A Blueprint for Online Success: The Definitive Guide to Structuring Your Ecommerce Team

The great thing about ecommerce is that it provides endless ways to connect with and engage customers.

The challenge is bringing value to all those touchpoints by managing all the digital technology and business processes to make ecommerce a win-win for buyer and seller.

But building an ecommerce business and loyal customer base requires a critical first step: putting together a team that understands all the crucial elements of a successful and growth-spurring ecommerce strategy, from marketing and customer acquisition to customer experience, order fulfillment and customer service.

To be effective, all of these operations must work together, sharing data for more efficient and personalized ways of serving customers. That operating level isn’t easy. To make it all work optimally, you need an organizational structure that’s clearly defined, productive, and brings out the best that each department and team member can contribute.

During my 35+ years as a marketing/ecommerce recruiter, I’ve had the opportunity to work with thousands of online businesses, both B2B and B2C. I’ve placed executive ecommerce leaders and helped recruit and hire entire ecommerce teams for clients ranging from Fortune 100 companies all the way down to early-stage companies and brand-new start-ups.

During my client kick-off calls, I am often asked to share my insights on ecommerce organizational structure, a topic I write about frequently. Over the decades I’ve seen what organizational structures work and which don’t. I’ve seen owners scale up their ecommerce businesses to great success while others crash and burn. ?

The stakes are high: In-house ecommerce departments can be complex machines with many moving parts covering various responsibilities, including product, brand and content, marketing, trading and conversion, operations and fulfillment. A misdirected, outdated or less efficacious structure can result in unnecessary ambiguity, confusion, and lack of accountability.

Many employers figure out their ecommerce organizational structure as they go. But they often shoot from the hip as they switch from focusing on markets to products to competitors, rather than stepping back and looking at the bigger picture. As a result, their efforts often result in piecemeal changes that overlook — or overlap — staff and department responsibilities. Such organizational confusion can cause people and business functions to work against one another. Even worse, business functions become totally misaligned with a company’s overall business objectives.

For example, let’s say one of a B2B company’s key objectives is to build customer loyalty by recommending products that would help customers do their jobs better. If the teams responsible for recommending products through website cross-selling pitches or emailed promotions pitch the wrong products because they’re not tied in with the buyer’s sales history or contract terms, those targeted buyers may feel they’ve wasted their time and seek another online supplier.

That’s a loss that an effective organizational structure would have turned into a win by providing customers what they needed.

Many flavors of Organizational Charts

I have never seen two org charts that look the same: There is no one universal answer for how to organize around ecommerce. But there is one irrefutable fact: It’s all about the people you hire. They will make your business, or break it. The structure is no better than the people who work it. The trick is putting the right people into the right places at the right time.

This article will help you do that.

The Ecosystem of Ecommerce

For HR professionals and others who have limited experience hiring ecommerce specialists, let me first provide some basic definitions. When I sit down and work with companies on ecommerce organizational design, I like to think in terms of the “front-end” of the ecommerce business (which is my focus) versus the “back-end.” This helps me to compartmentalize the major key roles. Front-end functions would include the following:

? Front End Development: Site architecture, site features and functions, front-end integrations, site testing, quality assurance (QA), user acceptance testing (UAT), asset upload, content management system (CMS).

? Merchandising: Manage and own the site calendar, planning and buying, pricing, site merchandising, manage online categories).

? Creative: Site creative guidelines, UX, UI (sometimes these functions report up to Development), features, editorial design, copywriting, design for marketing assets.

? Marketing: Site promotion strategy, SEO, SEM, display, affiliate, social, programmatic, email, vendor management, brand marketing, content.

By contrast, back-end operations would include such areas as enterprise resource planning software for managing customer and financial records; payment processing, order fulfillment and returns; fraud and tax calculations; and customer service, chat, and issue escalation and settlement.

We all know the engines of an ecommerce business: Attracting customers to the website, converting them into customers once they’re there, fulfilling orders and offering customer service, and turning first-time customers into repeat buyers.

Eventually, an ecommerce business will grow to the size where it will need specialists to take responsibility for these functions. And even though ecommerce as we know it is barely 25 years old, it’s already taking on whole new directions.

One client I know, a global multichannel consumer products corporation, has all but eliminated its ecommerce team and now draws in strategists, marketers, creatives, analysts, IT, pretty much everything the ecommerce channel needs from across the organization and utilizes them as sort of internal “contractors” to come in and help out as needed.

They claim it gives the divisional general manager the flexibility to re-allocate resources on very short notice and take advantage of market opportunities as they arise. Be that as it may, this represents the only such example of extreme ecommerce decentralization that I’ve seen in my practice.

Marketing Versus Operations

What’s the best ecommerce organizational structure for your business? That depends. Do you sell entirely online, or is ecommerce just one of your sales distribution channels?

If you’re a smaller pure-play, selling through a single digital channel, your ecommerce team should report up to your company’s owner or chief operator.

For those businesses that sell through multiple channels, ecommerce typically falls under marketing or operations. Only rarely—and I mean extremely rarely—should the ecommerce operation ever report up to IT, Finance, or any other department unless the business lacks a marketing or operational head.

When ecommerce began a sales channel in the 1990s, online companies often included it in the IT department because there was really nowhere else to put it.?They viewed ecommerce as a mostly IT channel, following a “build it and they will come” strategy with little marketing behind it. Even today, many companies in manufacturing, construction, and other industries still hold onto the outdated idea that ecommerce is an IT function. ?

But that mindset is fading as digital commerce becomes mainstream among old-line industries.

The decision to place ecommerce under marketing or operations in your ecommerce organizational structure often comes down to the nature of your company’s business.

