What I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Built a Marketing Department: Lessons Learned

When you’re growing your business, it’s natural to feel apprehensive about introducing new roles and departments. Fear not, as new departments are one of the most important steps to growing your business. The good news is that as long as you keep your business’s growth milestones in mind and remain flexible, introducing a new role is a lot easier than you think. In this blog post, you’ll learn about the four key phases to growing your business and what you can do to prepare for them.

What will your team look like?

With the creation of a marketing department, most people think the first thing to decide is exactly who will comprise your team. Planning to bring on three to five full-time roles, trying to figure out who will fill each position. Often basing decisions on the roles occupied by your current team. This part is key. We have seen greater success if you:

1. Establish what you want to achieve

2. Determine the work or initiatives that are needed to achieve that.

3. Examine what traits and experience are needed for that work

4. Analyze how any current resources might meet those needs.

Whatever is left is what you actually need to hire for. More often companies approach this thinking they need a social media expert for example, when really the missing piece is someone to project manage the work the team is already suggesting. Pulling in a Social Media expert can just add another opinion to the work needing to be done. This will give you an idea of which roles you can expand and what roles you might have to let go of. If you’re struggling to figure out who to let go, there are some easy ways to identify which roles you can reduce.

How much time will it take?

This is the most common misconception about growing a marketing team. Many businesses worry that they will have to completely overhaul their marketing strategy, but the truth is that most of the work that needs to be done is already done. If you have a clear existing strategy and focus on work that supports that strategy, you’ll find that your team can easily adopt those tactics. However, we would recommend that you focus on what you need to achieve the goals set out in your strategy. That should determine the size of your team and when it has grown (or shrunk) to meet the needs of the company.

What training will your team need?

When you restructure or add a new role to your team, it’s important that you support your team members. New software, workflows or communication is often part of this new look team. If you want them to succeed, making sure that the right tools are provided is essential. This doesn't have to be expensive training courses or technological solutions. Often well thought out on-boarding documentation and clear roles and responsibilities will help the rest of the team support and train any new additions.

Things you shouldn’t do

One of the most important things to keep in mind during the four key phases of growing your business is that you don’t want to add new roles and teams unless they are absolutely necessary. In most cases, your existing roles are enough to support your business’s growth. It’s important to keep this in mind so that you don’t accidentally add roles that aren’t necessary. Another thing to keep in mind is that you don’t want to add new roles that are only relevant for a short time. This is because most businesses grow slowly and their goals may not be relevant for another two to three years. If you only look at marketing roles that you need to add for a year or less, you’re likely adding roles that aren’t absolutely necessary.

Final Words: The bottom line

It can be easy to feel apprehensive about introducing new roles and departments to your business. Thinking that you could invest a lot of time and money into this new group and be unsure of how successful it can be, often prevents companies from taking this step. Metolius can help build that successful marketing team growth by helping create a plan. A plan that outlines exactly what work will be needed and who will be on your team, their roles, and their goals. Then setting realistic expectations as to what is achievable as well as palatable for the company to spend money investing in. If you feel you are ready to build your marketing team's success, we are here to help!