Marketing team structures report 2017

How to build
high-performance
marketing teams
The Marketing
Team Structures
Report 2017

2HOW TO BUILD HIGH-PERFORMANCE MARKETING TEAMS IN 2017
Contents
3. Will there ever be the perfect blueprint for marketing teams?
4. Introduction from Pure360
5. Digital vs traditional marketing teams
6. The marketing skills matrix
7. Ranking of skills by importance
8. Which part of the business manages this skill?
9. What is the average size of a marketing team?
10. Marketing teams are becoming more specialised
11. What role do agencies and consultants play?
12. Which department ‘owns’ technology in your organisation?
13. Tips for better marketing/IT collaboration
14. Top challenges in building a high-performance marketing team
16. The IDM View

Will there ever be the
perfect blueprint for
marketing teams?
Building an effective marketing team is one of the most pressing challenges
businesses face today.
Not so long ago, it was possible that a senior marketer could have a fairly
comprehensive overview of the various marketing channels on offer. Since then,
the media landscape has fragmented in a thousand different directions. Customer
data is spread across multiple devices and requires real-time, personalised
responses.
Is it possible for any one person - or any one team - to be experts in all channels,
all forms of content, its programmatic distribution, the analytics and technology,
not to mention overall marketing strategy?
Unlikely. None of the areas of modern marketing are simple or easy-to-learn
disciplines. The concept of ‘marketing’ itself has snowballed to encompass
everything from technology spend to, well, pretty much everything a business
does. So what is the ideal team structure?
In this report, based on the experiences of 290 marketing practitioners, we are
seeing the marketing department move towards specialisms in order to develop
expertise in new digital skills.
The transition is not easy. This is putting pressure on budgets, with tough
decisions being made about how much can realistically be covered in-house,
when to outsource to agencies, and how to work better with other departments.
We hope this report provides some insight into how to build a more effective team.
Luke Bilton
Director - Digital & Content
UBM plc

Introduction from Pure360
Marketing teams have changed dramatically in recent years,
and this evolution is predicted to continue at a significant
rate. In business, change is inevitable and necessary, but
historically slow and costly. The astonishing rate at which
technology is changing the way we interact with customers
is now putting pressure on businesses to evolve at a much
faster rate than ever before.
It is evident that the two key catalysts in recent years that
have necessitated the transformation of the traditional
marketing department are both intrinsically linked to
technology.
The first is the meteoric rise of the internet; there is no
doubt that it has revolutionised the way we do business. As
websites evolved to become major profit centres, and the
main source of leads for businesses, the part that marketers
played in the management of content and user experience
grew.
These changes also meant that CMOs needed a strong
grasp over all things tech - digital was becoming a
fundamental part of any marketing strategy. In turn,
marketers started to claw back control from the IT team.
The second catalyst is The Age of the Customer. The
demand for personal, contextual interaction with brands,
on whichever device or channel the customer wants to use,
means that generic, one-size-fits-all marketing is simply
unacceptable.
In the quest to make customer experience relevant across
every touchpoint, the respective area of marketing has
become a speciality. Marketers can no longer be a jack-of-
all-trades; they need to be the master of one.
This in itself can be problematic. As the needs of the
customer and the business changes, and new roles are
added to the marketing team to support the transition, silos
can unwittingly be created. Putting the customer first means
creating, and maintaining, a seamless experience across all
channels. A fully integrated team is the only way to achieve
this, and we can see from the report that more companies
are making the move to merge their on- and off-line teams.
Now, in modern businesses, the CMO is the one responsible
for facilitating growth and sales, and marketing forms
the largest part of the strategy to deliver this. The old
perceptions are changing as the tangible impact that
marketing has on results is proven across businesses
worldwide.
The key focus of the modern marketing team is revenue
generation. They must know the customer inside and out,
and be able to react quickly to changing circumstances.
This has led to one of the biggest transformations to today’s
marketing teams - the inclusion of data management,
analysis and storytelling. Having access to big data is
essential - that’s a given.
The challenge for marketers lies with determining what to do
with it all. Successful organisations are investing in people
who can not only analyse and dissect the data, but who can
also present it in forms that their marketers can swiftly act
upon. The report corroborates this by showing that these
disciplines represent high levels of growth in importance for
larger organisations.
I hope you enjoy reading the report and find the results
as thought-provoking as I did. Please get in touch with any
feedback that you wish to share - I would be really interested
to hear your views.
Komal Helyer
Head of Marketing
Pure360

Digital vs. traditional
marketing teams
Digital marketing used to be such a niche skill that teams were often siloed off
from traditional marketing teams. They were seen as two disparate disciplines.
Best practices have since evolved, with digital becoming a central discipline
across all areas of marketing.
We asked whether organisations still have separate marketing and digital
marketing teams, and the result was clear.
The clear majority (81.3%) have a marketing team that combines both
functions. The days of that separation of on and offline is now over, with digital
encompassing the majority of marketing functions.
Yes, we have two separate teams 12.2%
81.3%
2.4%
4.1%
No, we have a mixed marketing team
Not sure
Other (please specify)
Do you have different marketing teams
for offline and digital?