When the Operations Team Takes the Lead

Suppose you have many thousands of SKUs, with varied and complex supply chain, fulfillment and customer service requirements. In that case, you’re probably a good candidate for having ecommerce roll up to operations. Supply chain, fulfillment and customer service functions often require supportive yet complex systems and processes that do not usually fit within a marketer’s skill set.

This skills gap leaves too many opportunities for the operational wheels to come off. I see this often on the B2B side among companies that manufacture highly customized, engineered products.

This whole question of marketing versus operations really comes down to the strengths of the owner/entrepreneur. If you have a strong marketing or sales background, and that’s really what you want to focus on, then it only makes sense to hire someone with a strong operational skill set.

At a certain point in your company’s maturity—say, roughly in the $5 million to $10 million annual revenue range—it’s time to consider bringing on a strong operator to take care of the systems and processes that have been sucking up your time.

When Marketing Takes the Lead

When does it make sense to have marketing run the ecommerce show?

I usually suggest marketing take the lead for any ecommerce business other than the kind I described above with complex supply chain, fulfillment and customer service operations.?

An operations-led structure best suits pure-play ecommerce businesses—or those that need to put at least as much focus on customer acquisition, conversion and retention as they do on product management, fulfillment and customer service. This business category includes business-to-consumer resellers in highly competitive consumer product categories that rely on search, email, social, affiliate, UX, conversion, retention and other marketing channels and strategies to drive traffic and retain customers.

Some of the best owners I have ever worked with are very strong operators. They can take complex operations and create repeatable systems and processes while they grow and scale.

Even better, they recognize their strengths and weaknesses. Some have little interest in figuring out the customer-facing “front end” of the business—i.e., site promotion strategy, search marketing, site search, product and promotional displays, affiliate marketing, social media exposure, programmatic email marketing, vendor management, creative content, user experience and multiple customer interface strategies, etc.

Instead, their skill is in building the best operating machine for the digital channels.

Marketing is the most common functional bucket containing ecommerce, but marketing dominance is not universally the case among companies and industries.?

In larger corporations, where there is often a strong reliance on software and other computer technology to serve up the ecommerce store, IT groups will sometimes take ownership of ecommerce. But an IT-led approach can come with challenges. While it’s great to have all that technology expertise in the driver’s seat, the tradeoff is less focus on marketing and less understanding of customer behavior. That result can be problematic in a world where the customer is in charge.

Your IT team may lead the way with state-of-the-art ecommerce technology, but if their overall strategy doesn’t start with an understanding of what B2B customers need to do their jobs better, they could be headed to a costly upgrade sooner than expected.

What about the merchandising team—should they run the B2B ecommerce business?

I’ve had clients who run consumer goods ecommerce businesses ask me if merchandising should run the online store. After all, they reason, without merchandise there is no business. They assert that in the brick-and-mortar retail world, the head merchant sits at the same table with the president, chief financial officer and other top executives.

But I explain to them that, while that all may be true for the retail chain shopping experience, the mantra of “sell it and they will come” is not a winning ecommerce strategy. In ecommerce, shoppers constantly receive digital pitches through email, social media and other means that let them instantly click to shop and buy. In that kind of business, marketing the product is more important than the product itself.

When figuring how to properly structure a business team, it’s critical to consider what a business must do to generate revenue.

My most successful ecommerce clients ask themselves what I call the “how” question: “How are we going to grow the business?” Then they structure their organization around the winning growth strategy.

Hiring Your First Ecommerce Head

Once you’ve determined which ecommerce organizational direction you’re taking—operational or marketing—your business requirements will dictate who you should hire first as you begin to develop your ecommerce organizational structure.

For Small Firms: An All-Around Doer. For many of my smaller clients (who I define as generating up to roughly $10 million in revenue), the ecommerce team starts with an ecommerce specialist, a hands-on, roll- up-your-sleeves “doer” with both marketing and operational experience. At this level, they may not have more than seven or eight years of experience, but that’s OK. It’s always better to hire someone slightly “up” to take on new challenges than to hire someone “down” to a position for which they’re over-qualified; you want to allow this person room to grow into the role over time.

Building an Operating Machine. For business owners whose personal passion is building the best operating machine, this first ecommerce hire should be someone who has multiple talents and skills. They should be able to run with the marketing and sales side of the business. And they should already have a grasp of digital marketing, customer experience and, perhaps, even brand positioning.

Every online business needs to attract visitors, convert them and retain them. So, this initial ecommerce hire should be a digital native with a creative mind, highly data-driven and analytical, with proven experience developing teams.

Manager, Director, Vice President? There are two ways to go here. For a small business, you might need someone at the Manager level, a professional who can manage ecommerce technology and operations and report to an owner who handles overall strategy and the profit-and-loss statements. For a midsize or large organization, you might need a Director or Vice President who gets more involved in setting strategy and has greater responsibility for financial performance while overseeing a staff of ecommerce professionals.

The Operations Manager Option

Hands-on project manager: By “Manager,” I’m referring to someone with roughly 7-12 years of experience in the areas just mentioned. You might be able to get by with someone at the lower end of that experience scale (and at a lower price tag) if they’re going to be reporting up to a President and/or owner who is a savvy and deeply engaged marketer.

In that scenario, this role essentially would be a hands-on project manager.

Hands-on and strategic: On the other hand, you might need someone who is both highly strategic and very hands-on. This hire should also have a demonstrated track record of successfully growing an online business. preferably to a size much larger than your existing business. They should know more than you do about the latest trends and best practices in digital commerce, have management and leadership experience, and be able to identify and direct outside resources.

Tickets to that rewarding hiring dance would typically start at the Senior Manager or Director level. Most Directors have anywhere from 10 to 20 years of experience. In order to attract a candidate who currently has the title of Manager or Senior Manager, offering the title of Director can be a very strong inducement for someone who is ready to move up in their career.

