many structures exist of how to build the best marketing teams, like Gary Varynechuk’s math person, art person, video person and written word person, or Chris Walker’s architect, distributor, creative and subject matter expert, but in order to be successful in hiring and retaining top marketing talent, I recommend founders and CEOs take a step back to ensure their company is actually ready for building best in class marketing teams by revisiting, perhaps redefining, and aligning the executive team on what the fundamental purpose of marketing is in the organization.?

How can you build a great marketing team if you’re not aligned on what marketing is really supposed to do?

Through my 20 years experience running a design and marketing agency, to learning hard lessons at several of my own startups, and working in house as a director and head of marketing on both the brand and performance side, I’ve drawn insights that can help founders and CEOs attract and build the best in class marketing teams they dream of.?

If you’re a CEO and define marketing’s purpose as “getting more traffic”, “driving qualified leads to the sales team”, “acquiring more customers to drive growth” or “acquiring new customers at the best price” you’ll likely fall short in hiring or retaining marketing talent, and not achieve the growth and profitability goals you aspire to.

These common summaries of the role of marketing don’t take into account the financial aptitude needed in marketing as well as the emotional intelligence to build long term trust and value internally with employees, and externally with customers.

Let’s dissect a few other mainstream definitions before looking at a new definition of marketing’s fundamental purpose:

1. The famous Peter Drucker wrote in The Essential Drucker, “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself. The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.” ?Probably one of the simplest and strongest definitions, but more focused on selling, it lacks attention to the management of marketing costs which can derail a company’s growth trajectory if marketing spends more than the company can afford.
2. Caroline Forsey at Hubspot states in this article that “the fundamental purpose of marketing is to attract consumers to your brand through messaging”. Hubspot has done well with SEO marketing here to rank high on a Google search of ‘the purpose of marketing’ for the masses, but a company could spend $1M attracting 500 people for a $50 product through messaging and one could, and should, conclude that only attracting consumers through messaging, is not the purpose of marketing. Cost management, value and trust are absent from this definition.
3. Andrew Stephen wrote on Forbes.com that “the fundamental purpose of marketing revolves around creating value for people, which typically means customers.” Value creation is necessary but typically owned by the product and marketing teams working together on delivering products or services, and doing so to provide value, or at least perceived value. Value creation is not the only purpose of marketing teams, sitting between product and sales teams, though product is something they can, and frankly must, influence, if permitted.

Let me propose a definition that hopefully is simple and complete enough that it resonates. Part of it might seem familiar.

The purpose of marketing is to deliver the right message, to the right people, at the right time, at the right cost, so as to build trust.

Let’s break this definition down to fully grasp it.

Marketing must deliver the right message.

Brand and product marketing teams start by honing in on key messages by focusing on the core values of the company and the benefits of products or services, while ensuring, most importantly, that these values are aligned with those of their prospective customers. Segmentation, positioning, value propositions, and go-to-market strategies all stem from the craft of messaging. Strategists, writers and designers attempt to communicate to a prospect what the company or product stands for, why its products or services will benefit the prospect, and why they should therefore be purchased over another company’s.?

Performance or demand generation marketing teams then test and optimize variants of these key messages to fine tune the language that resonates with each of their customer segments. These refined messages appear in the combinations of hooks, headlines, copy, images and videos and all the creative advertising, articles and experiences we commonly associate with marketing.

Where companies often fall short in messaging is by talking about themselves and their products. Me, me, me vs you, you, you. Taking the time to understand customer’s pains and problems and being truly customer centric in messaging is only the first step to success.

Marketing must deliver to the right person.

Understanding who the ideal customer is requires various skill sets. An empathetic and human relationship to people allows marketers to understand the pains and problems they face, which helps shape products and services, and align messaging. An analytical, data-driven view of customer cohorts and campaigns might identify which customer segments are creating the most value in terms of sales or which are spreading the most word through their engagement and perhaps a source of long term value.

The right person must however not only purchase the product but they must evangelize it. The influence of marketing on shaping the product or service is critical here. In addition to product led marketing, evangelism marketing is an advanced form of word-of-mouth marketing in which companies develop customers who believe so strongly in a particular product or service that they freely try to convince others to buy and use it. Few companies do it well. The product or service ‘sells itself’ as Drucker suggested, because the right person received the right message, and that message created trust and ignited their passion.