The marketing skills matrix
This matrix compares the importance of various skills to marketing, to how likely
they are to sit within the marketing team itself.
Ranked by feedback from marketers, the matrix is structured to help you think
about which core skills are needed in your team (top right quadrant) and which
skills could be more easily outsourced to other internal teams or external
consultants, agencies or freelancers.
• The competencies highlighted in blue are those that typically sit within a
marketing team. The top right quadrant can be viewed as core marketing
competencies of high importance to marketing that sit within the team in the
majority of cases. For example, ‘Marketing strategy and planning’ is ranked
no.1 across organisations of all sizes, in terms of both importance and
centrality to the marketing department.
• The competencies highlighted in green are those which are likely to be
outsourced. These include skills such as advertising, creative, graphic design,
video, SEO, PPC and programmatic advertising.
• The competencies highlighted in orange are those that often sit with other
internal departments. These tend to be IT-related skills such as web
development, Artificial Intelligence (AI) or digital product management.
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
90%
Artificial
Intelligence
Video Production Web Development
Data Management
Content Production
Copywriting
Data Analysis and Reporting
Customer Insight
Marketing Strategy and Planning
Email Marketing
Direct Marketing
Social Media
Marketing Automation
SEO
Lead
Management
Graphic Design
PPC
Advertising Creative
PR
Event Planning
Programmatic Advertising
Digital Product Management
Importance of skill
Skillsitswithinmarketingteam

Ranking B2C B2B Not for profit
1 Marketing Strategy and Planning Marketing Strategy and Planning Content Production
2 Customer Insight Content Production Marketing Strategy and Planning
3 Data Analysis and Reporting Email Marketing Copywriting
4 Email Marketing Copywriting Email Marketing
5 Direct Marketing Customer Insight Website Development
6 Data Management Data Analysis and Reporting Data Analysis and Reporting
7 Website Development Data Management Customer Insight
8 Advertising Creative Lead Management Data Management
9 PPC SEO Social Media
10 Content Production Website Development SEO
11 Copywriting Social Media Graphic Design
12 Social Media Marketing Automation Event Planning
13 SEO Graphic Design Marketing Automation
14 Graphic Design Event Planning Video Production
15 Marketing Automation Direct Marketing Advertising Creative
16 Lead Management Advertising Creative Direct Marketing
17 Video Production PR Lead Management
18 PR Video Production Digital Product Management
19 Digital Product Management PPC Programmatic Advertising
20 Programmatic Advertising Digital Product Management PR
21 Artificial Intelligence Programmatic Advertising PPC
22 Event Planning Artificial Intelligence Artificial Intelligence
Ranking of skills by importance
B2C vs B2B vs NFP

0%
Marketing Strategy and Planning
Direct Marketing
Email Marketing
Marketing Automation
Social Media
Customer Insight
Data Analysis and Reporting
Copywriting
Event Planning
Content Productions
Programmatic Advertising
Data Management
Digital Product Management
Lead Management
PPC
Advertising Creative
SEO
PR
Video Production
Website Development
Articﬁcial Intelligence
Graphic Design
40%
20%
60%
80%
100%
Marketing team AgencyOther department Consultant
Which part of the business manages this skill?

The larger the business the more complicated
it gets.
Marketers at larger enterprises place a greater emphasis on the full spectrum
of competencies, compared to smaller organisations, which are generally more
selective in terms of which skillsets are important to the business.
Competencies viewed as highly important to larger companies include more
technically demanding disciplines, such as: Data Analysis (+11%) and Data
Management (+12%), Marketing Automation (+11%), SEO (+11%), PPC (+10%)
and Web Development (+10%), and Event Planning (+11%).
However, this doesn’t mean that large companies are more likely to have these
skills within the marketing team.
When compared to smaller organisations, larger organisations are actually less
likely to have skills sitting within their in-house marketing teams, due to larger
organisations relying on agencies to manage these functions on their behalf.
1-24
25-49
50-249
250-499
500-999
1000-4999
5000+
3 3
8
11
14
20
45
Company Size
What is the average size of a
marketing team?
The headcount within marketing teams varies considerably based on the size
of the organisation.
Companies from 1 to 49 employees have an average of 3 people in the
marketing team. At the opposite end of the spectrum, companies with 5,000
employees have an average of 45 marketers.