For growth: Deep experience where you need it: This person can’t be, and won’t be, an expert in everything. They will be what is often referred to as a “T” marketer, someone who has some depth in a few areas of digital marketing and just some exposure in others. Ideally, they can wear multiple hats, sort of a “Swiss Army Knife,” as I like to call them, who is an inch deep and a yard wide in many ecommerce-related areas but deeper in the areas where you need stronger expertise to drive the business.

Matching Hires to Growth Plans

You should define your areas of ecommerce need by how you expect your business to scale. Where do you want the business to be in 12 months, 24 months, 36 months? Exactly what will you need to focus on in order to reach those goals? What will your cash flow allow you to hire right now?

These questions, and others, should be part of the roadmap that spells out your vision for the business and how you’re going to get there. For example, if you’re planning to drive your business primarily through paid media, then start with someone who has solid paid media background and exposure to other growth drivers, such as email or social media.

I had one client who recently told me that 90% of their business was generated through email. Sounds like a scenario for an Email Marketing Manager to be Hire #1!

For owners who already have strong marketing and sales expertise as well as product domain knowledge, on-boarding an operations expert is the perfect complement. A good operational hire will help the company capitalize on its operating strengths and free up the owner to apply their expertise to generating new business.

I worked with one client recently who started his business after spending some 10 years with a bigger company in the same product category. He had the product knowledge, the product domain expertise, and an extensive background in the specific marketing channels that he knew would drive his business.

His new company’s product catalog was also relatively large (more than 20,000 SKUs) with a wide range of weights and sizes. The catalog included some private labels along with lines from brand manufacturers. This business was a perfect candidate for an ecommerce operations specialist.

Help for the Generalist Owner

Then there are those owners who are more of a generalist—good at many things but not expert at any one thing.

This situation can be a little trickier. I have worked with many business generalists who are actually pretty knowledgeable in a lot of different areas. Sometimes they struggle with “letting go,” a condition common among successful serial entrepreneurs.

In these situations, I usually recommend letting the company’s business roadmap dictate where to go.

Marketplace Marketers and Operators

For example, let’s say you have a strong Amazon marketplace business and you want to either launch or expand your direct-to-consumer channel. For this, you’ll need someone with strong expertise in things like email, search or social.

On the other hand, if you already have a strong direct ecommerce business and want to expand into marketplaces and other social channels, you might need a marketer, or you may need an operator, depending on where the weakest link exists.

Sometimes, marketplaces can include very complex inventory management requirements, so if most of your business is on Amazon, for example, and you expect that channel to continue driving most of your growth, then you might determine that you need a strong operator on your team.

Indeed, whichever direction you go in, each of these hires needs to truly “own” their roles. As an owner of the business, you would serve as a sort of general manager, providing strategic direction so that everyone keeps their eye on the prize.

Usually, the next priority, after marketing, is for someone to update the website with the latest products and content and optimize images to attract customers visually. A typical title for this person is Website Manager.

The Merchandiser’s Critical Role

If your business has many SKUs, an online merchandiser might be next in line. However, in many smaller ecommerce businesses, the owner (or one of the owners if co-owned) often handles merchandising.

I have worked with many owners who started their businesses based on product knowledge. Merchandisers don’t often enter the equation until SKU counts reach the point where the work requires a stand-alone position. In more established dot-coms, I’ve seen web merchandising and web merchandise buyers report up to either the ecommerce head or the top business leader/owner/President. For multichannel retailers, a merchandising manager on the ecommerce team (or director, depending on the team’s size) will serve as the product voice for the web business, with dotted-line relationships with merchants on the retail side to make sure both sides align on strategy, seasonality, stories, etc.

In the world of ecommerce, it’s all about testing and learning. You test different campaigns to see what works.

Growing your ecommerce team is no different. Start with 5 or 10 different campaigns to build your business case for scaling the team for different growth strategies. See which campaigns scale better than others. Segment your customer file and swipe it in 30 different directions.

Let’s say you discover that customer retention is a major growth driver for your ecommerce business. How would you try to increase retention—through email, customer service, paid media? What percentage of new revenue is coming in through each channel? The channels producing the best results should get the biggest staffs.

A recent call from a new client was a perfect example of an employer doing it backwards. His roadmap was channel-based, and he discovered he had specialists overseeing channels that simply were not growth drivers for the business. The important thing is to start at the customer level, then determine which channels should get the resources.

Rounding Out the Ecommerce Organizational Structure

When a pure-play ecommerce business reaches roughly up to $25 million - $30 million range, it’s not unusual to have as many as 15 or 20 employees/contractors covering additional critical functions, including many of the following key categories:

• Merchandising
• Customer Service
• Marketing
• Email
• Paid Acquisition
• Organic Search
• Content
• Optimization
• Management & Leadership
• Technology / Product Management
• Developers
• Designers
• User Experience
• Fulfillment (Shipping, Returns)

Specialized expertise is often outsourced as needed. In my experience, many of these functions can usually be covered by outside contractors, with the notable exceptions of Management & Leadership, Product Management, Merchandising, Purchasing and Fulfillment.

These areas often require a higher degree of cross-functional internal interaction, and most of my clients who reach this size will hire these roles on a full-time, permanent basis. I encourage clients to in-source whatever they view as strategic; that is when they can make a compelling rationale for hiring talent in-house for work that could yield a competitive advantage.

After all, “renting” the same team as your industry peers yields little competitive advantage. But hiring a consultant or agency with unique and specialized knowledge or capabilities can create significant value by compressing the learning curve or producing exceptional work your company can’t be do in-house.

Sometimes, the need to go outside is also driven by the realities of the labor pool. Some positions, most notably paid media and Amazon specialists, are especially difficult to fill. And even if you’re lucky enough to hire a good one, it’s hard to keep them because of the sheer abundance of opportunities that are out there. Plus, many of these individuals have shifted from full-time positions to contracts. As freelancers, they can make more money and work anywhere they wish.

