How to Structure Your Marketing Department (Part 2)

Building Your Strategy Before Your First Marketing Hire

When thinking about how to structure your marketing department, it’s important to create your strategy before making your first hire.

In order to understand this concept, let’s talk about it in construction terms. An owner of a piece of land is going to construct a building. So the first thing they should do is hire an architect. That architect is going to put together a blueprint and a prototype of that building. And that will happen before that owner goes out and brings in a construction team.

That blueprint, if done right, should visualize his end product, what that building’s going to appear when finished, how that building’s going to perform. All of this is going to impact who he’s going to hire to be on his construction team.

So let’s shift back to marketing. Often, organizations don’t have clear objectives or that strategic blueprint, and they go out and make a marketing hire anyway. And they do it without knowing what skill sets they need to build their marketing program.

Unfortunately, Marketri is often hired because a company feels like their marketer is underperforming, and they’re not quite sure what to do with him or her. What we find in most cases is that the marketer was brought on before any strategy was implemented, and the marketer’s skillset is not aligned with what that organization needs at that moment. So the company is unhappy because they’re not achieving their objectives. And the marketer feels like s/he’s underperforming and not living up to company expectations. But the expectations were unrealistic and uninformed from the start.If you were thinking about powering up your marketing and making a marketing hire, make sure you have your goals and your strategic marketing plan in place first. That will inform the types of skills that you truly need on your marketing team.

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