Marketing teams are becoming
more specialised
To allow teams to develop capabilities across such a diverse range of
competencies, there is a clear trend towards teams being made up of specialists,
as opposed to all-purpose marketing managers.
Marketing teams are restructuring themselves in 2017, focusing on specialised
functions rather than vertical markets.
The survey showed that 33% of respondents expect their teams to become more
specialised in 2017, compared to just 3% who are moving the other way to more
generalist roles.
30% generalist
roles remaining
generalist
roles
3% becoming
MORE generalist
in 2017
11% A
mix of
generalist
and
specialist
33% becoming
MORE specialist
in 2017
22% specialist
roles remaining
specialist roles
Why the move to specialisms?
“Our challenge is finding the right blend of specialist and generalist skills. Finding
the right split between digital and audience knowledge, having specialists in each
area,” one respondent commented.
In a recent interview with TFM, Dave Chaffey, founder of Smart Insights and IDM
tutor points out that it is often the right approach to centralise with specialists
when new technologies are introduced to an organisation.
“In the early days, digital marketing teams were created, but they weren’t
integrated with brand product marketing teams. The natural journey is to move
from a centralised centre of excellence to reskill teams, and to eventually
restructure so that these skills go back into business as usual.”

What role do agencies and
consultants play?
Not all businesses have the luxury of being able to equip themselves with an army
of specialists. For those who can’t afford to bring a diverse range of roles in-
house, outsourcing remains the most obvious solution.
We asked respondents what role agencies and consultancies were likely to play in
2017 and how satisfied they were with services rendered.
While some described how they were planning to move more business in-house,
the majority explained that they will be using agencies to ‘bring specialisation to
small marketing teams’.
Agencies are often treated as an “extension of the team” providing planning and
implementation services for things that the business cannot do itself or cannot do
very well.
By working a project-by-project basis it means that marketers “can tap into the
specific expertise we need at any particular point in time”.
They can be a useful way to “inject new and different thinking into the team”.
Main areas to outsource
The areas flagged as prime competencies for outsourcing included:
• Content and creative: Graphic design, producing video content and support in
developing a content strategy
• Search engine marketing and ad tech: Media buying, SEO and PPC
• Technologies: Website management, experiments with A.I. software and
augmented reality
• Other specialisms: Public relations and event stand build.
One respondent commented “I am increasing in-house capability and building
a centre of excellence. This is because agencies tend to work on projects
rather than permanent cultural change work that is needed to progress digital
transformation. I want to empower my team to feel like they can craft the future of
the business.”

As digital channels become the primary interfaces for connecting with customers,
the resources and budgets of marketing departments are increasingly being
invested into technology.
We asked respondents which departments owned technology in their
organisation.
Respondents could select more than one
Management/
Owner
Outsourced
ITagencies
Business
operations
(CRM,Data)
Digital
product&
Development
I.T.
Marketing
55%
68%
9% 9%
5% 4%
Which department ‘owns’
technology in your organisation?
Marketing only
12%
IT &
Marketing
36%
IT only
29%
Managing tech in a matrix
While more than half of respondents said that the marketing department was
the technology owner, just 12% said that marketing was the sole owner of
technology. In all other cases, marketing teams collaborate with different arms
of the business.
It is becoming clear that there is significant overlap between marketing and IT.
More than two-thirds of respondents (68%), said that their IT teams are the
technology owners; but only 29% said that technology laid with IT alone. One-third
(36%) said that IT and marketing teams shared ownership.

Tips for better Marketing / IT
collaboration
Over the years, the division between marketing and IT departments has become
one of the greatest ironies in business. While these departments are essentially
two sides of the same coin, for historical reasons, they seem locked in a Cold War
re-enactment, only disseminating information on a need-to-know basis.
Organisations ahead of the curve have realised the huge gains to be made by
combining these two departments. Of course, this requires a fundamental shift
in culture from both departments. Here are our top tips to ensure a tighter union
between marketing and IT.
• Break down siloes – IT tends to focus on transactional functions of the
business, with customer-facing applications often taking a back seat. Efforts
must be made to break down the cultural divisions between marketing and
sales by putting the customer front and centre.
• Make customer satisfaction a KPI for both teams – We are living in a
solutions-driven world and this affects both IT and marketing disciplines. Put
the customer at the heart of all projects. By starting with the customer rather
than the IT solution, both teams can let the ‘voice of the customer’ shape
better technology products.
• Collaborate - Build a culture of collaboration between functions. Depending on
the size of the organisation it is easy for communication to break down between
departments. You might even consider bringing both teams together under one
manager and budgeting authority to promote cohesion.
What type of support do marketers want
from vendors?
Marketing technology vendors can provide a variety of services to support
marketing teams. We asked marketers to rank the areas they need the most
support on a scale of 1-5.
Events and training
Customer support
Professional and creative services
(such as email design)
Account management
2.97
3.33
3.07
3.04