Omnichannel retailers and other businesses marketing through multiple channels may want to focus more on ecommerce. But if they can’t justify the ecommerce-dedicated resources they need, they’ll often designate other staff to take on ecommerce-related duties in addition to their other primary responsibilities. This approach is most common at the customer account level, particularly for omnichannel retailers and marketers that already have a dedicated account team in place.

If you’re going to commit to supporting channels other than Amazon, you need to have the right staffing model to do it. You should assign one person to each account or dedicate somebody to support “all other” brick-and-mortar dot-coms.

That simply means, rather than making digital 20% of one person’s job at each of five customer accounts, make supporting five retailers 100% of one person’s job. Most consumer marketing clients I have worked with who market largely through Amazon have a dedicated in-house Amazon account specialist. The bigger corporations often co-locate these positions in Seattle, where Amazon’s account managers are based.

As the ecommerce channel matures and volume grows, hiring priorities will develop as operational weaknesses become more evident and the channels, platforms and strategies that are most effective at driving that growth emerge. Perhaps your weakest link is in sourcing products, or maybe it’s in customer acquisition or on-site conversion. The amount of work and time required to fill those gaps will determine whether you need to make an internal full-time hire or go with an outside vendor.

In midsize and large-scale ecommerce businesses, each area can become a stand-alone department with a Manager or Director of Ecommerce, Digital Marketing, or similar function as department head, reporting up to a Director, VP, or even an SVP. Some companies I’ve worked with have dissolved their centralized marketing technology departments, and instead have distributed these specialists among individual teams.

The resulting structure has served to reinforce the cultural shift from reporting to respective departments to sharing responsibility for a team and leveraging expertise where it is needed. These teams are measured by the success of the product or service, and I’ve observed that incentives that reinforce this type of more collaborative culture can often lead to a surge in new ideas by newly empowered employees.

Here is an ecommerce organizational structure for one of my clients with a well-developed ecommerce business generating $50 million to $100 million in annual sales.

A few important observations as you review this chart. This is more representative of a business-to-consumer, or B2C (or direct-to-consumer/direct-to-customer, D2C) marketing organization versus B2B (this structure does not include the B2B-related sales enablement, as an example). Some of these roles are specialty positions that were initially outsourced and later brought in-house.

Also, note that this particular organization includes a Director of Retention. An internal CRM team is more typical in businesses that have a heavy focus on subscription, loyalty, membership and the like, and have systems and processes in place for collecting and segmenting customer data.

Here is an org chart for a $30 million Etsy-like consumer products ecommerce business that sells through retail, online marketplaces plus its own D2C website, with multiple positions to fill (the Marketing Director will oversee the D2C ecommerce business only).

Writing job descriptions for these roles is another discussion, but I have that covered for you. For starters, check out my article on job description?tips from the trenches.?Also, my ecommerce career guide goes into much more detail on exactly what to look for when hiring candidates for the most common digital commerce roles, along with sample job descriptions.

Aligning Ecommerce with Overall Company Structure

In the first org chart example above, ecommerce rolls up under marketing, and as you’d expect, that is typical for organizations that have a marketing leader.

People ask me sometimes if ecommerce should be a stand-alone unit, separate from marketing, sales or operations. That stand-alone structure seems to work best with smaller and mid-sized ecommerce “pure plays,” where the entire function reports up to a President, CEO or the business owner(s).

However, in larger media and consumer product companies, it is not uncommon to find ecommerce within brand management, integrated marketing or even media. A classic example of this would be a large consumer packaged goods company, such as a Procter & Gamble. Some of these big CPG companies can have dozens of ecommerce teams supporting a large number of brands and brand categories. Then there are businesses like Sephora, who have combined the retail and online teams to create a “Digital Center of Excellence,” a centralized SWAT team, as it were, which has transformed the way they look at customers across channels.

Here’s another example of an ecommerce organizational structure with an ecommerce team led by merchandising, marketing and operations.

Finally, here is an example of an ecommerce organizational structure with a client, a branded manufacturer specializing in women’s apparel. They launched their web business about two years ago and, with my help, have built a very capable merchandising and marketing team while going outside for their development work. They have one website that grosses approximately $10 million per year.

Owners have asked me about Product Development and whether that should be a stand-alone position. That might work in a large business, but not in a smaller ecommerce environment. That’s because with smaller enterprises, successful business innovation almost always falls under the owner’s or President’s governance. Also, product development is?more of a classic, highly strategic cross-functional process that requires the input of multiple internal teams and requires a top leader’s direction to keep everyone engaged.

Multiple Brands

Business owners or operators often ask me how they should structure their ecommerce department around multiple brands. Whether those brands exist or are on the product drawing board, they want to know: At what point does it make sense to set up separate digital commerce teams to support the individual brands? There is no “one size fits all” answer to this question because, like so many other things in ecommerce, there can be many variables, and those variables can become … well, even more variable over time.

In large multinationals (think P&G, Unilever and Coca-Cola), the digital commerce teams have various functions and granular specialties. In those environments, Email Marketing, SEO/SEM, Social Media Marketing, Creative and Design, and other digital marketing functions have separate teams responsible for each brand or business unit. Some of these companies have dozens of internal ecommerce groups overseeing the online businesses of their major brands or product categories.

But what about smaller organizations?

When a business is marketing distinctly branded products (often with their own branded websites), some brands will inevitably sell better than others so they will demand more immediate resources. But before you expand the org chart to accommodate brand or product-specific ecommerce teams, the Profit and Loss for each category needs to justify it. And that usually doesn’t happen until each brand or product category generates substantial revenue.

At that point, many businesses will name Brand or Category Managers to run P and L over each brand — sort of a mini-GM. They, in turn, typically report up to a head of marketing.

