9 Essential Roles in a Successful Marketing Team

Effective marketing is an important part of successful brand management, promotional efforts and sales strategies. Marketing teams are an integral part of developing and maintaining impactful marketing methods within an organization. Understanding the essential roles of these teams can help you more efficiently achieve your marketing goals. In this article, we discuss the definition and responsibilities of marketing teams and offer a list of the important roles within them and the contributions of each.

Related: 6 Key Purposes of a Marketing Plan

What is a marketing team?

A marketing team develops and implements strategies to promote brand awareness and drive sales of an organization's products or services. Often, marketing teams include several individuals with varying skills and responsibilities who work together to achieve mutual marketing goals. They may create and implement digital marketing, brand management, public relation and customer outreach strategies through research, data analysis and industry knowledge.

Related: How To Start Your Marketing Career

What does a marketing team do?

There are several responsibilities of marketing teams, and they may vary depending on their objectives. Below is a list of common marketing team duties:

• Research market trends and marketing tools

• Develop brand image and develop strategies to maintain its consistency

• Conduct and study customer satisfaction surveys to influence marketing decisions

• Attend weekly meetings to discuss goals and deliverables

• Communicate with sales teams to coordinate efforts

• Manage social media pages and related campaigns

• Monitor the success of competitors

• Develop and maintain brand website

• Negotiate with ad placement agencies

• Identify and research target audience

• Create images and messages for circulation that convey brand values and drive sales

• Design ongoing and temporary customer outreach campaigns

Related: How To Launch a Product Marketing Campaign

Roles of a marketing team

If you're building a marketing team, it may be helpful to understand the various positions within a team and how they function to achieve your marketing goals. Below are some of the essential roles of a successful marketing team:

Marketing manager

Marketing managers are the leaders of marketing teams and are responsible for ensuring each team member delivers their tasks timely and accurately. They often delegate responsibilities to team members, monitor their progress and offer support when needed. Marketing managers may also develop large-scale projects, such as campaigns, and assign appropriate tasks to individuals on the team. They also lead team meetings, monitor marketing budget, communicate progress to management and executive teams and may take part in the hiring process within their department.

A marketing manager may help ensure your marketing team stays focused, organized and within budget while working toward your marketing goals.

SEO specialist

Search engine optimization (SEO) strategists are an important part of a marketing team. These individuals have an advanced understanding of search engine processes and can help your organization remain relevant and visible on the internet. Consider including an SEO strategist in your marketing team to maximize the amount of inbound traffic to your websites through keyword integration and SEO analytics. SEO specialists may work closely with other members of the team who focus on digital marketing, such as visual designers, content marketers and website developers.

Data analyst

Data analysts contribute to a team by researching marketing performance and communicating their findings. They may gather data, analyze results and develop insights into the success of your marketing team's current methods. They can then apply this information to develop effective strategies. Consider including a data analyst on your marketing team to better understand the success of strategies, make informed marketing decisions and discover ways to improve upon your methods in the future.

Related: What Are Management Teams? Definition and How To Build Them

Public relations manager

Public relations (PR) managers develop and implement brand management strategies to improve the public perception of an organization. These individuals are a valuable asset to a marketing team and can help establish consistency and a positive brand image across your marketing efforts. To do this, they may develop brand awareness techniques, represent brands at industry events, build and maintain an organization's customer/client relationships or develop customer outreach and social media campaigns.

Brand strategist

Brand strategists function similarly to PR managers by maintaining a brand's image, but they focus more on the aesthetic aspects of marketing to establish consistent branding across the team's efforts. Consider including a brand strategist on your marketing team to make important decisions that could influence the consistency of your brand's image. These individuals may determine logos, color schemes, fonts used on websites or promotional materials and the general style of content used across platforms.

Visual designer

You may include a visual designer on your marketing team to complete a variety of tasks, from designing visual ads to editing promotional videos. Visual designers can help ensure that your visual marketing material remains consistent across all platforms and aligns with your brand's values and objectives. They may work closely with advertising and sales teams to create, edit and publish visual material such as images and video for promotional use, product packaging or social media content.

Content marketer

Content marketers are an important part of your digital and print marketing efforts. Consider including a content marketer on your team to write, edit and publish text and web copy for promotional use. These individuals may work closely with SEO specialists to create content that aligns with your brand's objectives and incorporates keywords and SEO strategies that can help to increase traffic to your websites. They may also write newsletters, social media captions and product descriptions.

Website developer

Often, the quality of your website can have a direct impact on the success of your marketing efforts. It's important to have a website that is consistent with your brand's image, easily navigated and attractive to your target audience. You may include a website developer on your marketing team to build and maintain your web pages in coordination with the rest of the team to create an internet presence that best supports your objectives.

PPC specialist

Pay-per-click (PPC) specialists oversee all of an organization's paid digital advertising efforts. These individuals often have an advanced understanding of finance and business operations along with extensive knowledge of paid advertising processes. Consider including a PPC specialist on your marketing team to bid for advertising placement, negotiate with advertisement placement agencies, review and adjust spending, review ad copy performance and report ad performance to management teams.