Ever watched the documentary ‘The Rise and Fall of LuLaRoe’. That is trust and passion ignited. But yet, they failed after making billions. What was missing??They broke trust by losing their grip on product quality (though trust can be broken in many other ways). As a result, the customers they thought were the right people who trusted them, were no longer. In fact they became the voice driving the company’s downfall.

So through qualitative interviews, observations, human connection, quantitative analysis and insights, and product led marketing, a clear understanding of the right person and the right messaging is gained. But timing of delivery is key.

Marketing must deliver at the right time.

Marketing funnels were developed as a framework for identifying the optimal timing in different channels, ranging from modern channels like paid social, search, or live streaming, to traditional advertising like out of home, TV and radio. Prospecting, retargeting and retention campaigns all identify different groups for different messaging at different stages of the decision making journey.?

Great marketing teams begin to set themselves apart by guiding prospects through this journey without the prospects even knowing it is a crafted experience. Marketers craft key messaging, identify the right people, and test and optimize the channels and funnels to deliver at the right time. Click through rates increase, cost per acquisition decreases, social comments roll in, the conversations are engaging, the brand is alive and known.

All good right?

But yet even the most crafty and creative marketing teams can still make costly mistakes to seal their fate. Best in class teams need to do more than deliver the right messaging for the right people at the right time.

Marketing must deliver at the right cost.

A typical marketing director or VP job posting will seek someone creative enough to oversee messaging, customer segmentation and brand campaigns, but also analytical enough to measure growth metrics like paid vs organic traffic costs, ROAS, conversion rates and average order value. But being analytical and creative doesn’t necessarily mean they are able to focus on the right costs. Amongst metrics to focus on, Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) and Long Term Value (LTV) rank top, with the most important growth and sustainability indicator to monitor and improve being the LTV:CAC ratio.?

This is where I’ve seen many companies fail in their marketing efforts because they fail to understand these key financial performance metrics, or if they do understand them in theory, they don’t focus on them in practice. Too high of a ratio and you’re not spending enough and limiting growth, too low and you’re spending too much and sealing your own marketing team’s fate.?

I often see great founders, COOs and CEOs get lost in the sea of modern metrics, shiny analytical tools and data studios, paralyzing their marketing team’s focus and creativity, by having them analyze the wrong data and not focus on fundamentals. Why is our CTR and CPC up today? Why did conversion rates change this month? Did we get a million social followers? Are we doing well on CPA??All these marketing questions just lead to marketing confusion.

STOP!

For specialists on marketing teams these might be metrics to look at but if you are directing marketing from the top, don’t fall for these traps. Let’s remember that the surviving corporate giants of today were built back in the day when computers didn’t even exist. They kept it simple and it worked.?

A big tree fundamentally needs water, sun and and the right earth to thrive. Not one hundred different things measured and optimized each day.

Managing the financial side of marketing, its water, is probably the most important and under assessed skill in a marketing leader. Don’t overlook it for the other requirements of creativity and analytical skills.

In addition to creativity and analytical skills, a marketing leader must understand financial management and create trust to ensure its team's success.

And finally, marketing must build trust.

Short term paid social campaigns, optimized Google ads, creative infomercials, or direct response Clickfunnel sales funnels can entertain, educate and persuade people to buy a product TODAY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST. “What clever marketing” we often think.?

But these kinds of marketing campaigns don’t usually build enough consumer trust to create long term value. Here today, gone tomorrow is the narrative of most of these companies. Short term campaigns might use tactics such as tapping into people’s fears and vulnerabilities with limited time offers, buy it or lose it messaging, or money back offers that seem to eliminate risk, but these tactics often can’t be repeated over again without losing trust.

Trust has to start within the company.

To build trust requires a level of authenticity that many companies fail to achieve and fewer even aspire to. Trust has to start within the company with employees as they are often the most powerful messaging vehicles. Only then does the brand’s voice authentically reach the customer. Communication transparency, openness to diversity of opinions and ideas, performance based rewards, constructive peer reviews, conflict management to deliver breakthroughs from breakdowns, and the simple but often missing managerial ability to connect with other humans, are cultural settings required to attract, retain and foster the best marketers.

As a company leader if you can focus marketing’s purpose on delivering the right message, to the right people, at the right time, at the right cost, so as to build trust amongst employees and customers, you’ll be able to pat yourself and your marketing leaders on the back for truly delivering best in class marketing and creating long term value.

If you're on the look out for new growth marketing leadership I'm always up for a chat.