These brand/category managers may or may not have strong digital commerce backgrounds. If they don’t, the existing ecommerce department becomes a “Center of Excellence” supporting each of the brands and will expand its capabilities as the brands grow and demand more resources.

If a Brand or Category Manager comes to the business with a background in ecommerce, that’s even better. They can oversee the duties that require more concentrated ecommerce expertise, in addition to brand marketing and category management.

For example, I recently worked with a client with three brands under their corporate umbrella, but one brand accounted for nearly 80% of the business, and email was a huge driver for brand retention. In that case, because of the business size (more than $50 million), hiring an emailer dedicated to that particular brand made sense. For the other brands, email fell under an ecommerce manager who supported the other smaller brands, along with social media and paid search (which the manager outsourced).

Plan Ahead for the Unexpected

The best advice I can give any owner or operator is to not get too far ahead of yourself when it comes to organizational planning. Before different brands or categories are even ready for market, leaders tend to think about organizational structures one year, two years and even five years down the road. For example, I can guarantee you that whatever plans most ecommerce businesses had in 2020 hit the shredder that year because of the unexpected impact of the pandemic. And there will always be more market surprises and disruptions.

The pandemic also had an outsized impact on the location of jobs in the ecommerce organizational chart—and this impact continues today. We all know how COVID-19 turned the traditional work model upside down, and ecommerce has been among those business categories leading the way in that transition.

That’s partly because ecommerce teams were already doing some of their work remotely before the pandemic hit, particularly in areas such as paid search, SEO, social and email, which rely heavily on individual contributors who can work from pretty much anywhere.

When everything shifted off-site, workers became acclimated to remote work, and now, according to a number of surveys I’ve seen, 40-50% won’t even look at a job unless it has some sort of remote or hybrid arrangement. That has major implications for any business that operates under a high level of collaboration among team members, which, of course, is a hallmark of ecommerce and digital marketing.

When it comes to personnel in more senior-level, transformational type positions, either newly created or back-fills, I lean heavily towards the camp that says they should work mostly on-site. Most of the businesses I work with seem to agree, and opt to keep these mission-critical positions in-office with a hybrid option of maybe 1 or 2 days off-site.

Key Takeaways

◆Start with strategy, then build the ecommerce organizational structure around it. It’s important that everyone in the company is on the same page and working towards the same goals regarding the firm’s commitment to ecommerce and its definition of success. So, first things first: Define the strategy up front and communicate it internally. Only then will budgeting and resourcing around ecommerce fall into place with everyone in the organization understanding it, and feeling some level of ownership and involvement.

◆Set up high-level goals, including KPIs and a roadmap. Review the roadmap every 3 to 6 months. Start small and work your way to the top, step by step. Either someone within the existing management team should take responsibility over ecommerce, or you should hire a Manager or Director to do that. I usually advise against contracting this most critical role.

◆Dedicated resources are generally better than designated resources. Some omnichannel companies relatively new to ecommerce assign responsibility for ecommerce to leaders or teams that also carry other core responsibilities. When work becomes crucial to driving performance, however, it deserves someone who is a dedicated specialist. Then, as the business scales and sales volume grows, you can add more dedicated resources.

◆As commitment to ecommerce increases, positions become more specialized. Performing at high levels requires expertise and specialized tools. Consequently, industry leaders are increasingly dedicating people in specialist roles to ensure that important work gets done correctly and at the right level. It’s critical to identify gaps in your ecommerce teams and where you may need specialists to round out your ecommerce organizational structure.

Ask yourself: In terms of skills and competencies of our current ecommerce team, where are we strongest, where are we weakest? Where are we focusing right now to grow the business? What’s working, and what isn’t? Are there big, clear areas that need attention?

Your ecommerce structure should start at the CUSTOMER level, not channels.

◆Company culture is key—whether it’s done by experimenting or simply instilling a sense of ownership and involvement in every part of the business. Firms must help every team and individual understand what digital means for them, and provide the right incentive structures in place so employees know what they need to do to succeed. Without cultural alignment, it doesn’t matter what your ecommerce budget is or how big your team is—eventually it will self-destruct.

◆Attention to detail is a highly valued attribute, and something you should look for in candidates. The first-in ecommerce manager will likely have to control many areas of the online business, so the initial support staff must be highly detail oriented. The last thing that you need with limited resources is checking over work and correcting errors; that can be extremely time-consuming and set the business back. In other words, don’t cut corners when hiring the first functional specialists. Be sure they have a track record of successfully performing the work your company requires at the expected detail level.

◆In-source and develop expertise internally where it matters most. Outsourcing critical activities can help accelerate results, mainly if the business is new to ecommerce. Still, I recommend developing expertise in-house in the areas that you view as strategic to the company, i.e., anywhere work can generate a true competitive advantage.

◆If it’s outside ecommerce, keep it outside the ecommerce department. Ecommerce should be treated as a highly specialized stand-alone function, so keep operations like finance, IT, HR, and strategically selected outsourcing in their own departments. But do tap other internal teams for help where it might make sense, e.g., pulling in someone from Finance who’s anxious to take on added responsibilities like checking customer records, or someone from IT to improve product data management.

◆Don’t be afraid to make tough changes to stay on track with your roadmap. I recently had a discussion with the owner of a $20 million DTC ecommerce business that has been doubling sales every year. He was concerned that his Ecommerce Director will not be up to the task of scaling the business. Making it even harder, this Director has been with the owner since almost Day One, and they’ve become closely joined at the hip. But sometimes it takes an outsider, such as myself, to remind owners that having the wrong person in charge of a growing ecommerce business is a losing strategy.

◆There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to ecommerce organizational structure. Don’t we wish it were that simple! No two ecommerce businesses are alike. They all have their own unique needs. All the more reason why it is essential to review your roadmap quarterly and make course corrections where needed.

