Even Superheroes Work in Teams
Long gone is the myth of the Lone Ranger, the John Wayne, the Rambo one person marketing team. Marketing in today’s multi-channel world, particularly Inbound Marketing, requires a team of professionals.
One solution to the increasing complexity of the business of marketing is to integrate new, powerful tools, such as inbound marketing software (ie. Infusionsoft, HubSpot, Marketo). As many of our readers know, inbound marketing software is an attempt to systematize and manage some of the complexity in order to attract and convert qualified leads through digital marketing.
Fascination and Fallacy of Inbound Marketing
The fascination of inbound marketing software is represented by its dashboards that assemble a myriad of data streams to produce neat, clean charts showing progress, or lack thereof, to decision makers. The fallacy is that a single person can’t run this software. I have yet to meet a single person who can successfully strategize, supervise, create content, deploy campaigns, track results, update lists and perform a number of other tasks required.
Successful inbound marketing is a team sport. And like any team there are practitioners, each dependent on the others to do their part well in order to make the whole process function at all, and then function well.
Members of an Inbound Marketing Team
A recent HubSpot blog post outlines the four types of “The 4 Types of Marketers You Need on an Inbound Marketing Team.” They are:
1) The Writer
Without a good writer, your inbound marketing efforts will probably come up short. You’ll need to continually turn out thoughtful, well-written content to fuel your marketing.
2) The Designer/Developer
Your designer/developer needs to be adept in designing your website for better conversion. While most of the designer/developer’s work will be web-based, they will need to have at least some experience with print design so they can lay out long form content like e-books or guides in PDF format.
3) The Analyst
This person looks at your web and marketing analytics continually, drawing conclusions and forming hypotheses for your other team members to act on.
4) The Strategist/Team Leader
The leader knows how to direct day-to-day activities and makes sure every member of the team marches to the same drum beat. As well, the leader deals with the rest of the business to ensure tools, funding and work environment for the rest of the team are appropriate.
The strategist thinks with both the right and left brain – connecting the dots between knowing the audience/their needs and the optimum inbound marketing activities.
If you have spent any time at all with inbound marketing, you’ll know that these four marketing types are the bare essentials. Further expertise in databases, SEO, graphics, UI, and subject matter experts will round out a fuller inbound marketing initiative. As team sizes grow so, too, does the need for management type functions.
Building a Team is a Specialty
Recruiting, training and managing this team of specialists is a specialty in itself. It is one that inbound marketing agencies practice and refine daily. That is why we feel that for most companies, hiring an agency is the best way to achieve success with inbound marketing. Yes, you’d expect us to say that. That’s ok, we believe it.