Top challenges in building a
high-performing marketing team
2017 is proving a challenging year for marketers. Traditional assumptions and
conventions are being challenged; new technologies are reshaping the marketing
landscape and to remain at the cutting edge, businesses must push against
received wisdom when it comes to best practice.
The major challenges marketers are facing in building high performing teams were
as follows:
Technology is driving strategic change
As marketing teams are dealing with increasingly sophisticated channels and
technologies “keeping up to date with the latest mass media platforms, social
media and email marketing’ is proving a challenge for many”.
We are seeing that having a clear marketing strategy is more important than ever.
Marketing leaders must be able to assimilate a complex mass of data-points, find
deeper customer insights and to communicate the vision to stakeholders. The
primary importance of strategy is true across businesses of all sizes and in all
markets.
Finding and retaining talent
Building a team that is capable of keeping up with these new technologies and
channels is proving to be a major task for organisations of all sizes who are
struggling to recruit and nurture talent.
“Securing technically skilled people with the right work ethic at an affordable rate’
was something we heard repeatedly from respondents.”
“Recruitment is harder when looking for a very wide range of skills. We need
people with both technical skills and commercial experience.”
The year of marketing specialisation
No one person can master all the skills that marketing requires in 2017. From
analytics and data management to SEO and content creation, the move is towards
building internal and external expertise around specific capabilities. This presents
a number of challenges, particularly for smaller organisations whose limited
budgets requires marketers to wear multiple hats. It also creates a more matrixed
environment, where marketers need to consider how to get the best from IT and
other teams.

The role of agencies, consultants and
freelancers
Trusted third-parties will play a critical role as they allow teams to fill gaps in
their portfolio of capabilities. Whether its technology, search engine marketing
or content production, agencies can provide expertise as and when required.
However, an over-reliance on agencies can be a risk, as it can lead to different
teams working in siloes.
Getting better with data
The need to improve handling of data is a key theme in this GDPR year. “We
gather a lot of data and information but rarely have time to thoroughly analyse
and use it strategically. Or rather to use this data to generate even more effective
campaigns,” one respondent said.
Others complained that they were struggling to develop a “data driven culture’
within the organisation with ‘so many metrics, so little for analysis”.
Tight budgets
Businesses large and small, but particularly small, have marketing teams under
pressure to do more with less.
“About 50% of the team has been made redundant,” said one respondent.
“The people that are left do not have the right skills”.
Others said that marketing simply wasn’t given the resources needed,
complaining a “lack of marketing budget” presented challenges in terms of
“managing expectations” from the business.

The IDM view
The complexity of digital marketing requires specialists from a wide range of
disciplines to work in a seamlessly integrated team of channel specialists and
marketing generalists.
While this report indicates that the need to digital marketing specialists is
deepening, a fact which is reflected in the broadening range of IDM courses, it
also suggests that those responsible for the management of marketing teams
need to have a correspondingly expansive knowledge of all marketing channels
and activities.
The report indicates that over 81% of respondents have already moved beyond
the much-discussed silo and that digital is now fully embedded into a marketing
process that regards marketing strategy and planning skills as the most important
core competency. Interestingly, this applies equally to organisations of all sizes.
It is significant that the report shows the growing dependency on combining in-
house and outsourced skills to achieve marketing objectives. Some 16% of the
professional marketing workforce is already part of the so-called gig economy and
many outsiders poses the much in-demand specialist Content and Creative, SEO
and PPC skills that don’t yet exist in-house.
The report also highlights the changing relationship between marketing and IT
that will perhaps herald the most significant developments in digital marketing
and skills going forward. It seems to me that great digital marketing often emerges
from the crossover points between different skill sets. The merger of marketer
insights and technologist skills will provide significant advantages to any business.
In a market fraught with strategic challenges and tactical difficulties that every
marketer must find a way of working through, this report will enable you to
benchmark your progress in the road to building a high-performance marketing
team.
Jane Cave
Managing Director
IDM

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