◆Set a clear path to reaching goals. No matter your company’s model, you will likely see greater effectiveness when working towards clearly outlined company goals and setting micro-goals linked to these larger objectives for individual indicators and specific periods.

Head of Ecommerce Job Description

For every box in the org chart, of course, there needs be an accompanying job description, and when it comes to the ecommerce leader, I have you covered.

The job description I am sharing below is for a Director-level department head, but this could just as easily be a VP position, depending on the business. Titles, of course, can be very interchangeable from one organization to the next, but generally the major distinguishing factors between a Director and a VP would include the level of strategic direction, size of budget, size of the ecommerce team they manage, reporting structure, and the level of influence this person will have over the entire business.

There are also other more subtle differences, but if you have a VP level position to fill, you can take the same job description I’m presenting below for Director and incorporate those higher-level criteria. I wrote this Director-level job description as a template that includes many of the most crucial responsibilities I’ve seen in recent job descriptions for these roles.

Major Duties and Responsibilities (Director of Ecommerce):

• Create a product roadmap for the business. Partner with Executive Team, business and technical teams to ensure that the roadmap meets the needs of the business and that the priorities are set.
• Manage the product roadmap for the eCom business. Define required projects and timing, then assemble teams of subject matter experts. Identify data and analysis to include in every step of the product roadmap process.
• Lead, develop, and manage the ecommerce team.
• Source new third-party vendors; conduct RFP processes, contract negotiations, and on-boarding and implementation of new vendors.
• Manage and support the team to optimize engagement and sales conversion of all online traffic.
• Oversee tracking of key success metrics for the ecommerce business.
• Oversee SEO keyword and content strategy to drive results.
• Manage existing SEM & SEO teams, agencies and contractors.
• Partner with IT to lead privacy compliance initiatives (GDPR, CCPA, etc.) and support customer relationship strategies.
• Enhance your testing methods for optimizing the site and evaluating the impact of each improvement on the sales funnel.
• Proactively understand customer needs and how your team can capture and retain their interest.
• Identify opportunities to increase relevance of the Natural Life online experience through recommendations and personalization.
• Establish meaningful business insights and lead development/implementation of analytics tools to drive improvements in ecommerce business.
• Introduce and manage tools for increasing on-site engagement.
• Communicate key insights and recommendations to senior leaders across the organization.
• Conduct analysis of digital experience, market trends, and third-party partnerships supporting the development of new and existing digital experiences.
• Stay up to date on industry trends, competitive landscape, as well as new digital technology, approaches, resources, and opportunities.
• P&L responsibility for Ecommerce budget.

Search Engine Marketing Manager

The second most common ecommerce position clients ask me to fill is search engine marketing.

The Search Engine Marketing Manager oversees the planning, optimizing, implementing and analyzing of natural and paid search engine activities. They are responsible for the top-to-bottom management of all pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO), including forecasting and budgeting.

The SEM Marketing Manager works both at the strategic and tactical level, touching all aspects of the organization’s search marketing roadmap, such as keyword management, creation of campaign messaging, bidding strategies, creative testing, and analytics.

They can also be in charge of affiliate and online advertising programs. One of the things I sometimes find lacking in these candidates is the ability to explain SEO methodologies to those who have little or no knowledge of how it works. It’s crucial, however, to have someone who can translate complex terminology into terms lay people can understand; that’s especially true when the SEM Manager is dealing with senior leaders in the C-suite and middle-level managers.

Succeeding with Social Media

Social media would be next on the SEM Manager’s list. The first rule of social media is that content drives social media success. The ability to write creatively and professionally with clarity while adhering to grammar and spelling rules cannot be overstated.

If you’re filling a position that has customer service interaction, look for writing samples that convey empathy with words. It’s good to have editorial experience, including writing and editing first drafts, re-writes, and final edits.

Of course, they need solid expertise with the most popular social media platforms and must stay up to date on emerging trends and the latest technology. Any indication they feel “comfortable” with what they know is a red flag.

When I qualify these candidates, I like to ask for examples of projects where they weeded out data that didn’t align with the company’s business goals, along with “data interpretation” examples that helped optimize marketing efforts.

Social media Managers and Directors must demonstrate they can think beyond tactical execution. Essentially, you are looking for things they brought to the business that the business didn’t even know they needed. That is true thought leadership.

Of course, you want to know how those strategies helped achieve business goals. Another tip is to ask about any experience they’ve had in handling a social media crisis. Most businesses have had that experience at one time or another, and that “in the fire moment” can reveal how they work under pressure.

Below is a short list of many other specialized functions that ecommerce businesses will eventually need to fill out as they grow. Companies often initially outsource many of these functions. When a business is ready for a new full-time hire, it can combine many of these duties by twos or threes into single positions.

Ecommerce:

◆ UX / UI – website troubleshooting, improving user experience and interface, A/B testing,

◆ daily management + merchandising

◆ Conversion Rate Optimization

◆ Data analysis

◆ Management of third-party apps

◆ Ecommerce product shots + image optimization

◆ Email marketing & SMS strategy

◆ Email marketing content creation

◆ Site + product reviews program management.

Marketing:

◆ Product assortment + Product Description / design recommendation

◆ 360 marketing strategy

◆ Product + collection launch planning

◆ Creation of ads, website banners and other creative

◆ Loyalty program management

◆ Social media management

◆ Influencer Outreach program

◆ Creation of visual brand materials

◆ Affiliates

◆ PR agency management.

B2B Ecommerce Organizational Structure

Too often, companies think ecommerce is all about building a transactional website, the kind they experience with the consumer products they buy online.?But as any B2Ber who’s done this will tell you, B2B ecommerce is an entirely different ballgame.

The entire business needs to transform to make B2B ecommerce connect with and serve customers effectively and efficiently—your culture, your structure, your operations. The entire company needs to think “digitally.”?Traditional organizational silos need to be torn down; all sales channels need to be aligned.

The transformation to B2B ecommerce can be a daunting task, particularly for more traditional businesses in manufacturing, construction and distribution. The fact that you are reading this lengthy article tells me that you have probably decided that ignoring the digital centricity of your customers is a losing strategy.

Going digital might have started as a back-of-the-envelope sketch. But now, you may have gaps to fill, and you want to be sure you’re positioning key roles in the right place at the right time. A few years ago, you could have gotten by with a simple website that contained basic sales information and a “Contact us” button.

But the move towards digital has accelerated rapidly, completely transforming the traditional B2B go-to-market model. And that trend is expected to continue to evolve in the post-Covid years.

Getting Started

So, where do you begin? You can hire an organizational management consulting firm that will charge you the big bucks, or you can do some research and learn where the puzzle pieces go. One place to start is to look at a sample org chart for a middle-sized B2B product company. Your particular business may be much smaller, but that’s OK. You probably have a good idea of where the weaknesses are.?

If you already have a marketing team, you’re halfway there. All of this may be easier said than done, however, for new roles that have a strong digital orientation. If you’re a more traditional B2B marketer, those job descriptions may not be part of your everyday vernacular. SEM? DAM? CMS? ?Welcome to the digital revolution!

Below is a schematic of a sample B2B marketing organizational structure for a mid-size B2B reseller I recently worked with in the maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) product category. The business has several divisions located in different markets; a General Manager heads up each division. This chart could also represent a business with a head of marketing reporting directly to a President, CEO, or an owner.

Let’s take a closer look at some of these departments in the B2B marketing organizational structure.

Director of Brand/Communications

This has two main responsibilities: brand awareness and company messaging. The director of brand/communications is responsible for creating a uniform brand look and feel across all distribution channels.

Typically, in a larger B2B enterprise, four or five positions will report up to the brand/communications director:

◆Public relations (and/or marketing communications).

◆ Industry relations.

◆ A brand marketer.

◆ A creative manager.

◆ A social media specialist.

Website creation would live under the creative manager and their team. In-house creative is often among the last roles in this category to go in-house since that can involve many specialized functions such as design and user experience. Website creation can also fall under Demand Generation, as discussed below.

Head of Content—a Company’s Voice

The head of content is a “must have” position in a critical department for any B2B company that generates a great deal of original content for demand generation, sales enablement, and overall brand support. I call this person the “voice” of the company, aligning all external communications to the brand.

Among other things, they are in charge of all creative execution by the Content and Design specialists, who work with other team members covering copywriting and multimedia.

In this next chart, I’ve put this department in as a shared services unit supporting brand marketing, sales and demand generation. However, initially it could report directly to the head of marketing before the company fills out the other roles under it. Here, “ecommerce” refers not to ecommerce operations, but tasks such as product descriptions, pricing, sales, promotions, codes, third-party marketplaces such as Amazon, and catch-all subsets that all tie back to products purchased on the website.

Director of Product Marketing

This role typically exists long before a company adds digital positions to the management mix. But I include it because it is one of the seats at the head table of most B2B businesses, or at least those that consider themselves “product-driven.”?And many B2Bers, at their heart, are highly product-driven (ask the sales force!). I won’t go into great detail here because many B2B business owners or Presidents/CEOs were once Product Marketing heads themselves. Still, it’s worth noting that this has a heavy customer communications component to it (particularly with outbound messaging), so internal-departmental collaboration becomes vital, particularly with brand marketing and content teams.

Director of Demand Generation ?

A role that is found in larger B2B businesses, the Director of Demand Gen has a?strong digital orientation. The Demand Gen group’s main objective is to nurture acquired leads through the funnel, which can have many different digital touchpoints.

The Demand Gen team typically involves several key players:

◆ The Digital Marketing Manager fills a critical role in this group. They would be responsible for numerous lead-driven channels supported by marketing operations that handle such automated communications as email and social funnel metrics.

◆ An Analytics and/or Optimization specialist handles lead scoring, KPIs, and reporting duties (rarely are these functions outsourced even in a smaller B2B company).

◆ Campaign Manager(s), including Account Based Managers who handle the biggest key accounts, develop and execute the Demand Gen marketing campaigns.

In addition, a B2B company might consider a separate channel-partner marketing role, if selling through channel partners is a key strategy.

Another important note: Although I’ve put website creation in this chart under Brand, you can also add it under Demand Gen if your company has a large, steady volume of leads to capture and events to market. Businesses that engage in many industry-specific or product-specific events often have a stand-alone event marketer.?

The many ways to structure the marketing org

The above B2B marketing organizational structure is, of course, only one of hundreds if not thousands of others where these seven top-level departments represent the key functions of marketing.

Sometimes, “Strategy” has a stand-alone team (with market research among the functions underneath it), and you might find larger B2B companies with a separate staff of specialists in data and analytics. Multichannel B2B marketers might place the tech stack and website structure under a “Digital” leader, and others might combine Marcom with Demand Generation.

Here’s another org chart for my Fortune 1000 B2B client in the maintenance, repair and operations MRO space. The company has a large demand generation group that falls under a GM who runs the company’s U.S. business. The main channels within the company’s integrated marketing team include online, catalog and print advertising, requiring, among other things, the need for a wide-ranging creative team. The team includes stand-alone roles for video production and a photographer.

In this org structure, email, PR, social and content all report up to a Manager of Email and Public Relations. It’s not unusual for email to take a bigger role with B2B companies that have a heavy email calendar (in this case, the mailing list is in the hundreds of thousands).

You’ll notice that this structure has one person managing public relations, the blog and social media. That’s quite a handful, and, as a I recall, I believe they ultimately decided to outsource the PR piece to an agency. PR should be among the last functions brought inside until the business reaches a large-cap market-capitalization status.

Also, you’ll find several technical roles in this marketing org structure, including database and email system administration. We all know that marketing and technology go hand-in-hand. And while the head of marketing is not expected to be a hands-on techy, they should definitely have had some experience with management responsibility over more technical roles, including marketing automation, web development, data and analytics.

This Fortune 1000 MRO company publishes an annual “phone book”-like catalog (see below) that goes out mostly to existing clients. The company’s product marketers also place ads in trade publications.

Expanding Your B2B Ecommerce Organizational Structure

Among the most common questions I’m asked when it comes to B2B marketing?organizational structure?is, “Where do I expand next?”

Quite simply, you focus your internal staff on where your most vital business operations and outsource the rest.

Marketing departments tend to expand organically. As tactical needs arise, they bring in?contract or full-time specialists to execute the nuts and bolts; then the company appoints department heads when leadership and strategy become higher priorities.

I almost never recommend you outsource product marketing roles, as they apply to the very strategic and competitive advantage of a business. You don’t want that competitive advantage under the control of an outside resource.

Another question B2B start-ups ask me is, “What functions/roles should I hire first?”

What Does your Company Need??

There are two approaches to answering this question: What the company needs and what you need as the owner/operator.

Obviously, a B2B company needs to cover product marketing, particularly promotional messaging and product launch.?Demand gen is usually next on the list, and then branding.

Next, consider what you need. That means honest conversation about your strengths and weaknesses as an owner/lead operator.

For example, you might be stronger in product marketing than demand generation, so demand gen will be a higher priority in your recruitment search.

Walk in the Customer’s Shoes

I also advise smaller clients to consider hiring someone who has been the customer at one point their career. You can be creative and you can be logical and organized but can’t fake empathy and experience.

There is no substitute for being in the customer’s shoes and on the receiving end of your sales and marketing efforts. And that experience doesn’t have to be entirely on the B2B side. I have plenty of candidates working at B2B businesses who successfully made the transition to B2B from brand-side B2C.

A final word on management layers: Usually, you don’t need line managers until you have around 6 or 7 people, give or take. At that point, it usually becomes too much to manage for one person. The company’s direction will dictate where it should slot the first line manager; you can then add specialists to fill areas where the organization is either stretched too thin or has weak links in the talent chain.

For a complete guide on how to stand up a B2B ecommerce business, there is no better book than Brian Beck’s?“Billion Dollar B2B Ecommerce.”?It will tell you everything you need to know!

Where to Find Talent

Once you have the org structure mapped out, it’s time to fill in the boxes.

The first place to look is in your own backyard—your employees. It amazes me how employers fail to tap into this resource’s full potential. Employees bring long established networks, and their contacts will have additional contacts. Nothing magical here: For us recruiters, our networks are gold. So are yours; you just may not realize it. Offer your employees a nice incentive, such as a meaningful referral fee or free trip, and it’s amazing how many names you might collect.

There’s also social media. Not a lot more needs to be said here. Still, think of every customer interaction as an interaction with a potential candidate.

Emphasize the Positive, and Get Social

“We’re growing. Rock stars wanted!” could be a nice tag to your signature line. It also sends a message to your clients that you hire only the best.

LinkedIn Groups are an often-overlooked resource for talent. There are literally hundreds of thousands of them, and I can practically guarantee there is a group out there that focuses on whatever specific role you need filled. LinkedIn offers a monthly allotment of free messages to other group members. You should take full advantage of that. Few employers do. In addition, LinkedIn now provides the option to add “#Hiring” to your profile image.

Targeted paid ads are be effective. This is where platforms like Facebook become particularly attractive; they let post job openings in the news feeds of people who most closely match your criteria for job skills, location and even outside interests. Here’s a terrific article I found that will tell you all you need to know when it comes to recruiting on Facebook:

“How to Use Facebook Ads to Recruit Top Talent.”https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/08/23/facebook-recruiting

In addition, there are a ton of specialized job boards to help you find everything from developers to designers, full-time as well as contract, on-site and remote.

Final Thoughts—and one Golden Rule

For business owners who haven’t hired large staffs before, I have one golden rule: Hire specialists who are smarter than you in their particular field. You’re running the overall business. You’re providing the vision and top-level leadership. Look for people who challenge the status quo, who challenge deep-rooted assumptions, who counter your explanation that “this is way we’ve always done things.” That’s how you build a high-performance ecommerce business!

There are literally a hundred job functions under the category of digital commerce. If you’re looking to fill one of these specialized roles and would like a sample job description, I have plenty of them—many of them I wrote, others supplied by clients.

Email or call me, and I’ll be happy to send one to you. My direct email address is [email protected]. Or call me direct at 507-451-4270.

Let’s talk about your organization, and where you want to take it.

##

?Jerry Bernhart, Principal of?Bernhart Associates Executive Search, LLC,?is one of the nation's preeminent and veteran executive recruiters in ecommerce, digital and multichannel marketing, and CRM. With more than 80 published LinkedIn articles, Jerry is the "voice" of best practices in the recruitment and hiring of ecommerce and digital marketing professionals. Jerry is also the author of the critically acclaimed book, "Careers in Ecommerce and Digital Marketing," on Amazon, and participates in many leading digital marketing and ecommerce conferences. Jerry has been recruiting and placing marketing professionals for more than 35 years. Check out?Jerry's other insights?on the?Thought Leadership?section of the?Bernhart Associates?website.

digital marketing recruiter, ecommerce recruiter, e-commerce recruiter, marketing recruiter, CRM recruiter, CMO recruiter, omnichannel marketing recruiter

#ecommercerecruiter, #e-commercerecruiter, #digitalmarketingrecruiter, #CMOrecruiter, #CRMrecruiter, #marketingrecruiter, #marketingheadhunter, #executiverecruiter, #bernhartworkingknowledge